ECON7030: Instructions for Final Report

Introduction

Introduction should be clear and concise. Discuss the research gap. What led to your research hypothesis/objective(s). This section is often vital in convincing your reviewers/graders that YOUR RESEARCH IS IMPORTANT!  

1. Demonstrate a clear understanding of the context and economic intuition of the research problem.

2. Clearly state the hypothesis, research question/research gap, contribution & significance of the research.

3. Clearly state if you are doing a pure replication or extending OP’s research. If it is an extension, then what is your extension idea (such as a more recent data)? Why is it important make this extension (rationale)?

4. At the end of this section, briefly state (in one sentence) the key findings of your research. Conclude the section by providing an outline of the structure of the report : Section 2 discusses data and model; Section 3 discusses results and so on….

Note on context: The context should be clearly described so that your assessor understands the background behind this research problem. Make sure that you are you are able to ‘place’ your paper in the field – that is, it is important to understand where your paper fits in the research on this topic.  

Please note that you are not required to write a detailed literature review again. A brief synthesis of the literature should be presented as part of the context. 

1.1 Conceptual framework

Clearly discuss the conceptual framework of your research. Follow OP.

2 Data

Describe the relevant data in clear and unambiguous terms.

Note:  Clearly state if your data is different from/or similar to OP data. If you are deviating from OP’s original research data in any way, then it must be discussed.  

2.1 Variables

Describe the key variables - outcome/dependent variables, key explanatory variables, and the key control variables. Follow OP in writing this section.

Note: You are not required to report summary statistics again.

3 Empirical Strategy

This section should address the ‘how’ part of research - ‘how was the research conducted’.  

· Clearly describe your statistical model (s).

· Justify your selected approach  

Again, my general advice is to follow OP in writing this section.

3.1 Demonstrate a clear understanding of the empirical approach of OP

Most of you conducted your research using a simple version of OP’s model. For example, using OLS when Instrumental variable (IV) would be more appropriate. In this section you will briefly discuss ideally what should have been done. Discuss:

- OP’s approach to answering the research question. For example, if OP used instrumental variable (IV) technique for estimation, discuss how the model is explained, what was the instrument, why is it  relevant instrument etc.  

- Why did OP adopt this particular empirical approach?  How does OP justify the choice of this model. For example, why IV, why not OLS?

- What modifications did you make to OP’s original model and why?

4 Results

o Clearly label tables and figures, adding appropriate notes to make it clear what variables are included and how they are constructed.

o You must present tables and figures professionally. Use relevant Stata codes (e.g., esttab / outreg / putexcel commands and/or graph export commands for figures) to produce tables/figures.

o Figures, tables, and graphs should be informative and self-explanatory. You should be able to direct your reader to the table or figure to give them an immediate understanding of the main results.

Note:

ü Do not use vague terms and be as concise as possible when you are reporting your research findings.

ü Do not discuss your results here – discussion/interpretation of findings should be saved for the “Discussion” section.

ü If relevant for your research (that is, if you have made nay changes in OP’s model or data), you should report OP's results (in one or two columns in the table of results).

5 Discussion

Relate your results back to your research question and the literature that your work fits into (this section can be subsumed in the Results section if you think it flows better). Some potential discussion points:

o Interpret the results and provide economic intuition of your findings

o Compare and contrast your findings with those of OP

o Discuss how your findings compare with those from the broader literature

Note: Discussion is probably the most difficult section of a research report – this section will rely entirely on your ability to think critically -  ability to understand and evaluate the literature, interpret results of statistical models, draw logical inferences from the model results, gather credible evidence in support of your arguments. Most importantly, you must provide economic intuition of your results – connect your findings to appropriate economic theories. In short, integrate the results of your study with the broader literature -  AVOID re-reporting them.

Keep in mind that “Discussion” should be consistent with the “ Introduction”  - connect your findings back to the problem you stated in the beginning.

6 Conclusion

Summarize the most significant results/findings. Do not include any new material in this section.

· Indicate the limitations of your research (things which you should have done to improve your research).

· Indicate future direction of research, which are the areas where further research will be beneficial.

· Indicate your policy recommendations based on the findings of this research– suggestions for what needs to be done.

7 References

By now you are familiar with requirements related to referencing. However, for your convenience, I am repeating them here …

· Include a reference list, with a mix of "forward" and "backward" citations (I wouldn’t specify numbers).

· At least one of the cited resources must be recently published (within the last 5 years).

· Pay attention to the quality of the resources that you cite.

· Focus on economics journals as much as possible. You may include references to journal articles from fields other than economics as long as they are relevant and are sourced from high-quality journals.

Note:

· Any source that you cite in the main text must be included in your references

· Conversely, do not include sources in your reference list if you have not cited them in the main text!

· Try to stay restricted to resources published 2000 onward (that is, avoid older resource published in the 90-s unless it is a seminal work).

· Regrading quotes, mark it as such (direct quote is marked with "..." and reference incl. page numbers should be given).

Citation style. Use author-date, Harvard style. references. Please consult: https://libguides.library.usyd.edu.au/ld.php?content_id=50827391.  

Appendix

You may OPTIONALLY include additional materials (questionnaires, extra information on description of variables, data, model). Typically, these are the materials which are not crucial to your conclusion ! Each appendix must be named and numbered, and the tables labelled and numbered accordingly.