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So you can pick a topic that you like yourself or you can use the one I pick “If gas taxes increase, consumer’s will buy less gas.”
1) Find a topic–hopefully one that interests you and is important to someone else too! A topic with a hypothesis. The hypothesis is an “IF-THEN” statement about an economic phenomenon. For example, “If gas taxes increase, consumer’s will buy less gas.”
2) Start an Annotated Bibliography (Read the Overview Module if you don’t know what this is). Basically, find a bunch of papers/books related to your topic and take notes on what they show.
3) Find data that can be used to show/test if your hypothesis has support.
What are the elements of a research paper?
Introduction: What is an introduction? For the introduction, you have to tell your reader why your topic is important and why it has something to do with economics. Picking a topic that is relevant (at least to interested economists and hopefully to a wider audience) is the essential first step. Hopefully, you have a topic in mind and if you don’t you should by the end of week 1 at the latest. After you have described your topic to the reader, you explain briefly what other folks have done in the area and how your work contributes to what others have done. Usually, your research question involves a hypothesis, but if you decide to make limited use of data in your project then you may not need to explore a specific hypothesis formally. Your hypothesis (perhaps only because of the specific data you choose) is usually unique compared with the work of other authors. You can use the same data source as other authors and replicating their work with a different sample. A replication paper may not sound like a lot of work, but it is. Your unique hypothesis is your paper’s contribution. At the end of your introduction, you have a roadmap paragraph telling the author what is contained in the rest of the paper.
Literature Review: After the introduction, a research paper discusses in detail what else has been done. This is probably the first major area of work in your project. You need to use google scholar and library databases (usually econlit) to search for related papers using keywords. It is very helpful to check out a couple of textbooks from the library in your topic area. The texts will cite to papers to get you started looking for key words. If you find a “seminal” work–that’s a very important paper in your area, then you will find a lot of paper’s cite it. Finding the seminal papers in your area is a great way to reduce the amount of time you spent searching for papers because they will all be linked to the seminal paper in the library’s databases.
QUICK NOTE: Start an “ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY”. The annotated bibliography lists all the papers you find including the proper citation. After each paper in an annotated bibliography word document, you make a quick summary of the paper’s main ideas and notes about how it is related to your paper. Usually, if you have a good annotated bibliography, the writing your literature review is simply a matter of organizing the notes.
Model/Hypothesis: This is sometimes referred to as the “theory” section of the paper. In the model section, you illustrate your idea with a simple economic model. In many cases, the model will be a supply and demand model, but it might be a consumer choice model, or a model of pro

fit maximizing firms, or even a macroeconomic model. This is also a place where a good textbook can help get you far along quickly. Most econ texts will have generalized models that can be adapted to your topic.
DATA, DATA, DATA: Most students will begin by picking a topic and then looking for a data source. Papers can be a good way to identify data sources, but so can government websites. Every government agency from the EPA to the FED has data available from a website which you can find easily with a google search. If you choose not to do an in-depth analysis of data to examine you hypothesis, then you will likely still be using some data. The data section identifies the data and describes it. After you have described what the data means, when and how it was collected, then usually the data section ends with “descriptive statistics.” If you are unsure, what descriptive stats are then google it. It is simple and if you need help then just ask.
Analysis/Results: This is “heart” of your paper. This is where you usually you will perform some statistical analysis and explain what the results mean for your hypothesis. Usually, the gist is the either the analysis supports or undermines your hypothesis. Either result is fine. You simply have to correctly interpret your findings. Other researchers will (and so will I) grade you not on your hypothesis, but on how well you interpret the results of your analysis.
Conclusion: This is where you discuss briefly the results of your analysis and what you could have done better. Usually, the part about what could have been better is a way of connecting your ideas to future research that would help provide more evidence for (or against) your hypothesis. All researchers have a limited amount of time and they realize that there work is just one piece of a puzzle that future researchers will solve one day. So, an honest assessment about the limitations of your research and what could be done in the future is a very helpful way to contribute to the research community.
part 1
1) What is your topic?
2) What is your hypothesis? IF what, THEN what?
3) List three sources–at least one book that deals with your topic. Give the author, title, publication, and date for each.
4) What is your data source? Does the data available make an assessment of your IF-THEN statement possible? Please explain how.
part 2
Upload a copy of your annotated bibliography.
The bibliography should include AT LEAST seven sources. Comment on whether the sources include an economic model in your notes and summarize the findings. Also, in your notes explain how the findings are related to your hypothesis–do they support your hypothesis?; how are they different?; is the dataset different? Mark any sources that seem especially important (i.e., seminal).
part 3
Data Summary
Please summarize your data in a word document and upload the document here.
Give the data source. Describe what each of the variables represents. Then for each variable of the data, give the sample size; the mean, the median; and the standard deviation. Explain in words how the data could show your hypothesis. For example, if I had data from different states with the different gas tax rates, and I had the total amount of gas purchased for those states, then I could show that states with higher tax rates have lower gas purchases. That is it COULD be shown to be true or false.