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Holly WangWorkshop at CAU
December 15, 2010
Conducting Empirical Research and Publishing in International
Journals
Procedures of Conducting Empirical Research
• Choose your topic• Build a team• Review literature• Economic models• Collect and clean data• Econometric method• Analyze• Write papers
Grant proposal
Choose Your Topic
• What is the hot topic currently?• Funding availability• Easiness in publishing• Time lag• Is it important over the long run or just a fad?
• What is your personal interest?• Motivated• Have background knowledge• Future career
• Define the right scope of the topic• Do you have the capacity to handle it?• Do you have the time and resource to handle it?
Build A Team
• Advisor: if you are a student• Is s/he the expert for the chosen topic?• Will s/he be able to give you enough time?• Is his/her advising style match your need?
• Team members• Need one expert to cover each aspect of the project: economic model, econometric methods, field knowledge, policy knowledge, data collection resource• Willing to share the resource and credit• Have a clear role for each team member
Literature Review
• Searching engine: google scholar, econlit, etc.
• Background and situation: eg, GDP, and other statistics
• Issues: • papers of similar topics: what have been done,
and what have not been studied• identify gaps in literature• specific objectives to fill the gaps
• Methods• papers with relevant methods that can be used
Economic Models
• Microeconomic theory• supply theory, demand theory, derived demand• imperfect competition and game theory• general equilibrium and trade theory
• Macroeconomic theory• growth model
• Structure model vs reduced form • Variable selection suggested by the theory• Shifters, especially demographic variables• Testable hypothesis
Data
• Based on theory, identify variables needed• Cross section vs time series• Location, size, time horizon• How aggregated • Survey design vs published data• Focus group• Random sampling• Data clean up
Econometric methods
• Least square based regression• Tobit model for truncated data• Logit/Probit for qualitative dependent variables• Equation systems: SURE • Maximum loglikelihood estimation• Nonparametric
Analyze
• Diagnose tests • Try alternative models specifications• Hypothesis• Results shall address the objectives• Explain results and compare with intuition
Paper Writing
• Make a title to be concise and specific• Key words and abstract• Select a journal
• Read a couple of recent issues• The topic is accepted by the journal• Impact factor, fees, fast review
• Cite articles from the journal• Formatting for the journal• Submit
Paper Structure
• Introduction (including background, literature review, objectives)
• Model (theory)• Data (explain data collection methods, and
variables, descriptive statistics)• Results• Conclusion (policy implication)