The research project will result in a poster presentation of your research on economic growth. It
will be completed in seven stages, as outlined below. (final grade weight): abstract (2%),
literature review (10%), data plan (5%), conclusion (5%), first draft (5%), outline (5%) and final
presentation (10%). All items will be turned in on Canvas except the final presentation, which
will be the poster you present at CTC, and the first draft. The first draft will consist of a meeting
with me to discuss your project..
This is an individual project that will be completed in stages. You will focus on an issue of
economic growth/development in the La Crosse area. We will spend time at Murphy Library and
the La Crosse Public Library learning about resources available to you. Your research must
cover a time period spanning at least 100 years.
Economists generally define economic growth as an increase in GDP per capita. GDP data are
not available for the La Crosse area for a time period extending over a century, so you will have
to measure economic growth indirectly, by looking for factors that are generally correlated with
growth. These can either be factors that cause economic growth, or those that accompany, i.e. are
“byproducts of” economic growth. As we will discuss during the semester, there are a variety of
explanations for how economies grow, such as the presence of natural resources, good
governments, educated population, technology, and trade, to name just a few. There are also a
variety of signals that an economy has grown that are not included in GDP. Increased lifespans,
lower poverty rates, clean environment, sufficient housing, lower crime rates, leisure time, etc.
During the semester we will address many of these issues.
You will have to decide what time period you are going to look at and how you plan to define
economic growth (cite supporting literature to defend your definition of growth). Did economic
growth occur? How are you going to demonstrate it? (cite relevant literature to support your
choice) Concentrate on one topic, do not attempt to use multiple variables. Finally, what else
may have caused the change you measured? i.e. is it possible that it wasn’t economic growth, but
something else? For example, you could argue that economic growth means an increase in real
wages. How will you determine the change in real wages? Who was affected? What may have
caused the changes? Can you measure that? How might you check for causation? i.e. is it
possible that wages rose because prices decreased? Would this constitute economic growth?
Your posters will be presented at the Economics Department Critical Thinking Colloquium on
Tuesday, April 30th from 3:30 – 4:30 pm. Your participation at the CTC is required. Clear
your work and practice schedules now. Alert coaches, directors, and employers of this conflict in
your schedule. If you are not present you will receive a zero for that portion of the project.
There are many ways to think about economic growth and many sources from which we can
observe it. Not all sources will be quantifiable, as we will learn throughout the semester. While
we can measure things like income, population, and the number of banks, other aspects of
growth, like the quality of schools, equality of opportunity, and safe neighborhoods might only
be observed indirectly. We will visit the archives at the La Crosse Public Library and Murphy
Library at UWL to learn about some of the materials available to you for your research. The
dates of visits are indicated in the syllabus.
Following is an overview of the individual parts of this project. Due dates for each can be found
in the syllabus and on the Canvas page. Unless otherwise indicated, each part will be turned in
on Canvas. Observe due dates and times. If you have to email something to me because the
Canvas drop box was closed, it will be considered late.
Abstract
Prepare an abstract for your research presentation. Your abstract will be an overview of your
plan for your research, since it is being written before you conduct it. It should include a
hypothesis statement covering your planned approach and what you expect to find. A typical
abstract is about one paragraph in length. Turn it in using the Canvas site dropbox. When I have
finished reading it you will be able to read my comments and view your grade in the Canvas
grade book.
Literature Review
Upload your literature review to the Canvas dropbox. The purpose of a literature review is to
provide evidence to buttress your hypothesis. Remember, your hypothesis is your educated
guess, and that a hypothesis that X causes economic growth, or X is evidence of economic
growth, is not by itself good enough. You need to point to literature that can support your
hypothesis. E.g. “I think that increased spending on entertainment per capita is linked to
economic growth because that link was found by XX in her research on the movie industry in the
U.S. between 1900 and 1950. My sample covers only Wisconsin from 1900-2000, but is not
significantly different than the XX sample because . . .”
Remember, you are not going to be able to prove that growth in X leads to economic growth in
La Crosse. You are arguing that growing X is evidence of economic growth – either because it
leads to growth (e.g. increased capital investment leads to increased growth) or is caused by
growth (e.g. growing real disposable incomes are evidence of growth because a growing
economy leads to better paying jobs and thus higher incomes). In either case you need to cite
literature that supports your hypothesis and conclusion.
The literature you cite almost certainly will not focus on La Crosse during your chosen time
period. Instead, it will likely focus on a different geographic area and a different time period.
You should wonder if the time and place analyzed in other work is sufficiently similar to your
time and place of study so as to increase the likelihood that those findings apply to your
situation. Focus on what the similarities and differences are, and why they may or may not
matter.
Citing one source is not particularly strong support for your hypothesis, so look for more
evidence, particularly something published in the past ten years if available. Cite a minimum of
three sources, but in general, the more the merrier.
In your literature and the final version of your project your sources need complete citations.
Author, title, publisher, where published, date published (year, volume, issue for journal articles;
year for books), and pages (for journal articles or chapters in edited collections). For examples of
how to cite articles, just look at the reference list in any of the articles you read for class. You
can use any citation style (e.g. Chicago/Turabian, MLA), just be consistent. And remember: a
link to an article is NOT a citation. You must use articles published in academic journals or
published books. Blogs, magazines, newspapers, working papers, and student theses are not
acceptable. Use the search engines on the Murphy Library website that we discussed in class to
identify literature relevant to your research. You may find dozens of articles. A quick read of the
abstract or opening paragraph will usually give you a good idea of the relevance of the article to
your own work.
