This course will guide students through the process of forming economic hypotheses, gathering the appropriate data, analyzing them, and effectively communicating their results. All students will be expected to have successfully completed Introduction to Statistical Methods in Economics and Econometrics (or their equivalents) as well as courses in basic microeconomics and macroeconomics. Students may find it useful to take at least one economics field course and perform a undergraduate research project before taking this course, but these are not requirements.
The required text is Writing Economics by Neugeboren and Jacobson. You are expected to read this text and follow its instructions in the work you hand in for this class, even though we will not cover the text in detail in the lectures. Other texts you might want to consult are A Guide for the Young Economist by Thomson, The Practice of Econometrics: Classic and Contemporary by Berndt, Elements of Style by Strunk and White, Stata® manuals, and The MIT Undergraduate Journal of Economics.
Your grade will be based on full participation in all aspects of the course. This includes attendance and participation in class (10%), attendance at required office hours (10%), one small paper (25%), two presentations (10%), and all proposals and drafts associated with the main project (45%). There will be no exams, and nothing will be due during finals week.
For the small paper, you will be given the choice of three topics on which to write a 6-8 page report. We will provide data sets and suggested techniques for each of the three choices. The main project will be a 10-12 page written report based on original economic research that you perform over the course of the semester. In addition to handing in the report at the end of the semester, you will be required to deliver a 5-10 minute presentation to the class on your preliminary idea, hand in a one page written proposal, hand in a rough draft, and deliver a 15-20 minute presentation to the class on your research near the end of the semester.
1. You are permitted, in fact encouraged, to discuss all course material with other students in the class. However, you must, obviously, hand in your own individual small paper and project. Discussion with others is intended to clarify ideas, concepts, and technical questions, not to derive group papers.
2. In fairness to students who complete assignments on time, students failing to hand in the small paper or the proposal on time will receive a zero for that assignment. We will accept late final projects, but their grades will be penalized a half a letter grade a day for lateness. You may turn in assignments during lecture on the day they are due, if there is a lecture.
3. Cheating or academic dishonesty in any form will not be tolerated and will result in swift punitive action. This includes but is not restricted to copying material from other students, lying, or plagiarizing from any source. Any student found to have cheated or behaved unethically or dishonestly will be given a grade of F on the assignment involved and referred to the appropriate disciplinary committees within MIT for further action.