Project

The project for Stat 5200 has two options. (i) Duplicate and discuss the analysis in an

existing empirical paper that uses econometric techniques taught in the course. Your

discussion should include criticism of the analyses carried out and the conclusions

reached in the paper, if such criticism is warranted. If you choose this option, you are

also encouraged to consider additional statistical analyses the author(s) did not

undertake—either perform the additional analyses or discuss what other and/or additional

approaches you deem appropriate. Note that you are not required to duplicate all of the

analysis in the paper. (ii) Use a data set of your own choice and execute an analysis.

The project is due Thursday, 19th December, at 11:59 p.m.

The final report should include the following sections: (1) introduction of the problem of

interest; (2) description of the data; (3) description of the models that will be fit to

address the economic problem of interest; (4) presentation of the fitted models, with

interpretation of the results (and place the R code in an appendix); (5) conclusions from

the analysis performed about the economic problem of interest, along with criticism and

discussion of limitations of the study.

For this project you are required to work individually.

I want to limit the length of your report. Your presentation should not exceed 15 pages,

exclusive of the appendix containing code.

Submit to me a brief proposal, no more than a page, describing the problem to be

considered, the data set you plan to use, what analyses you plan to duplicate, and what

additional analyses you plan to consider (if you have chosen the first option). If you

subsequently decide to change your topic, a new proposal is required. This brief research

paper proposal will be a part of one of homework questions (sometime in October).

I will be available to discuss your project with you. Either come to my office hours or

arrange an appointment.

A good source of data from published papers is the Journal of Applied Econometrics

Data Archive. It is available at https://journaldata.zbw.eu/journals/jae. The American

Economic Association maintains a web page with resources for economists on the

Internet. It lists economics journals which maintain data archives. The url is

https://www.aeaweb.org/resources.