Abstract & Title

• Descriptive title included

• 200 words or less abstract

Introduction

• States your research question clearly

• Explains what economic theory says about the potential answers to your questions, and/or defines clear hypotheses that you test

• Describes why your topic is important

• Describes what you do

• Describes what you find

• Describe how it contributes

• Reader can infer all main points of paper just from introduction

Motivation/Literature Review

• At the back of your mind, when motivating your paper, ask “what is the link to economics”?

  • If studying discrimination, what does economic theory tell us about why discrimination exists/persists

  • If studying stock market returns, what do economic models tell us about our ability to predict returns?

• Includes papers that have answered your research question (or similar research question)

• Research results described in present tense (“Smith finds,” not “Smith found”)

• Papers linked clearly to their contribution (as relates to your research question)

Methodology, data, and empirical specification

• Data source described and cited

• Population model written out (you can use the Equation Editor in Word)

  • Use proper equation notation (betas, u, etc)

  • Use appropriate subscripts (i, t, y, etc)

  • All relevant variables explained/defined

  • Use “real names” to describe variables when possible (ie use female for women, not w1)

  • Don’t forget the error term!

• Describe your methodology. Are you estimating a model using OLS? If so, say so.

• Correct standard errors: robust? Clustered? Something else?

Please enjoy this empirical specification handout!

Results

• When using categorical/dummy variables, what is your omitted category? Make sure you know and that it’s clear.

• What are the units of your measures?

  • Is that percent or percentage points?

• In most contexts, about 3 places past the decimal point is right, but it depends on the magnitudes. If you really want to be precise, set and stick to a reasonable number of significant digits. There’s no place for a number like 0.05403823 or 0.0000000 in your tables.

Tables and Figures

• Tables should be properly formatted. That is, they should be made in Excel (or LaTeX) and NEVER copied and pasted out of Stata

• Variables should be described using real words. Ie, “number of children,” not “numchld.”

• Tables and figures should be numbered (Table 1, Table 2, etc… Figure 1, Figure 2, etc.) and should also be given a title. Refer to tables by their numbers in the text.

References

• Use footnotes rather than endnotes

• At the end of your paper, include list of references cited

• You can format using APA, MLA, or Chicago style

  • Citation Owl or Google Scholar will do it for you

• In-text, cite with author and year (Author, Year; Author, Year) or (Author Year, Author Year)