ARE 298 - Empirical Project, 2006

Grading

The following is a summary of the grading procedure we will use for second year projects this year. We're sharing this information in the hopes that by making the process more transparent we can reduce student anxiety, and by making the incentives explicit, improve student performance.

Each paper will be carefully read and evaluated by at least two faculty members, who collectively form the ``committee" referred to below.

• First, the paper will be evaluated on seven criteria: the quality of the question, the model, the data, the econometric analysis, the results, the oral presentation, and the creativity.
  • Question (how sharply defined and how well you justify its relevance)
  • Model (the adequacy of the theoretical and/or statistical model to the question)
  • Data (adequation of the data to the problem, use of descriptive statistics, discussion of its property for the econometric analysis)
  • Econometric analysis (quality of the econometric estimation, tests, use of alternative specifications, etc)
  • Results and conclusion (interpretation in terms of the question, interesting use of the results, conclusion adequately drawn from the analysis)
  • Oral presentation (quality/clarity of the presentation, response to questions)
  • Creativity (the "creativity" points are meant to rewards students who have explored a relatively new econometric technique, or an unusual data set, or have combined data sets from different sources, or use models from different disciplines, etc. Anything that makes the project somewhat more interesting than a simple good replication of a standard analysis).

  On that basis, each member of the committee will prepare a complete ordering of each of the papers he has evaluated.

• Second, each member of the committee assigns a "check", "check-plus", or "check-minus" to each of the referee reports he has received.

• Third, the committee will meet to compare the orderings, and construct a complete ordering of all of the papers, and then assign them letter grades.

• Finally, the committee can make adjustments to the letter grade (of at most a half-grade) of a student based on the quality of the referee reports he has written.

Ordinarily, the topmost paper will also win the Sidney Hoos prize (see the winners of previous years on the Applied Econometric web-page). Only students in their second year at ARE are eligible for the Sidney Hoos Prize. However, the committee reserves the right not to award the prize to any paper.

Students will receive the two reports from the two members of the committee with the short assessments made on the seven criteria defined above, as well as the scores on the referee reports written.