Name: Yubo Wei

Instructor: Joyce King

Class: Writing 2

Date: 11/07

How Economists Write?

Abstract

This study employs two examples of economic papers to analyze the writing

conventions in economic articles. These include the use of abstract, the straightforward

but story-telling writing style, and the use of data and tables. All genre summaries are

based on analysis of economic texts and comparisons with other popular but common

genres.

Keywords: abstract, genre, data, table, economics, storytelling, straightforward.

Imagine a scene like this: The TV show starts, a dinosaur doll with a big belly

appears on the TV screen, singing songs and playing games with a group of children.

Your kid who is not even taller than TV stands in front of the fluorescent screen, with his

head up, shaking his body like the doll. You may be thinking to yourself: kids who are

just beginning to babble are getting smarter about singing and dancing to TV shows or

even learning a foreign language. At the same time, the kid next door sits in front of the

TV all day, only watching cartoons full of violent and bloody elements. Gradually, he
became restless, violent, and even learns to say the dirty words of the cartoon

characters. In those scenes, we all have to agree that this will undoubtedly have a huge

impact on the future of those two children. You might think, why do TV programs affect

children so differently, how to prevent children from being exposed to bad content, and

what role should the government play in this process? Fortunately, these are the topics

that an economics paper will study. Through particular writing conventions, the

economists can better achieve their goals that economics study.

What does economics study?

As you may have noticed, the study of the effects of television on children

seems to have little to do with money, markets, and trade, which are often used in

economics. Instead, it has more to do with psychology or sociology. So why are they

considered as a research topic of economics? In my first economics class, the professor

told us that economics is the study of the allocation of scarce resources. But whenever

people ask me what my major is and I answer economics, I can always feel a prejudice

against economics in their eyes. People assume that as a stereotype, economics is just

market, trade and capital. It's all about money, which is material, staleness, and tedium.

Actually, the main goal of an economics paper is to answer the question: Does "X"

cause "Y"? And how does some X affect some Y using economic intuition? The

economic intuition, in this case, refers to the economic thinking and analytical methods.

Because it seeks to find out the best connection or allocation of resources, all the

problems of resource allocation and selection under the condition of resource scarcity,

whether the problem is commercial or physical, can be brought into the scope of
economics and studied by economic analysis. Economic intuition is applied in more and

more social sciences, and this is called "economic imperialism".

The First Thing to Start:

How do we convey the idea more effectively when writing? The first writing

convention to notice is the abstract section. The main function of the abstract is to

convey the core contribution of the paper straightforwardly. The core contribution here

refers to the most core and creative contribution in the paper. This paragraph often

consists of only three to four sentences and must be specific. Distilling out a core

contribution always requires careful thought, because sometimes it hurts to have to

sacrifice so many other contributions that you may be proud of. Once you've distilled the

core contribution, you'll be able to better organize the paper and focus on that

contribution, which will help readers quickly grasp the essence of the article. For

example, in a paper analyzing the positive relationship between children and TV

programs, the authors directly pointed out in the abstract section: “This study employed

inductive analysis to analyze forty-two PBS children’s educational television series in

the United States for cognitive and social themes.” (Moore-Russo 2013)The authors

explicitly state that the main subjects of their study -- 42 children's educational dramas --

and another -- cognitive and social themes in the first sentence of the paper. They then

go on to outline the experimental method they used: “Series were grouped by age

bands of 6 years and under, mixed age, and 6 years and over.” (Moore-Russo 2013)

Finally, the conclusion is drawn in clear and concise language: “The weighted data were
sorted in multiple ways for analysis revealing Social and Emotional Behavior as the

most predominant category in PBS children’s programming, and Mathematics was one

of the least predominant categories utilized as a main focus across all age groups.”

Thus, an abstract that conveys the core contribution is complete. This is very important

because not everyone will read the whole paper, but almost everyone will read the

abstract, and a successful abstract is always straightforward.

The Writing Style.

