ECON 4400: Elementary Econometrics Summer 2021

The Ohio State University Sungmin Park

Final Paper
Due at 11:59 PM (Eastern Time) on Monday, August 2, 2021.

Using econometric methods learned over the course of the semester, argue your position
on a research question that relates people's characteristics, decisions, or policies to
individual, economic, social, or political outcomes. Your paper must be at least 10
double-spaced pages but no longer than 20 pages, written in plain English prose. It
must include results organized into figures and tables to support of your argument.
However, it must not contain any raw code or output from a particular software. I will
evaluate your paper on both its content and delivery.

Your paper must be free of plagiarism. This means that any ideas or expressions you
use from others' work, however small or large, must be represented as theirs and not
yours. You must quote the ideas or expressions you are borrowing and cite their
sources. If you are unsure of what constitutes plagiarism, see standard definitions such
as one given by the Ohio State University.1

Here are a few pieces of writing advice. First, you should not wait until you have all
desired results to start writing. Writing is not a mere reporting of what we find, but is
often itself a thinking process that helps build and clarify our own argument. Second,
explain all of your results in plain English in addition to reporting them in equations,
figures or tables. What may seem obvious to the researcher is usually not as obvious to
the reader who has spent much less time thinking about the topic. Third, use a clear
topic sentence at the beginning of every paragraph that best represents its point, and
use transitional phrases between paragraphs to indicate the relationship between
different points.

Here are some further suggestions (not requirements) to make your paper persuasive.

1. Introduction (3-5 paragraphs): After providing a brief motivation (1 paragraph is

enough), go straight into stating your research question and main result (another
paragraph). The goal is to let the reader know your central claim as clearly and as early
as possible. Briefly explain the data and empirical methods you use (1 paragraph).
Finally, discuss why your result is important (1-2 paragraphs), such as by explaining its
economic significance and pointing out how it is different from an existing study.

1 https://u.osu.edu/cononlinecoursefaq/academic-misconduct-and-plagiarism

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ECON 4400: Elementary Econometrics Summer 2021
The Ohio State University Sungmin Park

2. Data and empirical strategy (many paragraphs): State your exact data source, for
example, World Bank's World Development Indicators. Describe your data set by
explaining the sample size, units of observation, and important variables, and other
important features. It is a good idea to include a table of summary statistics for the
crucial variables. Sometimes, it can be helpful to provide a scatter plot of the
relationship between the main dependent and independent variables. Furthermore,
explain your empirical strategy, such as multiple regression, panel regression using
difference-in-differences or fixed effects, or instrumental variables. It can be helpful to
to state the exact population model equation. Describe any control variables or
instrumental variables you are including, and argue that why doing to will provide
appropriate results.

3. Results (many paragraphs): Organize your results into a table (or more if needed) in
the most accessible way to the reader. Your results should not contain any raw code or
output from your econometrics software. That is, you should clearly explain what you
did rather than expecting the reader to decipher what you did. For each numbers or
estimates, provide standard errors, appropriate explanation, and interpretation,
including a discussion of the economic and statistical significance. It is helpful to put
stars ***, **, or * etc., to indicate statistical significance under 1%, 5%, or 10%, but
you are not required to do so if you provide careful discussion. If needed, you should
scale the units of the data for your dependent and independent variables so that your
estimated coefficients are easy to interpret. That is, estimated coefficients should not
look like 0.000*** or 1572394. Discuss any positive or normative implications of your
results. Discuss their weaknesses or limitations.

4. Conclusion (2-3 paragraphs): Summarize your question, method, main result and
implications. Discuss any additional takeaways or caveats from your results, and suggest
a direction for future research.

5. References: Include the full information about any sources you cite. Such information
is easily available from Google Scholar for users to copy and paste. The formatting does
not matter as long as it is consistent. For example, if you've mentioned a paper by
Acemoglu et al. (2001) in your text, you can include its full citation as
Acemoglu, D., Johnson, S., & Robinson, J. A. (2001). The colonial origins of comparative
development: An empirical investigation. American Economic Review, 91(5), 1369-1401.

I will continue to be available through email, my regular office hours (Mondays and
Wednesdays 3:30 - 5:00 PM EST), or by appointment. You can ask me any questions whenever
you are stuck or not sure of what you are doing.