Economics 304: Intermediate Macroeconomics
Fall 2007
Reed College -- Professor Jeffrey Parker

Research Proposal
Draft Outline Due: Monday, November 12
Final Proposal Due: Wednesday, December 5

This assignment asks you to write a research proposal to answer an interesting question related to macroeconomics. You don't actually have to do the research and attempt to answer the question. You should find a question that you think is interesting, explore some of the literature that has attempted to answer the question, and then propose a research program that would provide information to add to what is known.

Identifying a question: The first step in formulating your proposal is to find an interesting question relating to macroeconomics. The answer to this question could be theoretical or empirical in nature; it could be comparative in nature or focus on a single country; it could involve the U.S. economy, other advanced economies, or developing economies. It probably makes sense to avoid highly general questions like "Does investment respond to the interest rate?" or "What is the MPC?" unless you have a novel idea for approaching them. These questions have been studied extensively and you would have a large task to even begin to review the relevant literature.

Reviewing the literature: Once you have a question in mind (or at least an area of interest), you should begin to find and read the literature on the subject. Blanchard has references to studies on some topics, or I can probably help you get started. EconLit is a database of all works published in economics journals since the 1960s. It is accessible through the Reed Library Web site. You can search for various terms, authors, titles, etc. Once you get into the literature, you can use references from papers you find to go backward as necessary and could use the Social-Science Citation Index (in Web of Science on the library Web site) to move forward. Be careful here, because you could easily find hundreds of papers on a topic and you don't have time to read that many. If your list starts to get long, skim papers to see which ones are more and less important to you and read the dozen or so papers that are most closely related to your question.

Formulating your proposal: Once you have an idea what others have done, it's time to think about how you could try something different. Your proposal doesn't have to be completely original; it would be fine to apply a method that another author has used to a different data set or to refine an existing study in some other way. You will most likely not have all the mathematical or econometric skills that you would need to actually perform the study. You may not have access to the data required (or such data may not even exist). However, your proposal should be as specific as possible in outlining how the research would be done. What data would be needed? Do these data exist? If not, how would you propose to obtain them? (It must be possible; you can't just say "let's suppose that detailed data on GDP and unemployment existed for the 19th century U.S. economy" or something like that.) How would you analyze them? How would your research plan lead to an answer to your question?

Let me help you: I expect you to use me as a resource at each stage of this project. Once you have an area of interest, I can help you find literature. When you get confused by the papers you read, I can try to help you understand them. When you need information about available data sets or about econometric procedures that would be appropriate for analyzing your data in a particular way, I will probably have suggestions. However, my advice will be far more useful if it is timely, so don't postpone working on this project or coming in if you have questions.

The final product: Your final proposal should be a concise statement of your proposed project. It should have an introduction in which you outline the project and clearly state the question you are trying to answer. It should have a literature review that describes the existing literature that is more closely relevant to your question. Then it should have a section describing your proposed research in detail. A complete bibliography using appropriate citation style is required. I encourage you to use Endnote to keep your bibliographic information and integrate it into your document. I expect that most of the proposals will be 10-15 pages in length, but the appropriate length will depend on your topic: how much literature there is to review and how much detail is involved in describing your proposed research.

Deadlines:
Monday, November 12: Turn in an outline that describes your research question with a tentative bibliography.
Wednesday, December 5: Final draft due.