SYLLABUS: ECON 201



SYLLABUS: ECONOMICS 145

ECONOMIC RESEARCH METHODS

SPRING 2020

INSTRUCTOR: Professor Craig Gallet

OFFICE: Tahoe 3024

CLASS HOURS: TuTh 10:30 – 11:45AM (AMD 220)

PHONE: 278-6099

E-MAIL: cgallet@csus.edu

OFFICE HOURS: TuTh 8 – 9AM; Tu 12 – 1PM

PREREQUISITES:

Economics 100A, Economics 100B, and Economics 140 with a minimum grade of C; GWAR certification before Fall 2009, WPJ score of 70+, or at least a grade of C- in English 109 M/W. Since this is a “capstone” course in the BA program in Economics, enrollment is restricted to graduating seniors.

MATERIALS:

There are no textbooks required for this course. I will provide you with handouts, which you can refer to throughout the semester. If you’re someone who likes to have a textbook, there are a few out there relevant to this course. In particular, although not required, you might find the following useful:

Greenlaw, S. 2006. Doing Economics: A Guide to Understanding and Carrying Out Economic Research. Houghton Mifflin.

Koop, G. 2013. Analysis of Economic Data, 4th Edition. Wiley.

Studenmund, A. H. 2017. Using Econometrics: A Practical Guide, 7th Edition. Pearson.

DESCRIPTION:

In this course you will apply your knowledge of economics towards the completion of an applied project. Specifically, you will analyze a research question of interest and summarize your results in a structured paper. You will also present your findings to others at the end of the semester. Course objectives are the following:

• To identify a valid research topic within a field of economics.

• To identify appropriate studies and summarize a literature.

• To identify, collect, and summarize appropriate data.

• To apply economic theory by formulating and testing hypotheses using appropriate econometric techniques.

• To write a paper summarizing your results and present your findings to others.

• To gain an appreciation for the value of economic reasoning and research, but to also recognize the limitations of its application.

SOFTWARE:

While you’re free to use whatever software you like to estimate regressions (but not Excel), we will predominantly use Eviews and/or Gretl during lab times throughout the semester. Note that I have no experience using Stata, SPSS, or R. Thus, the risk of using software I am unfamiliar with is that you could find yourself “stuck” should an issue arise.

Since I will be providing edits and comments in the assignments directly related to your paper, you need to use Microsoft Word throughout the semester.

GRADING:

There are no exams in this course. Instead, your course grade will be based on a weighted average of 7 written assignments (collectively weighted as 77% of your course grade), 3 in-class presentations (collectively weighted as 6% of your course grade), 1 final presentation of your research to fellow students and a select group of faculty during the final week of class (weighted as 7% of your course grade), and the final submission of your paper (weighted as 10% of your course grade). Note that all content will be graded on a 100-point basis. Thus, your weighted average for the course is calculated as:

Weighted Average = 0.77●(Average Score on 7 Assignments)

+ 0.06●(Average Score on 3 In-Class Presentations)

+ 0.07●(Score on Final Presentation)

+ 0.10●(Score on Final Paper)

Your grade for the course will then be determined using the following ranges:

|Weighted Average |Course Grade |

|93.34 – 100 |A |

|90 – 93.33 |A- |

|86.67 – 89.99 |B+ |

|83.34 – 86.66 |B |

|80 – 83.33 |B- |

|76.67 – 79.99 |C+ |

|73.34 – 76.66 |C |

|70 – 73.33 |C- |

|66.67 – 69.99 |D+ |

|63.34 – 66.66 |D |

|60 – 63.33 |D- |

|< 60 |F |

| | |

Note: If scores are below expectations, the instructor reserves the right to “adjust the curve” accordingly. However, any curve adjustment will not apply towards the various deductions (e.g., lack of attendance, etc.) as explained in this syllabus.

POLICIES:

Before discussing the work you need to complete over the course of the semester, please note the following policies:

1. Attendance: Given the direct linkage between in-class activities and successful completion of your project, your attendance is very important. Accordingly, I will periodically take attendance when we meet as a group. While you’re allowed one “freebie” (i.e., you can miss one meeting when attendance is taken and not be penalized), every time attendance is taken and you are not present (for the entire class meeting) will result in your weighted average being reduced by 2 percentage points. Hence, suppose you miss 7 class meetings when attendance is taken and your weighted average for the semester is 80%, which falls in the B- range. Now, after the one freebie, your weighted average is reduced 12 percentage points, knocking you down to 68% (which as indicated above is a grade of D+ for the course).

