Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
ECON4207/ECON6003(Arts)
PROJECT INFORMATION
Submission details
Students are required to submit a written copy AND an electronic copy of their project. The
electronic document must be a pdf file or a word file. Hard copies of the document must be
typewritten and stapled. Student name(s) and number(s) must be clearly indicated on the cover
page.
The hard copy of the major project should be deposited in the Economics Box 1 outside the north‐
west doors to the ASB, by 5pm on Friday May 27th. The electronic copy of the major project must be
submitted on the course website by 11:59pm on Friday May 27th.
Submission via email or fax will not be accepted. Additional instructions on submission of the
electronic copy will be available on the website.
Late submissions: a penalty of 20% of the value of the project will be deducted for each day (24
hours) or part thereof past the deadline unless an extension is granted.
All electronic copies of essays will be checked for plagiarism on the Turnitin software into which they
are uploaded. See notes on Plagiarism below and also note that the Turnitin software will
automatically check against all other assignments submitted.
Be reminded that the University regards plagiarism as a form of academic misconduct, and has very
strict rules regarding plagiarism.
For UNSW’s policies, penalties, and information to help you avoid plagiarism see:
http://www.lc.unsw.edu.au/plagiarism/index.html as well as the guidelines in the online ELISE
tutorial for all new UNSW students:
http://info.library.unsw.edu.au/skills/tutorials/InfoSkills/index.htm.
If you have any doubts or questions on what constitutes plagiarism and how it will be treated, please
ask me or your tutors.
Group work (Optional):
You may work in groups of at most 4 people for the project. A cover sheet for the project is posted
on the course website. The group members are required to complete a peer assessment sheet for
the project. It is your responsibility to resolve any work load conflict among the group members. The
peer assessment sheet will be used to assess each member’s contribution to the project. In the
event of a big discrepancy between group members’ contribution, the mark allocated to each
member will be an average weighted by their peers’ assessment.
Project information
You are required to form groups of up to four students. The project will be in the form of an
article review and replication of the methodology to a real dataset. The project is due in week
12.
The project involves the following main tasks:
1. You are required to nominate a particular topic from the course schedule that interests you
and select a journal article that has been published in this area. The article can be either
purely theoretical or of applied nature. Nominations must be received by week 9.
You can choose an article (topic) from the list provided or pick up your own from the
literature.
Discuss the assumptions of the econometric model used in the chosen article and their
implications. In the case of an applied article, clearly explain the data considerations and
the validity of the implied model assumptions. If the article is purely theoretical, clearly
connect the theoretical results to the assumptions imposed on the model and the
implications of the estimation method used.
2. The written project is due Friday of Week 12 (see above).
3. Class presentation (Week 13): You are required to present a summary of your project
during week 13 in no more than 15 minutes using no more that 7/8 overhead
transparencies. A copy of the overhead transparencies must be handed in for assessment.
Choosing a topic:
Greene textbook has an extensive list of references to journal articles (pages 1099‐1146). Make a
decision which topic of ECON4207/ECON6003 you want to do the project on. This process can either
start from looking up the topics and then finding a journal article. Alternatively, you may have a data
set in mind/question that you want to explore (perhaps part of your exploration of
honours/master/PhD thesis topics). In this case, you can think of ways to address the question using
a journal article. This is an opportunity for you to choose something you want to work on more in
the future or part of your preparation to write up your thesis work.
Alternatively, you may consider the following suggestions:
Topic 1: Determinants of labour supply for married women.
topic1_data.txt is real data from the twelve year Michigan Panel Study of Income Dynamics.
Things you may want to address/reflect on in this topic:
Decide whether to model the labour force participation decision or the number of hours
worked;
Propose and estimate an earning (wage) equation. This might be used to address any concerns
of selection bias.
The validity of potential experience as an IV for log(wage) is questionable. Perhaps more
convincing is to add hours to the wage offer equation, and instrument hours with indicators for
young and old children.
Useful reference:
Mroz (1987), The Sensitivity of an Empirical Model of Married Women’s Hours of Work to Economic
and Statistical Assumptions, Econometrica, Vol. 55, No.4
Topic 2: Determinants of Extramarital Affairs
The dataset AFFAIRS.xls is real data from a US survey by Psychology Today. Things you may want to
address in this topic:
Whether to model the decision to have an affair, or/ and the number of affairs;
Useful reference:
R.C. Fair (1978), A Theory of Extramarital Affairs, Journal of Political Economy 86.
Topic 3: Forecasting US Inflation and GDP
Data in “hof.xls” includes time series on a large number of macroeconomic/financial variables.
These variables may have useful information in forecasting inflation and gross domestic product. The
challenge here is to find a way to use all this information to construct “good” forecasts for the
economic activity.
Useful references:
1. Stock and Watson (2002), Macroeconomic Forecasting Using Diffusion Indexes, Journal of
Business & Economic Statistics, Vol. 20, No. 2
2. Giannone, De Mol and Reichlin (2008), Forecasting using a large number of predictors: is
Bayesian shrinkage a valid alternative to principal components? Journal of Econometrics, Vol.
146, No. 2.
3. Giannone, Reichlin and Small (2008), Nowcasting: The Real Time Informational Content of
Macroeconomic Data Releases, Journal of Monetary Economics, Vol. 55, No. 4.
Broad guidelines
As a guide, you could think of including the following section:
1. Introduction (1 to 1 ½ pages): Here introduce the topic and explain why it is important and
interesting to study the chosen topic. Discuss previous results in the literature (refer to one or
two papers, and broadly describe their main results) and any econometric, modelling, or policy
issues and implications.
2. Data (1 page): Describe the variables you choose to include in your model, the number of
observations, the main problems you had manipulating the data and the decisions you made.
Defend the decisions that you made. Basic descriptive statistics would be good here, and
probably some graphs too.
3. Model (1 page): You can describe very briefly a theoretical model in order to motivate your
choice of variables and to help with the interpretation of the results. The model has to be
developed on the grounds of the properties of the dependent variable and the available
regressors. Then describe the econometric model(s) in some detail. This can also be done in the
results section.
4. Results and interpretation (3 pages): This is likely to be the main section in your paper. Describe
your econometric models and your results. Interpret the results. Discuss likely problems with the
model and possible violations of your main assumptions. Try to say something about the effects
of possible biases on your findings. This should also include a careful account of relevant
hypothesis tests and their meaning.
5. Diagnostics and Sensitivity analysis (1 to 2 pages): This is also a crucial part of your paper. You
want to convince the reader that your results are real and not just an artifice of the particular
model you are using. Run different models, change some of the decisions you made in
manipulating the data and rerun the models. Describe your results and say if they remain true
with these changes or if they are sensitive to the exact model/data assumptions you are making.
Modelling of real life data is always difficult. It is therefore important that you are able to look
critically at your results and are able to identify drawbacks and shortcomings of your findings.
6. Conclusions (1/2 page): Restate your main results and say how you would expand the paper if
you had more time, more data, etc….
7. References (1/4 page): Reference your textbooks (if you used them) and any article you have read
and used as a basis for your discussions and decisions.