Office Hours

Overview

This course is designed to transition you from a course-taker to a professional economic researcher.  The primary goal of this course is for you to develop the techniques for conducting original research in economics.  You will be required to read and evaluate journal articles, write a research proposal, and undertake work on your third-year research paper. You will be expected to speak and write critically about your research and the research of others.  In the process, you will build the experience needed to contribute to economic knowledge.

This class is appropriate once you have completed most of your field coursework for the economics Ph.D. Under the current program guidelines, students are expected to enroll during the fall semester of their third year of study, and to complete their third-year research paper by the end of the academic year.

Your third-year research paper is expected to be a rigorous research paper suitable for journal submission. In some cases, this paper will serve as a key analytical chapter for your dissertation, to be completed in the following year.  In any event, it will mark the beginning of the process of developing your dissertation proposal. 

Course Requirements

You must register for this course with the credit/no credit grade option.

2.  You will be required to prepare a written commentary and critical evaluation of a published paper that is related to your planned area of research, and to make a brief presentation to the class. Please limit your written report to 10 double-spaced pages. 

3. You will write a research proposal that identifies an interesting research problem, summarizes relevant research, states a research objective for your research, outlines the methodology that you will use to address the problem, anticipates data or other problems that must be overcome, and outlines a research plan and timeline.

4.  You are required to write your third-year research paper, as described in the graduate program guidelines. If you have not already done so, you will need to arrange for a faculty member to serve as your research paper adviser, as well as two other faculty members to act as readers. Please arrange your advisor and readers now, obtain their signatures on the appropriate form, and submit it to the Graduate Chair (me) for my approval.

Note that all Econ faculty can serve as research paper advisor or reader; they do not need to be Regular members of the Graduate Faculty.

5.  In addition, you are required to attend at least 75% of department seminars held throughout the semester.

Tentative Course Outline

Class is scheduled for Tuesdays and Thursdays 3:00-4:30 pm., although we will not use all of these class meeting times. I will let you know in advance the schedule for the following week.