Intro

Compiled by Malika Mukambetkalieva Senior Student at Economics Department(2022) American University of Central Asia Economics Program Syllabus

Instructor: Dr. Nurbek Jenish, Associate Professor, Economics Program nurbekj@hotmail.com

Office Hours: By appointment.

Course Objectives and Description:

The purpose of this course is to train students to conduct rigorous research in economics. Students will gain expertise in choosing research topics, analyzing data sets, and writing a research paper. My role, as an instructor, in this course is slightly different from my role in a lecture course. Seminars are a group endeavor involving give and take in many directions. We are all working together to create something new. My role in this workshop is that of a facilitator, though I will deliver some review lectures. I am here (as are the other students in the seminar) to help you succeed at undertaking novel research.

Course design and assignments. The course will include both group meetings and individual consultations involving student teams with the instructor. During the course, students have to deliver several presentations in order to show the progress of writing senior thesis paper.

Grade Component Points

Grading Policy. Incompletes will be given only to those who have obtained permission by the end of Week 8, or who face a legitimate medical emergency. The final grade for the course will be calculated as follows:

  • Attendance/ Participation 10%
  • Research topic presentation 10%
  • Revised research topic presentation 10%
  • Literature Review Presentation 15%
  • Literature Review Paper 15%
  • Final Presentation 40%

Penalty for misrepresenting others' work as your own or other will be done in line with AUCA honor code violations; other penalties TBA. The following grading scale will be used (subject to change):

  • A= 90+
  • A-=85-89
  • B+=80-84
  • B= 76-80
  • B-=72-76
  • C+=68-71
  • C=64-67
  • C-=60-63
  • D+=56-59
  • D=53-55
  • D-=50-52
  • F<52
  • X=more than five unexcused absences

Readings: There will be no readers for this course. However, students are strongly encouraged to consult the following books for this course.

  • Guideline(Students' Manual) for Senior Undegraduate Theses. Unpublished, Economics Program, American University of Central Asia (will be send by department with all dates and deadlines)
  • Dudenhefer, Paul, 2009. A Guide to Writing in Economics. Unpublished, Duke University ( This reading is very good guide in writing Economic Paper, suggested to get familiar with it)
  • Additional handouts and course materials will be available on web-resources designated for the course

Tips and Advices from another student:

  • Start searching for topic as soon as possible
  • If you don't know what topic to choose and where to start, read economic articles, follow the news in this field, read some papers, attend conferences( for example attending Life in Kyrgyzstan conference helped me learn about the field I want to choose), attend guest lectures of the economics department.
  • Start looking for Supervisor as soon as possible
  • While choosing a supervisor , concentrate on how comfortable you are with your professor, do not hesitate to contact them.
  • Look through all available data for Kyrgyzstan or Macro level data, it will greatly help you in choosing a topic. Without enough data you will not be able to work on your topic so it is better to know what kind of data you have beforehand. You can visit "Survey Search Database", which is a list of micro-data sources that were conducted in Kyrgyzstan since 1991. Basically this webpage was created to facilitate the search of all surveys and data for Central Asian countries, as now all the info about available data is collected in one place. https://storage.googleapis.com/survey_database/index.html
  • After finding a supervisor, don't wait for them to write to you, contact them first, ask all questions you have, and show your progress on the thesis.
  • Do not miss any of the presentations in this course
  • Listen to the suggestions of the Professor, take into consideration comments
  • Choosing decent literature is very important, discuss how relatable they are with Professor and Supervisor
  • During the revision of Regressions Models and Stata pay attention to lectures, you will need this knowledge very soon
  • Do not hesitate to contact Professor during office hours
  • Start writing soon, there will be many changes and corrections
  • If some of the papers are not available for reading or payment required, contact authors and ask them to send you their work indicating the purpose, most of the time authors are friendly and easy with sharing their works.

Course Content

The course is not designed to teach you empirical or theoretical tools but rather help you apply the knowledge and tools you have gained throughout your studying. The goal of the course is for you at the end of the semester to come up with well-posed thesis topic and well defined research questions as well as main and secondary literature, model to work on. At the end of the course you should have a clear idea of what your research question is, what you are going to research, and why your topic is relevant. Other than that you should have access to the data you are going to use and have a decent literature review.