2. Topic Approval: Your topic must be chosen in consultation with me. I am here to help you, and so rather than going down a “rabbit hole”, I can help steer you clear of this. Bottom line, you will not learn what is required in isolation. Accordingly, you are required to schedule a few meetings with me over the course of the semester so that you have a better chance of remaining on target. Failure to meet and get your topic approved by me will result in a grade of F for the course. Also, failure to show up for a scheduled meeting with me will result in a 5-percentage point reduction in your weighted average.

3. Punctuality: Assignments are due on assigned days and times (see tentative dates and times below). Failure to turn in an assignment when it is due will result in a 50% reduction in your score on the assignment (if the assignment is turned in before the beginning of the next class meeting). If the assignment is not turned in before the beginning of the next class meeting, then you will receive a score of zero for the assignment. All 7 written assignments, as well as your final paper, must be submitted to me electronically via email.

4. Required Revisions: For all assignments, I will evaluate your work and provide recommendations regarding content, grammar, style, estimation, interpretation, etc., etc. For Assignments 4 – 6, in particular, since these are the main “building blocks” of your final submitted paper, you are expected to address all of the recommendations and concerns I raise. Accordingly, the final version of your paper is meant to be a revision of Assignments 4 – 6, addressing my recommendations and concerns raised on these assignments, as well as the inclusion of a title page, introduction, and conclusion (i.e., Assignment 7). Failure to address my recommendations and concerns will result in a grade of 0 for the final submitted version of your paper. Please see me at any point in the semester so that I can help you address any recommendations and concerns.

5. Presentations: I understand public speaking is tough for a lot of folks, including me! However, you will likely need to speak in public at times throughout your career, and so this is a skill you “learn by doing”. Thus, for every PowerPoint presentation (Presentations 1 – 2) you do not deliver, your course grade will be reduced by 5 percentage points. Failure to deliver Presentation 3 or the Final Presentation will result in a grade of F for the course. Similar to the written assignments, you will need to provide me an electronic copy of your PowerPoint slides prior to your presentation (see specifics below).

GRADED WORK:

Assignment 1: You will be provided data to analyze issues using econometric software. This assignment will provide practice regarding econometric techniques, as well as presenting results in formatted tables.

Assignment 2: You will submit a research prospectus (2 pages minimum) summarizing your proposed project. In the prospectus, you will discuss your proposed topic, preliminary empirical model, and how your research extends the literature. You will also discuss proposed data sources.[1] Furthermore, you will present a 3 minute summary to the class using PowerPoint slides (Presentation 1). Provide an electronic version of the slides to me (via email) by the tentative due date and time (see below).[2]

Assignment 3: You will be provided data to analyze issues using econometric software. This assignment will provide practice regarding econometric techniques, as well as presenting results in formatted tables.

Assignment 4: You will submit a preliminary literature summary and reference list (6 pages minimum) consisting of a summary of a minimum of 6 studies (published in peer-reviewed Economics journals) relevant to your chosen topic. The last page of this assignment will consist of a properly formatted reference list of all studies cited thus far.

Assignment 5: You will submit a preliminary discussion of your empirical model and data summary (5 pages minimum). This will involve discussing your expectations (i.e., testable hypotheses linked to reasonable economic theory), methods of estimation, data sources, and interpreting summary statistics (and possibly plots) of your data. If you cite additional studies in this assignment, make sure to update your reference list.

Assignment 6: You will submit a preliminary analysis of your estimation results (5 pages minimum). This will involve providing tables of results, interpreting results, and linking your results to your expectations outlined in Assignment 5. If you cite additional studies in this assignment, make sure to update your reference list. You will also present a 5 minute summary to the class using PowerPoint slides (Presentation 2). Provide an electronic version of the slides to me (via email) by the tentative due date and time (see below).

Assignment 7: You will submit the introduction (1 page minimum), conclusion (1.5 page minimum), and title page (including a maximum 150-word abstract) of your paper, as well as a finalized list of references. This assignment will be submitted as part of your final paper, and is thus due the day your final paper is due (see below).

Presentation 3: This will occur the week prior to your final presentation and is meant as a “dry run” for the following week. For this presentation, you will prepare a 6-8 minute PowerPoint presentation (depending on class enrollment). You will provide electronic (via email) copies of the slides to me by the tentative due date and time (see below).

Final Presentation: This will occur during the last week of class (i.e., May 5 and 7, 10:30-11:45AM, room TBA), and will not only have fellow students in the audience, but select faculty as well. Do not be surprised if members of the audience ask questions, as faculty will evaluate your presentation. Accordingly, preparation on your part is critical. Practice your presentation several times, perhaps among fellow students, so that surprises are minimized.

For this presentation, you will need to adjust the PowerPoint slides you submitted to me for Presentation 3 by taking account of any comments I provided you, and electronically provide me your final slides by the tentative due date and time indicated on the last page of the syllabus.

