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Page 1: William Thomson. A Guide for the Young Economist Chapter II.pdf · William Thomson. A Guide for the Young Economist Notation and De–nitions. Writing Papers Notation Bad notation

Writing Papers

Writing Papers

William Thomson. A Guide for the Young Economist

Notation and De�nitions

Page 2: William Thomson. A Guide for the Young Economist Chapter II.pdf · William Thomson. A Guide for the Young Economist Notation and De–nitions. Writing Papers Notation Bad notation

Writing PapersNotation

Bad notation can make an otherwise well-written paperimpossible to read.

Choose easily recognizable notation

The best notation is notation whose meaning can be guessed:

Y ,W ,F (X , L),U(X ,Y ),Π, p, q, L, t

If Z designates a set, call its members ......

If Ri is agent i�s preference relation, then agent j�s preferencerelation is...

Do not designate just any quantity by ε

Page 3: William Thomson. A Guide for the Young Economist Chapter II.pdf · William Thomson. A Guide for the Young Economist Notation and De–nitions. Writing Papers Notation Bad notation

Writing PapersNotation

Choose the abbreviation of your assumptions carefully (Mon,Cont, Con)

A common way to introduce an abbreviation for a condition isto place it in parentheses.

ex. Incentive Compatibility Condition (I .C )

Never put abbreviations in a section heading

By C3 and C5 we conclude that there exist an equilibrium.

Do not introduce notation you will use only once or twice

Page 4: William Thomson. A Guide for the Young Economist Chapter II.pdf · William Thomson. A Guide for the Young Economist Notation and De–nitions. Writing Papers Notation Bad notation

Writing PapersNotation

Respect the hierarchy of the di¤erent parts of a paper

Do not refer in the main text to terms, ideas or derivationsintroduced in a footnote or in a remark.

Footnotes should contain only information that is notessential to understanding your main arguments.Example: Second, regarding countries�concern for each others�ful�llment of the IEA, we can also �nd many real cases, where forinstance, certain northern European countries such as Germany mayfeel some disappointment from observing that many othersignatories do not carry out their promises as they should.

Footnote: Existing evidence suggests that only 15 out of the 41countries included in Annex I of the Kyoto protocol have ful�lledtheir commitments in Article 3.

Page 5: William Thomson. A Guide for the Young Economist Chapter II.pdf · William Thomson. A Guide for the Young Economist Notation and De–nitions. Writing Papers Notation Bad notation

Writing PapersNotation

For instance if you use M and M 0, make them play exactly theroles they play in the de�nition.

Ex. if in the de�nition M 0 > M, avoid M > M 0 in yourapplication.

Page 6: William Thomson. A Guide for the Young Economist Chapter II.pdf · William Thomson. A Guide for the Young Economist Notation and De–nitions. Writing Papers Notation Bad notation

Writing PapersNotation

Example

Consider a common pool resource (CPR) where an incumbentinitially exploits the CPR and an entrant analyzes whether ornot to enter

Page 7: William Thomson. A Guide for the Young Economist Chapter II.pdf · William Thomson. A Guide for the Young Economist Notation and De–nitions. Writing Papers Notation Bad notation

Writing PapersNotation

The initial stock of the CPR is either low or high,θK = fθL, θHg

Page 8: William Thomson. A Guide for the Young Economist Chapter II.pdf · William Thomson. A Guide for the Young Economist Notation and De–nitions. Writing Papers Notation Bad notation

Writing PapersNotation

Example

Assume a two-stage complete information gameFirst stage, the incumbent is the only �rm in the areaSecond stage of the game the entrant decides whether or notto join the incumbent.Agents have to select an e¤ort level xi (�rst stage) and ei andej (second Stage)

Page 9: William Thomson. A Guide for the Young Economist Chapter II.pdf · William Thomson. A Guide for the Young Economist Notation and De–nitions. Writing Papers Notation Bad notation

Writing PapersNotation

Example

The incumbent exerts an e¤ort level of x1 > 0, with anassociated cost of c(x1)

where marginal cost of e¤ort is positive, cx � 0 and convexcxx � 0.The total amount of resource appropriated by the incumbentis f (x1, θK ), which increases in the initial stock, fθ > 0, andin the e¤ort level, fx � 0but exhibits decreasing marginal returns to e¤ort, fxx � 0Assume that the marginal product of e¤ort increases in theinitial stock, fxθ � 0.The incumbent enjoys the following monopoly pro�tsMK1 (x1) � f (x1, θK )� c(x1).

Page 10: William Thomson. A Guide for the Young Economist Chapter II.pdf · William Thomson. A Guide for the Young Economist Notation and De–nitions. Writing Papers Notation Bad notation

Writing PapersNotation

Example

Minimum Wages and Employment: A Case Study of theFast-Food Industry in NJ and PA

Page 11: William Thomson. A Guide for the Young Economist Chapter II.pdf · William Thomson. A Guide for the Young Economist Notation and De–nitions. Writing Papers Notation Bad notation

Writing PapersNotation

Example

∆E i is the change in employment from wave 1 to wave 2 at store i

Wave 1: stores in PA and stores in NJ paying $5.00 per hour ormore

Wave 2: stores in PA and stores in NJ paying less than $5.00

Xi is a set of characteristics of store i , and

NJ , is a dummy variable that equals 1 for stores in NJ.

GAP is the proportional increase in wages at store i necessary tomeet the new minimum rate.

Page 12: William Thomson. A Guide for the Young Economist Chapter II.pdf · William Thomson. A Guide for the Young Economist Notation and De–nitions. Writing Papers Notation Bad notation

Writing PapersNotation

De�nitions

Do not assume Readers familiarity with your terms

Many Studies have analyzed the problem of the commons using thePrisoner�s dilemma game (Muhsam, 1973), chicken or assurancegames (Ostrom et al. 1994), and in�nitely repeated games (Balandand Platteau 1996). The prevention of the Tragedy of the commonshas been demonstrated using di¤erent models, from theconsideration of asymmetric players to the change in the structureof the game (for a comprehensive review of these studies see Faysee,2005)

Page 13: William Thomson. A Guide for the Young Economist Chapter II.pdf · William Thomson. A Guide for the Young Economist Notation and De–nitions. Writing Papers Notation Bad notation

Writing PapersNotation

When you �rst use a term, make it immediately clear that it isindeed new.

Example: The function f exhibits decreasing marginal returns

We use Di¤erence-in-Di¤erence (DD) analysis to compare thechange in outcomes for the experimental states to the changein outcome for the non-experimental states.

"An allocation rule is e¢ cient if for all preference pro�le Rand all allocations z that it selects for R, there is noallocation z 0 that all agents �nd at least as desirable as z andthat at least one agent prefers"


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