Good economic paper

Before starting to actually work on a thesis and writing it, it is essential to understand the goal. To write a good economic paper means that your work should fully fulfill its potential, meet the expectations established by the paper itself and communicate with the paper's intended reader. As it was written in the main reading and mentioned in the course "writing is thinking". Rather than seeing writing as a final step in the research process, you should see it as part and parcel of the research process from the very start. That is why as it is already pointed out it is crucial to start early and rewriting is the normal part of every research. "Writing paper is a recursive process – write, revise, re-write…;". Many arguments or points we want to mention in our writing may seem to be good in our minds until we try to express it on paper by words. Only after trying to explain things with writing, we can understand how bad the arguments are or what needs to be improved, what we want to explain and how. So, writing is a tool to actually understand what you want to say. And again, writing good paper, doing good research takes time, so use that time properly. In the Dudenhefer manual on how to write economic paper, there are advices on wiring a good economic paper:

  1. Adopt learning as a goal. In our concern about grades, we often forget about one very important thing: learning. Approach the writing assignment as a chance to learn: to learn about a subject, to learn about research methods and sources of information, to learn about your writing and research habits (and whether you may need to change them).
  2. Think of yourself as a writer. Too often students think of themselves as, well, students, and they view their assignments as required tasks in which they have no real investment. The problem with that is it puts you in the wrong position in relation to what you want to accomplish. If you were taking an exam, you would do well to regard yourself as a student. But writing a paper is not about taking an exam or even studying per se. It is about writing and all that writing entails—planning, researching, drafting, revising, thinking. Therefore, do not think of yourself as a student but as a writer, an economist, a scholar. For models and inspiration, read the series of interviews with writers in the Paris Review and the testimonials of economists in Passion and Craft: Economists at Work.
  3. Surrender to the process. Researching and writing a paper is not a strict matter of completing a series of tasks that take a finite amount of time and that yield a predictable result. Researching and writing a paper is instead a recursive and sometimes uncertain and unpredictable process that refuses to fall completely under your control. The more you surrender to the process, the happier you will be.
  4. Start early. That means today. Not after this weekend's parties, or after spring break, or after the big game, but today. How? Make a list of possible topics. Compile a bibliography of books and articles on your topic. Read about your topic, and take notes as you read. Formulate a tentative thesis. Write what you know, and what you would like to know, about your topic.Writing an empirical paper takes time, you will have to work with data, models, stata, interpreting the results etc. There is very little probability that you will be able to do it "overnight", consider it when you decide to procrastinate.
  5. Set a schedule. Do not trust that you will work efficiently and in a timely manner. Set a schedule for your writing project, and stick to it. Show up at the same time every day so the muse will know when to find you. Tip: Set Monday mornings as deadlines; that way, you won't be tempted to spend the entire weekend away from your project.
  6. Understand the need for information. Information comes primarily from two sources: thinking and research. If you don't know what to write, you have not thought enough about your topic or researched it enough—or both.
  7. Write before you are ready to write. Students often see writing as the final activity of a linear process, as the thing you do after you have conducted your research and formulated your ideas. But in reality, researching and thinking and writing are all of a piece. Start writing something—anything—before you have finished your research. Write even before you know what you want to say. Indeed, it is often only by writing that we work out and discover what we truly want to say.
  8. As a last tip, Please keep track of your sources as you work out your ideas on paper. Do not rely on your memory! When you come across a passage or a statistic you might use in your paper, write down precisely where it comes from. Accurate and scrupulous note-keeping in the prewriting stage will save you lots of extra work and headaches later when you draft your paper. (As a student who has gone through all the pain of losing an important link, it is highly advisable to keep track of your sources).

Good writing

It is an introduction to economic research. It is the part where you should learn how to write. Again from the Dudenhefer's manual along with the course professors notes we have 9 principles of "Principles for Clear, Cohesive, and Coherent Writing". Where Cohesive stands for united, (представляющий единое целое), and Coherent stand for clear and carefully considered each part of it connects or follows in a natural or reasonable way (последовательный).