Final Submission of Paper: Now you’re in the home stretch! Your final paper (likely in the range of 20 – 25 pages) will consist of addressing feedback received thus far in reference to Assignments 4 – 6 (as these are the main “building blocks” of your paper). You must then “package” your final paper, providing a printed and an electronic copy (by the due date and time below), in the following order:

Title Page (which includes your abstract)

Section 1. Introduction

Section 2. Literature Summary

Section 3. Empirical Model and Data Summary

Section 4. Estimation Results

Section 5. Conclusion

References

Tables (and possibly graphs)

Note: Even if you have not turned in all Assignments 4 – 6, your final paper must contain all the above content. Indeed, failure to adequately include this content in your final paper will result in a grade of F for the course. Further, note that Assignment 7 is simply the title page, Section 1, and Section 5 of your paper.

SOME ADVICE:

1. Start working on your project early…like today! The most common way for students to fail the class is that they postpone working on their projects and then realize they do not have enough time to finish. Begin searching for a topic that interests you. This can be the most challenging part of the process, and so it’s best not to put it off too long. Also, in the process of finding a “do-able” topic, data must be available. And so, in tandem with finding a topic you need to be exploring the availability of data.

2. I am here to help. Send me emails or stop by my office and let’s chat.

3. Your ability to write is an important determinant of your performance. Indeed, poor writing skills will significantly reduce your grade. Contact the university writing center if you need assistance ().

4. You are expected to follow university guidelines on academic honesty (see ). Failure to adhere to these guidelines can have serious impacts. For instance, DO NOT intentionally or unintentionally plagiarize, for plagiarism on any material submitted to me for grading will result in a grade of F for the course, and will also be referred to the Office of Student Conduct.

Check out the university library () for more on how to avoid plagiarism. If at any point you have questions regarding how to properly credit a source, come and see me.

5. Proofread your work several times before turning it in. When proofreading, continually ask yourself the following: Are these my words? Do they make sense? Do my sentences and paragraphs flow in a logical manner? Will they be understood by my audience? Doing this will help you avoid silly grammatical errors and more serious issues regarding plagiarism.

RESEARCH IDEAS:

In consultation with me, you should pursue a topic of interest. However, for those “stumped” on how to proceed, I have done a lot of work in applied microeconomics, particularly in the fields of health economics, industrial organization, and environmental economics. For instance, within the area of health economics, there is much data on a variety of topics. Furthermore, because I regularly work with panel data, many topics can be addressed within a panel data framework. In each example below, if you are interested, (1) you should talk to me and (2) always be thinking about how to address an issue from an economics perspective. Consider:

1. Health Outcomes

There is a lot of literature on how health outcomes respond to such factors as per capita health care spending, per capita income, unemployment, income inequality, and a variety of demographic measures, such as race, age, and level of education. Some ideas:

• You could use CDC Wonder () to compile state-level data on some mortality measure (e.g., infant mortality, mortality due to cancer, mortality due to accidents or homicide, etc. etc.), and then go to various other websites to get regressors.

• A “hot” topic these days is prescription opioid abuse. You could go to Kaiser Permanente () and get data on the prescription opioid mortality rate for U.S. states, and then go to other websites to get data on factors to explain the rising trend in opioid-related deaths over the past few years. Notice that Kaiser Permanente also provides data on other health outcomes as well.

• You could go to the California Department of Public Health () and Rand California (which you can access through the university library website) and explore the determinants of some health measure at the county level in California, such as infant mortality or under-5 year old mortality.

• You could go to the World Health Organization () or the OECD () and construct a data set addressing some health outcome using country-level data (e.g., infant mortality, under-5 year old mortality, or maternal mortality).

• Perhaps you could look at how the labor market, or some other economic institution, affects the fertility rate, using either U.S. state-level or international-level data.

• As a related topic, you could use CDC data to examine the demand for abortions at the state-level. For instance, in addition to other factors, perhaps state-level abortion policies (see data from Guttmacher Institute) and labor market conditions affect the abortion rate in each state.

2. Tobacco Consumption

While there have been a lot of studies that look at the impact of tobacco control policies on the demand for tobacco products, perhaps you could extend this line of research by looking at the impact of tobacco control efforts on other factors, such as obesity, child health, infant mortality, smoking cessation efforts, or other drug use (e.g., alcohol or illicit drugs).

A related idea is to look at determinants of state-level spending on tobacco and/or substance abuse control. For example, the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids provides data on state spending on tobacco control. This data could tie into a study of what determines differences in tobacco control efforts across states. If interested, check out:

.

3. Crime

Perhaps you could go to the Bureau of Justice Statistics () or Rand California (via the university library website) and download state-level data on a particular type of crime rate (e.g., homicide, property crime, hate crime, etc.) and then go to other websites to find determinants.