Your literature review will be a formal statement of support for the hypothesis you outlined in
your abstract. The literature review should summarize at least three relevant sources related to
your hypothesis and how your work will build on and advance the existing state of the literature.
A general rule of thumb as to length: one paragraph per article you review and a two or three
paragraph summary, which explains how the articles relate to your work and how you will
advance that literature. Be sure to include a bibliography with complete citations for each source
that you cite.
Recall from reading other articles that the point of a literature review is to cite literature relevant
to your work, discuss its approach and results, and how your work relates to it. Will you use
some of the methodology, data, questions from this work? How will your work differ? i.e. how
will you build on it or expand from it? What will you do to add to the general knowledge of this
topic?
If you are going to use AI to help you write your literature review, carefully read the AI
generated project to be sure that it follows the guideline above. AI is great at accessing material,
not so great at output, so be sure to read it and correct typos, logical gaps, and grammatical
issues. Most importantly, be sure that the literature review actually covers material relevant to
your hypothesis, and be sure to indicate how your work will build on the literature you reviewed.
You can improve the quality of an AI generated literature review by feeding a program, such as
Chat GPT, the specific articles that you have already identified as most relevant to your own
work. And of course, you will need to defend why the work you cite applies to the La Crosse
economy during the time period you have chosen. And of course, you can actually do all the
writing yourself. Using AI is a tool of choice, neither a requirement nor a substitute for
generating a logical and useful literature review.
See the item “Finding Journal Articles on the Murphy Library Website” on the Canvas site for
some helpful hints on how to search for scholarly articles. This is useful for finding specific
articles as well as searching for articles that will be useful to your own work.
Data Plan
Upload your data plan to the Canvas dropbox. This will consist of a one or two page overview of
how you intend to measure economic growth, and over what period you intend to do so. Discuss
the method that you will use for measuring this growth and why you think this is indicative of
economic growth in the La Crosse area. What are you observing? Where will you get the data?
What frequency will you use? E.g. are you sampling city directories every five years? Do you
have annual tax roll data? Are you using proxies? If so, why? What would be the ideal measure,
and why can’t you use that? Your data plan should make it clear what you are using to measure
growth and why it is a valid measure. You may cite other literature as part of your defense for
using your measure of choice. You may turn in your data plan before you have finished
gathering all of your observations.
First Draft (nothing to turn in)
Each of you will schedule an individual meeting with me the week before CTC to go over your
research project. Meetings will be scheduled for 15 minutes. Bring your work with you (not the
actual poster – you can pick that up at our meeting). There is nothing to turn in. At this meeting I
want you to tell me about your project, which should be nearly complete by this point. Show me
your work and discuss your results. Before we meet you should have already addressed the
following issues: How does your choice of measure relate to economic growth? Where did you
get the data, and are you confident that it measures what you want it to? Can you explain what
your results mean? Have you considered alternate explanations? The purpose is to be sure that
you have gathered all your evidence and considered all relevant issues. The timing of this
meeting will afford you the opportunity to make any changes needed to present your poster in its
best possible form.
Conclusion Statement
By now your research project should be in its final stages, enough for you to come to a
conclusion about your hypothesis. Your conclusion statement should be a one or two page
summary of the conclusion you have reached. The conclusion statement should begin with a
brief summary of your hypothesis and how you tested it, and then a summary of your results. Did
they support your hypothesis? How confident are you in those results? Would additional research
increase your confidence? If your hypothesis was not supported by your research, do you have
any ideas why? Would further research help identify those reasons? If so, what might need to be
done in the future? Note that you are not committing yourself to doing any further research, just
suggesting what might need to be done to test why your original hypothesis was incorrect, or
what might bolster your confidence in your results. As usual, both form and content will be
graded, so careful proofreading is recommended before you upload your conclusion statement to
the Canvas dropbox.
Outline
Turn in an outline of your final research presentation. This should be one page. Your outline
should be a basic sketch of the main points that will appear on your poster. Think of an executive
summary using only bullet points. It should not exceed one page in length. Upload it to Canvas.
Poster (nothing to turn in)
Bring your poster to the CTC. Dress is business casual.
Prepare a one minute overview of what you have done. Notecards are permissible. Most of the
talking you do will be answering questions. The audience will consist of students (mainly from
Eco 110 and 120 courses) and faculty, so the questions will be at two very different levels. Be
prepared to answer simple questions from the students (Why did you choose this topic? How
does this indicate growth?) and more in-depth questions from the faculty (How confident are you
that this is causation and not correlation? What inspired your choice of measurement
instruments?). A rubric for scoring your presentation follows. I will visit each of your posters
during the CTC. A few general points to keep in mind: posters should speak for themselves – i.e.
if you are not at your poster, I could read it and know exactly what you did; use large enough
font that it can be read from five feet away; organize your poster in a logical fashion; both form
and content matter.
By this time I will have had plenty of interactions with you about your research. During the CTC
portion of the assignment, I will visit each of you, but will not be asking questions. I will be
observing your poster. Spend your time talking to others who have not yet had the opportunity to
hear about your project.