Principle 1

Keep your complete grammatical subjects short, structure your sentences so that they have complete grammatical subjects that are short. Try to use short sentences. Below you can see two versions of the same sentence, the first with a long complete subject (italicized), the second, with a short one:

  • Long subject: A full explanation of why the model cannot accommodate this particular case of omitted variable bias is given in the appendix.
  • Short subject: The appendix explains in full why the model cannot accommodate this particular case of omitted variable bias.

Principle 2

Express key actions as verbs. Try to avoid nominalizations - noun forms of words that can also be verbs. Note that for some words, the verb form and the noun form are the same.

  • There is opposition among many voters to nuclear power plants. Many voters oppose nuclear power plants.
  • Economists made attempts to define full employment. Economists attempted to define full employment.
  • We conducted a review of the matter. We reviewed the matter.

Principle 3

Begin sentences with old information. Clear writing is writing that flows, and the best way to create flow is to begin sentences with old information. This will ensure that you create a passage that is cohesive. Often, old information appears as a sentence connector or transitional word or phrase that indicates the relationship between a sentence and the one that preceded it: for example, thus, however, in contrast.

  • Econometrics is an indispensible tool for modern economists. It allows us to analyze data, estimate relationships b/w economic variables.
  • Econometrics is an indispensible tool for modern economists. It allows us to analyze data, estimate relationships b/w economic variables. However, econometrics requires solid knowledge of matrix algebra.

Principle 4

End sentences with new information - place new or important information at the ends of sentences. New information is the most important in a sentence; thus should receive the most emphasis, and the place of most emphasis in a sentence is at the end.

Principle 5

Make the subjects of your sentences clear. The subject should tell the reader who or what the sentence is about.

  • Omitted variable bias has plagued studies of student achievement. It has prevented researchers from reaching confident conclusions about the best way to reform the education system. (This story is about omitted variable bias.)
  • Educational researchers have long been prevented by the problem of omitted variable bias. They therefore cannot be confident that their studies yield reliable conclusions about the best way to reform the education system. (This ―story is about educational researchers.)

Principle 6

In each passage use a limited set of concepts/ideas - for a given passage, do not introduce new information at the end of each sentence. Or in other words make the first few words of your sentences constitute a limited set of concepts.

Principle 7

Be concise – clear writing is generally concise: Delete words that mean little or nothing. Delete words that repeat the meaning of other words. Delete words implied by other words. Replace a phrase with a word. Change negatives to affirmatives. ● In my personal opinion, it is necessary that we should not ignore the opportunity to think over each and every suggestion offered. ● We should consider each suggestion.

Principle 8

Write in paragraphs. Paragraphs may perform any number of functions. Most develop an idea; in those cases, the paragraph should have a topic sentence, a sentence that states the main or controlling idea. Others may describe something, such as an economic model or a dataset. Once you have drafted a paper, examine each paragraph as a whole and list briefly what it does (or what it is supposed to do). You can use that list to get a good sense of the content and organization of your paper.

Principle 9

Do not plagiarize – see AUCA's Honor Code. Follow consistently generally accepted in-text citation and referencing rules: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/02/

Identifying and Narrowing a Topic Finding and narrowing a topic are crucial to a successful research project. In order to write effective economics papers, it is important to understand how research questions and ideas usually develop in the discipline. Most research projects are extensions of or complements to the "literature," the existing body of published articles (and books) on a particular subject. Regardless of the subject that interests them, most economists first become intimate with the literature on the subject, paying especial attention to the questions asked, the data used, and the models and estimation techniques employed. Suggestions on how to find a topic

  • Topic should sustain your interest - What economic issues grab your attention? What issues bring out the debater in you? Think about any news stories you have read in the paper or heard on the radio lately. Did any of those get you talking? Have you or your family been affected in an extraordinary way by something in the economy? Browse current periodicals. Skim current issues of economics journals for ideas for a topic. Here are a few titles to get you started: the American Economic Review; the Economic Journal; the Quarterly Journal of Economics; the Journal of Political Economy; the Review of Economic Studies; the Review of Economics and Statistics; the Journal of Economic Literature; and the Journal of Economic Perspectives. Skim through working papers of leading research institutions: International Monetary Fund, World Bank, European Central Bank, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and (unpublished) working papers of top western universities and economic schools (Harvard, MIT, LSE, etc.)
  • Once the topic is selected, you will then need to narrow it. So how do you do that? In economics, there are four classic dimensions along which to narrow a topic: time period, demographic group, geographical region, and event or policy action.

