89255 - RESEARCH METHODS AND COMMUNICATION IN ECONOMICS

Conoscenze e abilità da conseguire

This course will guide students through the process of developing research ideas, gathering, processing, and analyzing the appropriate data, and effectively communicating their results. The course is designed specifically for students interested in doing empirical academic research. At the end of the course, students should be able to prepare a research proposal for a (feasible) empirical study and to deliver a short presentation about the research question, empirical strategy, and planned data work.

Contenuti

1. Research proposal and presentation: Your grade will be based on a four-page research proposal and a 15-minute presentation thereof.
   All complete research proposals are due by January 14, 2019, at 10am. Presentation dates are tentatively scheduled for January 15 and February 13, 2019, 9am-1pm.
   
   
2. Class Participation: Active participation in all classes, including your classmates’ presentations, is highly, highly, highly (yes, I wrote that three times) recommended.
   
   
3. Sketch of Potential Research Ideas: In the last week of classes, I will meet each of you individually to discuss your research idea(s), which will then culminate in the afore-said research proposal and presentation. Finding decent, viable research ideas is challenging, so you should start thinking about that ASAP. Once you have a couple of decent ideas, please send me a 1-page description structured along the lines I will describe in class.
   
   
4. Paper Readings for Second Class: On the second day of classes, we will discuss five influential, well-crafted empirical papers. Thus, ahead of that day, I ask you to skim the introduction of the following papers (reading the entire papers is recommended, but not required):

• Black, Sandra E., “Do Better Schools Matter? Parental Valuation of Elementary Education,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1999, 114(2), 577-599.

• Finkelstein, Amy, Matthew Gentzkow, and Heidi Williams, “Sources of Geographic Variation in Health Care: Evidence from Patient Migration,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2016, 131(4), 1681-1726.

• Fujiwara, Thomas, “Voting Technology, Political Responsiveness, and Infant Health: Evidence from Brazil,” Econometrica, 2015, 83(2), 423-464.

• Pons, Vincent, “Will a Five-Minute Discussion Change Your Mind? A Countrywide Experiment on Voter Choice in France,” American Economic Review, 2018, 108(6), 1322-1363.

• Washington, Ebonya L., “Female Socialization: How Daughters Affect Their Legislator Fathers’ Voting on Women’s Issues,” American Economic Review, 2008, 98(1), 311-332.

Testi/Bibliografia

Though the class will not be based on any specific textbook, there are a number of potentially useful sources:

1. Econometrics: if you are interested in doing applied economics for a living, Angrist and Pischke’s Mostly Harmless Econometrics and Mastering ‘Metrics are fundamental references.
   
   
2. Coding: Matthew Gentzkow and Jesse Shapiro’s Code and Data for the Social Sciences (freely available here) is an essential reading for any economist working with data.
   
   
3. Writing: two good references are The Sense of Style, by Steven Pinker, and The Elements of Style, by William Strunk. The former is an outstanding general style manual, while the latter is a succinct, albeit slightly outdated guide to polished writing. Jesse Shapiro’s notes on writing an Applied Micro Paper are also great and freely available here.
   
   
4. Presenting: Jesse Shapiro is (again) my favorite, free source on how to give an applied micro talk. His notes are available here.

Metodi didattici

All classes start at 8:30am sharp and end at 10am sharp. Please make a real effort to arrive in time.

Date  Activities Deliverables

8/11/18 Reading an econ paper 1

9/11/18 Reading an econ paper 2 Skim intro of papers listed above

16/11/18 Stata coding session 1

16/11/18 Stata coding session 2

22/11/18 Writing an econ paper 1

23/11/18 Writing an econ paper 2

29/11/18 Presenting an econ paper 1

30/11/18 Presenting an econ paper 2

6/12/18 1^st round of 1-on-1 meetings Sketch(es) of research idea(s) due

7/12/18 2^nd round of 1-on-1 meetings

14/1/19 Research proposals due

15/1/19 1^st round of students' presentations

13/2/19 2^nd round of students' presentations

Modalità di verifica e valutazione dell'apprendimento

A five-page research proposal and a 15-minute in-class presentation.

Orario di ricevimento

Consulta il sito web di Enrico Cantoni