Posted: December 11th, 2022

Northeastern University – ECON 2560 – Applied Econometrics

Northeastern University – ECON 2560 – Applied Econometrics – Fall 2022
Paper Review Project Due date: Dec 15, 11:59 pm Boston Time
** Late work will not be accepted for this assignment **
You must complete this assignment individually (it is ok to discuss your paper and evaluation with colleagues but do your own
writeup). Please upload your writeup to Canvas in PDF format.
Background:
Research papers are a primary way that economists communicate their work. Many papers are empirical — analyzing data —
and a large percentage of those use econometric methods. Reading and evaluating such papers is thus an important part of
economic skills and training. Each of the papers listed below is an empirical paper using econometrics, with a range of
difficulty, topics, datasets, and econometric approaches.
Assignment: choose one of the research papers below (or one of your own choosing, subject to pre-approval), review it, and
turn in a roughly two-page writeup that covers the following points:
Describe the data used in the paper: what are the units of observation, how many data points are there, what are the
dependent and independent variables, what are the time periods/frequency, etc?
Does the paper provide descriptive statistics summarizing the data? If so, are they well-presented and informative?
What econometric techniques are used: OLS, nonlinear LS, Panel or Cross-section, maximum likelihood, logit, other?
How is/are the regression specification(s) chosen? Based on economic logic, analysis/testing, or both? Does the paper
contain discussion of functional form issues?
Are the assumptions about the data, in particular the 4 LSA (4 Least Squares Assumptions) (if relevant in the paper’s
context), appropriate given the estimation techniques used in the paper?
How well do the paper’s econometric results support its conclusions? Comment on your perception of the paper’s quality
from an econometric perspective.
Note: you do not need to discuss the paper’s non-econometric results other than to tie the econometric results to the paper
topic and conclusions. Sections like literature review and theoretical model may be skipped if appropriate.
Suggestions/resources:
Choose a paper that interests you and has econometrics that you feel comfortable evaluating (some use just basic econometrics
from the first few chapters and some use techniques beyond what we’ve covered in class). You should probably skim several
papers before making your choice. If you want to choose a different paper, ask me by Dec 2nd so I can review it and make
sure it is appropriate (I’ll get back to you within appx 24 hours). Some of the papers are long and difficult; it is ok to do your
writeup on part of a paper, especially if the paper has multiple empirical sections. (You don’t get extra points for choosing my
paper; I included it because it is simpler and more straightforward than most journal articles.) Make sure you leave enough
time for this assignment — you will have about a little bit more than two weeks to do this project but reading and digesting
economic research papers takes some time.

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