Due to the wide coverage of economic research, economic papers often adopt

a special style of writing that is different from that of most other disciplines. On the one

hand, a good economics paper should adopt a "news report" style, not a "mystery

novel" style. You may have noticed that news reports always begin with the most

important information, and then add context for readers who care about details. While a

good mystery novel always reveals its purpose after foreshadowing it. An economics

paper cannot be like this. The introduction should be straight to the point, directly

introducing the research content and main contributions of your paper. Because readers

are generally busy and impatient, no one would read a whole paper from beginning to

end. On the other hand, economists are more writers than scientists. An economics

paper that best conveys the central idea, and is also widely known by the public will

never simply state its conclusions and experiment process. Essays in economics are

prose, and prose tells stories. All economics papers start with a funny and eye-catching

story that tells you how some X affects some Y, using an economic intuition. This story
often serves as a cue to your paper, and it should be used throughout the article to

guide your research further. To sum up, economics papers need both a straightforward

style of "news reporting" and a story-telling style of "prose", while most other disciplines

only have one of them.

The Present of The Evidence

Because economic papers study the most reasonable allocation of resources,

mathematical calculation and data collection and analysis is essential. And what really

expands the scope of economics and distinguishes it from other disciplines is its use of

evidence and research methods, and, in the term of writing, the use of tables and

graphs. The main goal of an Economics paper is to answer the question: what is the

causal impact of some X on Y using observational data and quantitative methods?

While other disciplines try to accomplish this, none of them use quantitative methods as

we do. Statistics only uses data but does not care about causal inference, and

psychologists/sociologists use qualitative data rather than quantitative (that is, analyze

data by themselves). The most valuable evidence in the paper is the raw data followed

by a story. Data are usually collected from databases set up by governments and

various international organizations, such as OECD (Organization of Economic

Cooperation and Development) (Melody 1973), and it is the job of economists to

analyze data. When actually doing research, economists will build a series of economic

models to simulate social phenomena. These models will be extremely complex at first,

but as the research progresses, some variables irrelevant to the study or with minimal
influence and controllable will be excluded from the model. Whereas the remaining

variables will be divided into two categories, independent variables and dependent

variables. Then economists will use the control variable method to assume that some

economic variables are stable according to the "actual" situation to explore the influence

of other variables on economic phenomena.

Therefore, after understanding the common evidence and research methods of

economics, it is clear that tables and graphs are the two main ways to show experiments in

economics papers. Tables can present a large amount of data from a database to the reader at

once. When using a table, the study variable is usually in the left column, the data variable is in

the top column, and the data is in the middle of the two columns. Each table should have its

own explanatory text, so that the reader can quickly read the table without looking for

information in the text, which will increase the pressure on readers. For example, Moore-Russo

used following table to show the relationship between Suggested viewing ages, number of episodes

viewed, and codification for PBS series. As you can see, the table that economists using is really easy to

understand ( Moore-Russo 2013)

But do not overcorrect, the table explanatory text should never be longer than the

original information in the text. Graphs are also the easiest way for authors to visually

show their models. Beautiful graphs can enliven an article. Graphs are better at

expressing patterns and patterns of data than lengthy text descriptions. They make

readers quickly understand the form, structure, changing trend and characteristics of

data in an intuitive way, which can reduce the tedious description of words. Sometimes

illustrations can also be used to describe situations where words are difficult to express
clearly. So tables and graphs are the two major tools for economists to analyze,

organize, and illustrate data.

An economic essay begins with a story and ends with a story. It starts out

as an academic paper that tells you what the authors' main research contribution is.

Then it suddenly becomes a story, the protagonist's rough fate and social injustice

involved in your heartstrings. You follow the authors’ mind through the data in search of

specific causes and solutions. In the end, the hero's story ends and your own begins.

Work Cited

1. Melody, William H., and Action for Children's Television. Children's Television;

the Economics of Exploitation. New Haven: Yale UP, 1973. Print. Yale Fastback ;

12.

2. Moore-Russo, "Cognitive and Social Themes in Children's Public Television

Programming in the United States." Journal of Children and Media 7.2 (2013):

253-72. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17482798.2012.712919