Project Information and Deadlines Prof. Stephen Schmidt

Economics 43 Fall 2003

Economics 43 requires you to use the econometric material in the class, and data you collect, to write a paper about an economic topic of your choice. In order to write the paper, you have to have two things. First, you must have an economic relationship between two (or usually more) variables that interests you, of the form (or if you have several independent variables), and a reason to want to estimate it; either a hypothesis about that relationship that you’ll test, or a reason to forecast values of the dependent variable. Second, you must have a source of data which will let you measure observations on X and Y. (The more observations the better, although you should have 20 or 25 at the minimum.) You choose X and Y based on the topic you’re interested in and the data available to you. You are welcome to talk with me about possible topics and possible variables, and if you wish to do so, should do it in the first week of the term. Once you have an equation and data, you estimate the parameters of the model and draw appropriate conclusions based on your estimates.

You will do at least some work on the project in most of the weeks of the class, and there are seven deadlines that you must meet:

1) By September 15^th (second week) you must turn in a one-page written proposal that describes what economic topic you are interested in and what economic relationship you wish to discuss. You are encouraged to discuss this proposal with me before it comes due.

2) By September 29^th (fourth week) you must turn in summaries of three articles found in EconLit that deal with a topic similar to yours, listing their model, regression, and data source.

3) By October 8^th (fifth week) you must turn in a printout of at least 20 observations on the variables in your data set. (If you have less than 40, bring me the whole data set.)

4) By October 20^th (seventh week) you must turn in one regression that you have run using Eviews and your data set.

5) By October 31^st (eighth week) you must turn in a rough draft of your paper, including one section which discusses the economic meaning of the estimates you have obtained.

6) By November 5^th (ninth week) you must prepare a Web page that briefly summarizes your regression and findings, and post it to the college’s Web server, giving me the URL. If you are not familiar with using the Web, I will provide you with a standard form you can use to create your Web page and will help you post it to the Web.

7) By November 10^th (tenth week) you must email me comments on the Web pages of three of your classmates. Your classmates will also receive these comments.

8) By November 19^th (finals week) you must turn in the final draft of your paper.

You are encouraged to meet these deadlines early if you can. Extensions on these deadlines can be arranged if needed, although I will be reluctant to extend them by more than one or two days since, if you fall behind, it will be difficult to catch up. In general I will assess a penalty of 2 points per day late for each deadline missed, or 5 points per day late for the final draft deadline, unless you have gotten an extension before the deadline.

If you are looking for a topic, look back at the textbooks and notes from other economics classes you have taken and find material that interested you. Then try to find a relationship about that material that you think you could estimate econometrically. If you have a topic and a relationship but are trying to find data, I can indicate some data sources to you, and the reference librarians (who know much more about the contents of the library than I ever will) can also be very helpful to you if you have an idea what you’re looking for.