ARE 298 - Empirical Project, 2007

Calendar

The following dates are for 2007 (Spring and Fall Semester). "Deliverables" should be put in Maximilian Auffhammer's mailbox. We will not tolerate any delays or lateness. You have months to prepare to meet these deadlines; do not procrastinate.

Date

Description

Deliverables

Pick advisor and topic. You should write a one sentence blurb regarding the topic you'd like to work on, and discuss it with your advisor, who must be an ARE faculty member. DO NOT delay arranging a time to talk to your advisor; faculty are busy, and you're asking them to do you a favor.

Question & abstract. This should be a very succinct description of your research question, along with a similarly succinct blurb describing a proposed modelling strategy, dataset, and plan for estimation/testing.

Summary statistics and data description. This should be something which could become a section of your final paper. You should describe the dataset you plan to use, and provide summary statistics for each variable of interest. In your description of the dataset take some care to discuss issues that may affect your estimation strategy. Is the data from a random sample? What are known sources of measurement error? If a panel, is there reason to believe that there may be cross-sectional dependence?

Submission of your paper. The paper has to be complete. Typically a complete paper will include an introduction, a well-specified economic model, an estimating equation, a description of the data, discussion of results, and a conclusion.

Short, public presentation of your project. In addition to presenting your own work, we will ask you to serve as a reviewer for two of your fellow students. These reviews will be due on the day of the presentation you'll review. Details on presentation dates will be determined later.

Revised papers due. This is it! You should incorporate feedback from your presentation and reviews in order to produce a final paper by this date. Once again, you need the signature of your advisor, so don't wait until the last minute.