Question

outline for emperical research project

Answer 1

Answer:

Any empirical paper should roughly follow the format outlined below.

1.Introduction/Motivation:

1) The question you are trying to address (stating the hypothesis to be tested directly is a good way to do this)

2) Why we should care about this question (Is it an unproven theoretical result? An important policy question?)

3) What are your main results? Explain briefly how your findings differ from previous work and what the implications of these findings are. If your analysis is inconclusive (which is fine!) be upfront about this and very briefly state why.

2.Literature Review: This section should basically consist of two parts (both of which should be brief).

1) The first section should discuss previous research that is directly relevant to your paper (not every single paper written on the topic). The review need not only be topical, but can include research that employs the same methods you are using, analyzes a similar model, uses the same dataset, etc.

2) The second section should explain your contribution in more detail. You should discuss how your approach is different from what has been done before: Is it new data? A new model? A new identification strategy? Are you answering a question more broadly/specifically? Specifically comparing how you are improving on a previous paper is useful. You should think creatively in this section about issues of external validity: Are your findings relevant for a population/institutional environment that is different from previous work, and could this be the reason your findings differ?

3.The Model :

In this section you want to discuss the basic behavioral, informational and institutional assumptions you are making. It is important to be explicit about which assumptions may be driving the results. You should discuss how the results are sensitive to changes in parameters.

You should write out the basic econometric specification first and explain each of the variables and the parameters of interest. Why is this the correct specification for the question you wish to address? Was it derived from theory and has it been used in previous empirical work? Why are certain variables included and others not? Discuss whether you are using basic OLS, GLS, etc. and why this is appropriate. You should be very clear about where identification is coming from and what assumptions you need to make in order to interpret the parameters as you wish to interpret them (e.g. discussing exclusion restrictions if you wish to interpret certain parameters as causal). After discussing the basic specification, write out any elaborations or additional tests you will perform and why.

4.Results: Here are some basic things to guide you in presenting your results:

1) You should present results in a way that develops your argument step-by-step. For example, you may want to present your main results first, then break those results down by subgroups and then perform robustness checks.

2)Compare your results to what others have found. You don’t need to worry if you don’t find anything significant as long as your methods are sound and you have interpreted the results well. Discuss why your results may differ from past research.

5.Conclusion:

Summarize your findings and point out limitations of the results and possible extensions. This is a good place to speculate in a more casual manner about the implications of your results. In general, the conclusion should not contain any new results.

6.References: It lists all the sources you've used in your project, so readers can easily find what you've cited.

We also can add points such as methodology, Remarks, Comments, and The points that are required to be included in the project.