Holly Wang Workshop 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)