4. Income Inequality

There is much attention in the regular press, as well as the Economics literature, on rising income inequality. You could collect data on income inequality from the OECD, or some other organization, and explore its determinants using international data.

5. Demand for Air Travel

You could go to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics () and get annual data on the number of air travelers to the U.S. from a variety of countries. You could then perhaps go to the website of the IMF, World Bank, OECD, or the Penn World Tables and try to get data on characteristics of these countries (e.g., per capita income in comparable monetary units, unemployment rates, price, etc.) and build a demand model for international airline travel to the U.S., with the goal of measuring elasticities of demand. It would be interesting to see if the “Great Recession” affected the demand for international travel to the U.S., since this demand is particularly sensitive to business cycle fluctuations.

6. Demand for Energy

Using the State Energy Data Systems (SEDS) from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (), you could construct a state-level panel data set to examine the demand for some energy source (e.g., demand for gasoline, demand for electricity, etc.). Perhaps attention could be given to estimating key elasticities of demand.

7. Demand for Housing

You could use county-level panel data to estimate the demand for housing in California. Data could come from Rand California (access through library website) and the California Association of Realtors (). You might focus on the price and income elasticities of demand and see how these changed as a result of the housing bubble several years ago.

Alternatively, you could use county- or state-level data to examine the determinants of the rental rate (i.e., percent of households which rent, as opposed to own their residence). Perhaps you could examine how such factors as fair market rents (data available from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development), average single-family home prices, and economic fluctuations affect the rental rate.

OUTLINE:

Below is a tentative outline of activities and due dates. Depending on how we progress, as well as your topics, we may need to adjust the schedule periodically.

|Week |Date |Content |Assignment Due* |

| |01/21 |Introduction | |

|1 | | | |

| |01/23 |Bill Kristie (Library Room 136 – lower level library) | |

| |01/28 |OLS: Descriptive Analysis | |

|2 | | | |

| |01/30 |Practice with Eviews | |

| |02/04 |OLS: Descriptive Analysis | |

|3 | | | |

| |02/06 |Open Lab |Assignment 1 |

| |02/11 |OLS: Descriptive Analysis | |

|4 | | | |

| |02/13 |Presentation 1: Prospectus |Assignment 2 |

| |02/18 |OLS: Inferential Analysis | |

|5 | | | |

| |02/20 |Open Lab |Assignment 3 |

| |02/25 |Model Specification | |

|6 | | | |

| |02/27 |OLS Pitfalls | |

| |03/03 |OLS Pitfalls and/or Open Lab | |

|7 | | | |

| |03/05 |Panel Data/Time Series Issues | |

| |03/10 |Open Lab | |

|8 | | | |

| |03/12 |Open Lab |Assignment 4 |

| |03/17 |Open Lab | |

|9 | | | |

| |03/19 |Open Lab | |

| |03/24 |Open Lab | |

|10 | | | |

| |03/26 |Open Lab |Assignment 5 |

| |03/31 |Spring Break (no class) | |

|11 | | | |

| |04/02 |Spring Break (no class) | |

| |04/07 |Open Lab | |

|12 | | | |

| |04/09 |Open Lab |Assignment 6 |

| |04/14 |Presentation 2: Preliminary Results | |

|13 | | | |

| |04/16 |Presentation 2: Preliminary Results | |

| |04/21 |Open Lab | |

|14 | | | |

| |04/23 |Presentation 3: Practice for Final Presentation | |

| |04/28 |Presentation 3: Practice for Final Presentation | |

|15 | | | |

| |04/30 |Presentation 3: Practice for Final Presentation | |

| |05/05 |Final Presentations | |

|16 | | | |

| |05/07 |Final Presentations | |

| |05/08 |Final Paper Due (Printed and Electronic) by 5pm |Assignment 7 |

* For Presentation 1, your PowerPoint slides need to be submitted (via email) by 8am on February 13. For Presentation 2, your PowerPoint slides need to be submitted (via email) by 8am on April 14, while for Presentation 3 they need to be submitted (via email) by 8am on April 23. For the Final Presentation, your PowerPoint slides need to be submitted (via email) by 8am on May 5.

Submit all written assignments electronically via email. Assignment 1 is due by 8am on February 7 (Friday). Assignment 2 is due by 8am on February 13 (Thursday). Assignment 3 is due by 8am on February 21 (Friday). Assignment 4 is due by 8am on March 13 (Friday). Assignment 5 is due by 8am on March 27 (Friday). Assignment 6 is due by 8am on April 10 (Friday). Assignment 7 is due by 5pm on May 8 (Friday).

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[1] For all submitted written work, use 12-point font, double-spaced, 1-inch margins throughout, and number pages accordingly.

[2] For PowerPoint slides, keep them simple. No need to try to “blow over” the audience with fancy colors or animations.

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