Examples

  • A topic such as ―Kyrgyz women's participation in the labor force can be narrowed by a policy: ―The effect of the 2005 Amendments to the Law on Gender Equality on women's participation in the labor force.

  • Monetary policy in Kyrgyzstan can be narrowed to ―Channels of interest rate transmission in Kyrgyzstan.

  • Continue to read articles about your topic. The better you know the literature on your topic, the better you will get for the kinds of questions researchers have asked about it—and about the kinds of questions you should ask about it. Let their questions be your guide.
  • Read the literature reviews in those articles, and the concluding sections. The literature reviews will either be in the introduction or in a section of their own; taken as a whole, they will outline the boundaries of the research that has already been conducted.
  • The conclusions often identify questions that are still unanswered. If you are lucky, much of that work may have already been done for you. That is, for some topics, recent comprehensive surveys of the literature may exist. If you find such a survey, be sure to consult it.
  • Consult with your professor about narrowing a topic.

Making an economic arguments

Economics has its own way of making an argument. First, Economic arguments subject a phenomenon to economic analysis. Second, economic arguments use economic assumptions, concepts, and theories to explain or understand the phenomenon in question. Third, economic arguments use certain kinds of evidence to support hypotheses.

Types of Economics Writing

In general economic papers can be classified into:

  1. Empirical Papers (The focus of the course): Although there are more genres of economics writing than just empirical and theoretical papers, when it comes to measuring the true mettle of an economist, it is only the empirical and theoretical papers that really count to the mainstream discipline.
    • Empirical papers test a model with data to see how well the model represents reality.
    • In this course (and for your thesis) the models, which are tested, will be usually adaptations of models constructed by other researchers. In other words, when you conduct an empirical study, you will not construct the model from scratch. For instance, the Exchange Rate Pass Through toImport Prices in Kyrgyzstan – the methodology can be borrowed from already published studies.
    • The data will come from large surveys administered by some third party such as the government (for instance, household survey - longitudinal dataset).
    • Empirical papers are divided into sections, usually these six—introduction, data, model, estimation technique or methodology, findings, and conclusion. The order is just as given. They contain a literature review that is either part of the introduction or in a section of its own that follows the introduction.
    • The findings of empirical papers usually consist of coefficient estimates derived from regression analyses. The results are presented in tables.
  2. Theoretical Papers: In theoretical papers a model is extensively developed, one that is internally logically consistent. Much like proofs in geometry, the conclusions of models in theoretical papers are "proved." That is, the model is shown with a sufficient degree of internal logical consistency to "prove".
    • The model may begin as an adaptation of a model constructed by another researcher; or it may be constructed more or less from scratch by the author himself.
    • Unlike empirical papers, which normally contain more prose than mathematics, theoretical papers can, for pages at a time, contain as much mathematics as prose.
    • Theoretical papers are identified by lots of "propositions," "proofs," "theorems," and "lemmas" and by an absence of data.
  3. Economic History Papers: Economic history papers examine changes over time in economic institutions, economic conditions, economic practices.
    • In economic history papers the sources of evidence are such things as statistics, archival materials, and contemporary sources (e.g.,newspapers, magazines, and government documents dating from the period under study).
    • Economic history is not to be confused with the history of economic thought or the history of economics.
  4. Other types of economic writings are: History of thought papers, Literature reviews, Handbook and encyclopedia entries, Book reviews etc.

Structure of Empirical Papers Empirical papers usually consist of the following sections:

  • Introduction
  • Literature Review
  • Data
  • Model
  • Estimation technique or methodology
  • Findings/Results
  • Conclusion.

