Capstone

Capstone assignment Objective: students learn to identify an empirical research question relate it to what is already known analyze it using econometric tools present their analysis.

What is assessed? Report, length 5 – 10 pages. Presentation

What is a good topic? Any topic you find interesting... Any topic you can convince others to be important.

Key ingredients – Introduction Research question – be specific. Motivation of the research question – why should one bother? What is already known – any contribution is relative to what we already know  establish prior art.

Key ingredients – Data & Theory sections Source(s) Variables & definitions (are you in line with the literature?). 5. Economic theory What is your hypothesis and where does it come from? Don’t necessarily need a model, but need a theoretical argument.

Key ingredients - Analysis 7. Econometric model Your empirical specification What is the key source of variation (experiment, law change, DiD). Results Report results Economic and statistical significance Robustness Potential sources of misinterpretation Conclusions What did we learn?

Practicalities vis-a-vis data Check your data: plots of variables visual inspection of the data mins and maxes measurement units.

Other practicalities Be careful to correctly cite your sources. Mark direct citations. Check your reference list. See Tomas Dvorak (2007) An Annotated Sample Paper in Econometrics, The Journal of Economic Education, 38:1, 124-124, DOI: 10.3200/JECE.38.1.124 https://minerva.union.edu/dvorakt/43/sample_paper.htm

Earlier topics Bitcoin and financial markets Foreign direct investment (FDI) and host country growth Price of electricity and household consumption Determinants of Finnish firms’ FDI Student satisfaction, hours studied, and free weekends Energy consumption and economic growth Higher education and income in post 1970 Finland

Earlier topics Okun’s law in Finland and the EMU area ECB interest rates and EU economic growth Institutions and economic growth in developing countries

About teams Team size 2-3. If still students without teams  form new team  join existing 2 student team