[ Basic Information | Objectives
| Online Course Resources |
| Your Research Proposal | Attributes
of a Quality Research Paper |
| A. Course Requirements | B. Grading Policy
| C. Attendance Policy |
| D. Cheating and Plagiarism Policy | E. Snow
Policy | F. Disability Policy | G.
Schedule ]
by Chris Bell, Department of Economics, UNCA
| Your research proposal should be written according to the following format: | |
| 1. | Topic: the specific hypothesis or issue you propose to examine. |
| 2. | Literature review: a list of what you believe to be the most important articles and books on your topic. Include a brief (several sentences at most) description of each item on your list. |
| 3. | Your proposal: what you propose to do and how it differs from what others have already done. |
| 4. | Research design: a description of the materials and methods you plan to use to conduct your research and a statement, based on preliminary inquiries, regarding the probability you will be able to obtain the necessary data. Your research design will depend on the type of paper you wish to write. Examples of the questions you must address for each type of paper are given below. |
| Note well: Your proposal will be evaluated on form as well as content. It should be well organized, with its main points flowing smoothly from one paragraph to the next. Its sentences should be clear and concise. An excellent reference on good writing is Strunk and White's The Elements of Style. | |
| Examples
of the types of papers most often written for Economics 316 include case
studies, empirical tests, and theoretical extensions. We will read and discuss an example of
each (every paper cited below is included in the required text, Readings
in Transaction Cost Economics). See too the list of past Econ
316/480
papers on the s |
|
| C | Case Study:
What theory, tool or technique (e.g., the S-C-P paradigm, travel cost
study or capital budgeting analysis) do you plan to apply to better
understand an interesting economic, business, or personal situation? What
is the economic, business, or personal situation in which you plan to
apply it? How similar are the conditions of the situation you plan to
examine to the assumptions on which the relevant economic theory, tool or
technique is based? What are the points of similarity? Of divergence? To
whom will the results of your study be interesting? Why? Will your case
study shed light in some other way on an existing economic theory? If so,
how? What sources of information on this situation are available to you?
How does what you plan to do differ from what others have done before? How
is it alike?
And (if appropriate): What does the relevant economic theory predict you will find? Will your case study allow you to test the relevant economic theory? If so, how? Will your case allow you to discriminate between two (or more) competing economic theories? If so, how? Will your case study shed light in some other way on an existing economic theory? If so, how? Example: United States Steel’s Acquisition of the Great Northern Ore Properties: Vertical Foreclosure or Efficient Contractual Governance?, by Joseph Mullin and Wallace Mullin. |
| C | Empirical Test: What
relationship, between which variables, does an existing economic theory
predict? What technique (e.g., multivariate regression) do you propose to
use to test to see if, in fact, this relationship does exist? Is data
available on the variables you need to conduct your proposed test? How are
you going to get this data? If data is not available on the variables you
need, is data on reasonable proxies for these variables available? How are
you going to get this data? How similar are the variables you will
actually use to those described by the economic theory you propose to
test? How does what you plan to do differ from what others have done
before? How is it alike?
And (if appropriate): What relationship, between which variables, do two (or more) competing economic theories predict? How do the predictions made by these competing theories differ from each other? What technique do you propose to use to accept one of these models and reject the rest? Example: Comparative Institutional Economics: The Governance of Rail Freight Contracting, by Thomas Palay. |
| C |
Theoretical Extension: What is the contradiction between the observed economic relationship you wish to explain and the existing theory economists use to explain this relationship? Which of the assumptions of the existing theory do you plan to relax? What effect do you think relaxing these assumptions will have on the predictions made by models based on the existing theory? (Note that this question has two parts: what do you think your proposed model will predict, and how do these predictions differ from those made by the existing models?) Can you think of an empirical test or a case study that could be used to test your proposed theoretical extension? How does what you plan to do differ from what others have done before? How is it alike? And (if appropriate): What shortcoming (other than an observed contradiction) to an existing theory do you wish to address? How do you propose to remedy this shortcoming? Can anything be done with your proposed extension (e.g., an empirical test) that couldn't be done with the existing theory? Example: The Nature of the Firm, by Ronald Coase. |