The empirical economic paper

Professor Tauchen in the Dudenhefer manual explains how economists write papers "we start from the innermost spot, the model and equations. We do the empirical work, and then write a narrative around selected tables and figures. We gradually expand the paper outwards in both directions towards the introduction and conclusion. Those two sections are written last: it's impossible to write them until the author knows what is inside the paper."

Describing Your Data and Their Sources

One of the innermost parts of an (empirical) economics paper is the data section. The best way to learn about writing a data section is to read several data sections in the literature on your topic and pay attention to the kinds of information they contain. What you tell your readers about your data will depend in large part on the kind of analysis you are conducting. your data section should do at least the following.

  • Identify the data source. This means a sentence that explicitly says where your data come from.
  • Describe the data source. You should tell your readers such things as the number of observations, the population groups sampled, the time period during which the data were collected, the method of data collection, etc.
  • State the strengths and weaknesses of the data source. How do your data compare with other data sources used in the literature? Does yours provide more observations, and/or more recent observations, than other sources? Was the data collected in a more reliable manner?
  • Note any features of the data that may affect your results. Were certain populations overrepresented or underrepresented? Is there attrition bias or selection bias? Did the method of data collection change?
  • Explain any computations or adjustments you made. Sometimes, a data source does not give you something directly; you perhaps had to add/subtract/multiply/divide two given pieces of data to get a third. Describe how you constructed your sample. Did you have to eliminate certain kinds of observations, for instance?

You should pay attention to what aspects of your data will be most relevant to your project; you might devote more space to discussing your dependent variable than a control variable. Data sections often contain a table of descriptive statistics, statistics of relevance about the sample. These statistics usually include the mean (e.g., mean income, mean age, mean years of schooling, etc.) and standard deviation. For categorical data (like race), however, you do not report a mean; instead, you report the percentage of the observations in each group. Again, the nature of your project will determine how best to describe your data. It bears repeating that the best way to learn how to write a data section is to read several data sections in the literature and pay attention to the kinds of information they contain.

Describing Your Model

Economic analysis largely concerns the construction and testing of models. Models are abstract, simplified representations of an economy, of a function, of a decision making process, and so on; they are expressed in a combination of words and mathematics. A typical model section in an empirical paper will be four or five pages long. If the paper presents a simple regression, the model might simply be the regression equation. In the model section, the writer takes the reader through the series of equations that constitute the model. The description should begin verbally. Below is the example of Paul Krugman from the Dudenhefer manual: "We consider a model of two regions. In this model there are assumed to be two kinds of production: agriculture, which is a constant-returns sector tied to the land, and manufactures, an increasing-returns sector that can be located in either region." You should also indicate the source of the model. Did you construct it yourself, or, as is more common, was it borrowed or adapted from someone else? "The model, like many of the models in both the new trade and the new growth literature, is a variant on the monopolistic competition framework [i.e., model] initially proposed by Dixit and Stiglitz." As you describe your model, its corresponding mathematical form is presented. You should lay out all the assumptions you make in your model, as well as explain the intuition behind those assumptions. And, as it was said before, let published economics papers be your guide.

Describing Your Estimation Methods and Techniques

Models often contain constants or "parameters" whose values need to be estimated. You will need to state the statistical technique you will use—reduced-form regression, two-stage least squares, etc.—to estimate the parameters of your model. Describing one's estimation technique often involves equations; to make the equations easier to follow, you should first explain the notation used in the equations. After introducing the necessary notation, the authors begin explaining their estimation technique in earnest. The length and detail with which you describe your methods will be determined by the complexity of your analysis. Reporting and Interpreting Your Results The results section of an empirical paper is usually the longest. In an empirical economics paper, you test a model with data; in the results section, you report the outcome of that test. In most cases, when you report the results of your analysis, you are at the same time referring the reader to a table in which the results are presented. When you present information in a table, there are at least two expectations that you need to fulfill. The first is that you explicitly introduce the table. The second expectation is that you should, in your narrative, identify the main points made by the data in the table, the points that most closely correspond to your research question. When stating your results, you should draw your reader's attention to the applicable numerical figure in the table. "As seen in column 1, the coefficient on education is 0.583 and is statistically significant at the 5 percent level."