Holly WangWorkshop at CAU

December 15, 2010

Conducting Empirical Research and Publishing in International

Journals

Procedures of Conducting Empirical Research

• Choose your topic• Build a team• Review literature• Economic models• Collect and clean data• Econometric method• Analyze• Write papers

Grant proposal

Choose Your Topic

• What is the hot topic currently?• Funding availability• Easiness in publishing• Time lag• Is it important over the long run or just a fad?

• What is your personal interest?• Motivated• Have background knowledge• Future career

• Define the right scope of the topic• Do you have the capacity to handle it?• Do you have the time and resource to handle it?

Build A Team

• Advisor: if you are a student• Is s/he the expert for the chosen topic?• Will s/he be able to give you enough time?• Is his/her advising style match your need?

• Team members• Need one expert to cover each aspect of the project: economic model, econometric methods, field knowledge, policy knowledge, data collection resource• Willing to share the resource and credit• Have a clear role for each team member

Literature Review

• Searching engine: google scholar, econlit, etc.

• Background and situation: eg, GDP, and other statistics

• Issues: • papers of similar topics: what have been done,

and what have not been studied• identify gaps in literature• specific objectives to fill the gaps

• Methods• papers with relevant methods that can be used

Economic Models

• Microeconomic theory• supply theory, demand theory, derived demand• imperfect competition and game theory• general equilibrium and trade theory

• Macroeconomic theory• growth model

• Structure model vs reduced form • Variable selection suggested by the theory• Shifters, especially demographic variables• Testable hypothesis

Data

• Based on theory, identify variables needed• Cross section vs time series• Location, size, time horizon• How aggregated • Survey design vs published data• Focus group• Random sampling• Data clean up

Econometric methods

• Least square based regression• Tobit model for truncated data• Logit/Probit for qualitative dependent variables• Equation systems: SURE • Maximum loglikelihood estimation• Nonparametric

Analyze

• Diagnose tests • Try alternative models specifications• Hypothesis• Results shall address the objectives• Explain results and compare with intuition

Paper Writing

• Make a title to be concise and specific• Key words and abstract• Select a journal

• Read a couple of recent issues• The topic is accepted by the journal• Impact factor, fees, fast review

• Cite articles from the journal• Formatting for the journal• Submit

Paper Structure

• Introduction (including background, literature review, objectives)

• Model (theory)• Data (explain data collection methods, and

variables, descriptive statistics)• Results• Conclusion (policy implication)