PLEASE READ FIRST BEFORE ACCEPTING THIS ASSIGNMENT: You are going to need a software called SATA to get the datasets from the websites
The Topic of this assignment is your choice, but it has to be related to economics or finance.
The websites listed below should help you to find the datasets:
World Bank Open Data | Data
IMF Data
RESTAT_Replication.tar – Review of Economics and Statistics Dataverse (harvard.edu)
Census Bureau Data
The empirical project (term paper) should employ the econometric methods we covered in the course. If you use
methods that are not related to the topics that we covered, the econometrics part of your projects will not be accepted, and you will get
zero from those parts! For example, we are not covering time series econometrics or ANOVA in this course. And, obviously, a project
that uses econometric tools that are specific to such topics (and other unrelated econometrics topics) will not be accepted. Also, the
topic must be related to Economics or Finance. So, for example a topic about physics or chemistry is not accepted.
The term paper is expected to be at least six (6) double-spaced pages and at most nine (9) double-spaced pages,
which should contain (i) abstract, (ii) introduction, (iii) description of the data,(iv) econometric model,(v)results
and interpretation, and (vi) conclusions.
Rubric: Consists of two main parts.
a) (40 pts) Written Communication Skills:
i) Organization (15 pts): This is about organization of the structure of the paper similar to professional academic
papers. A typical academic paper must have an Abstract, an Introduction, a Main Text (explains the model and
results), and a Conclusion. Also, when presenting the paper, the flow of the paper must be maintained.
ii) Purpose (15 pts): This is about explaining the purpose/aim of the paper in a clear and convincing way.
iii) Professional Writing (10 pts): This measure evaluates the term paper’s sentence conciseness, readability,
clarity, accuracy, and coherence.
b) (60 pts) Analytical Skills:
i) Evaluation of the Problem (15 pts): This is about analyzing the results of econometric analysis.
ii) Identification of Relationships (20 pts): Using econometric methods to identify/estimate the parameters
correctly using proper methods. So, this is about proper estimations and presenting these results properly.
iii) Support of Claims (15 pts): Argue that your econometric results are in line with your economic claims. For
example, you explain that you expect some result using economic intuition and argue that your econometric results
are in line with these claims. If the results do not agree with your claims/expectations, you may argue about for
why you may have such results.
iv) Policy Recommendations (10 pts): Based on your results your paper needs to make some policy
recommendations. Generally, this is done in the conclusion section.
