WritingEconomics.doc

Writing Economics

Robert Neugeboren with Mireille Jacobson

@2001 The President and Fellows of Harvard University (minor revisions in Jan. 2005)

Acknowledgments

This guide was proposed and supported by The Harvard Writing Proje ct.

Nancy Sommers, Sosland Director of Expository Writing, and Kerry Walk,

Assistant Director of the Writing Project, read drafts, gave advice, and saw

the project through from inception to completion. Kerry Walk wrote the

section on Formatting and Documentation (chapter 5). Christopher Foote,

Assistant Professor of Economics and Director of Undergraduate Studies,

wrote part of chapter 3 and commented on drafts of the whole work.

Oliver Hart, Michael Murray, Lorenzo Isla, Tuan Min Li, Allison Morantz,

and Stephen Weinberg also gave very helpful comments. Special thanks to

Mireille Jacobson, who compiled the appendices, added examples, and

revised and proofread the text. Thanks also to Anita Mortimer and the

Economics Tutorial Office.

Contents

1 Introduction | The Economic Approach

1 Economics and the Problem of Scarcity

2 The Assumption of Rationality

3 The Theory of Incentives

3 Writing Assignments in Economics 970

4 Plan of This Guide

5 One | Writing Economically

5 Getting Started

6 The Keys to Good Economics Writing

7 An Example from the Literature

8 Achieving Clarity

10 Managing Your Time

11 Two | The Language of Economic Analysis

11 Economic Models

12 Hypothesis Testing

13 Regression: An Example

14 Improving the Fit

14 Applying the Tools

16 Three | Finding and Researching Your Topic

16 Finding a Topic for a Term Paper

18 Finding and Using Sources

19 Doing a Periodical Search

19 Taking and Organizing Notes

21 Four | The Term Paper

21 Outlining Your Paper

22 Writing Your Literature Review

23 Presenting Your Hypothesis

24 Presenting Your Results / by Chris Foote

29 Discussing Your Results

30 Five | Formatting and Documentation / by Kerry Walk

30 Placing Citations in Your Paper

32 Listing Your References

34 Sample References Entries

44 Appendix A | Fields in Economics

47 Appendix B | Standard Statistical Sources

49 Appendix C | Electronic Indices to Periodical Literature

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Introduction | The Economic Approach

Economists study everything from money and prices to child rearing and

the environment. They analyze small-scale decision-making and large-

scale international policy-making. They compile data about the past and

make predictions about the future. Many economic ideas have currency in

everyday life, cropping up in newspapers, magazines, and policy debates.

The amount you pay every month to finance a car or new home purchase

will depend on interest rates. Business people make investment plans

based on expectations of future demand, and policy makers devise

budgets to achieve a desired macroeconomic equilibrium.

Across the broad range of topics that interest economists is a unique

approach to knowledge, something common to the way all economists

see the world. Economists share certain assumptions about how the

economy works, and they use standard methods for analyzing data and

communicating their ideas. The purpose of this guide is to help you to

think and write like an economist.

ECONOMICS AND THE PROBLEM OF SCARCITY

Since its beginnings as “the dismal science,” economics has been

preoccupied with the problem of scarcity. The hours in a day, the money in

one’s pocket, the food the ground can supply are all limited; spending

resources on one activity necessarily comes at the expense of some other,

foregone opportunity. Scarcity provides economics with its central

problem: how to make choices in the context of constraint.

Accordingly, economists ask questions such as: How does a consumer

choose a bundle of commodities, given her income and prices? How does

a country choose to meet its objectives, given its national budget? How do

decision-makers allocate scarce resources among alternative activities

with different uses?

While this central economic problem may be rather narrow, the range

of topics that interest economists is vast. Indeed, insofar as it can be

characterized as choice under constraint, any kind of behavior falls within

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the scope of economic analysis. As Lord Lionel Robbins (1984), one of the

great economists of the twentieth century, put it:

We do not say that the production of potatoes is economic activity and

the production of philosophy is not. We say rather that, in so far as

either kind of activity involves the relinquishment of other desired

alternatives, it has its economic aspect. There are no limitations on the

subject matter of Economic Science save this.

It should come as no surprise that economists are sometimes called

“imperialists” by other social scientists for their encroachment on fields

that traditionally belong to other disciplines. For instance, historians

studying the migration patterns of eighteenth-century European peasants

have explained the movement out of the countryside and into the cities in

terms of broad social and cultural factors: the peasants were subjects of

changing times, swept along by the force of history. By contrast,

economists, such as Samuel L. Popkin (1979), have attributed urban

migration patterns to the trade-offs faced and choices made by individual

actors; from this perspective, the behavior of these peasants was rational.

THE ASSUMPTION OF RATIONALITY

Economists approach a wide range of topics with the assumption that the

behavior under investigation is best understood as if it were rational

(though we know that not all behavior is, in fact, rational) and that the

best explanations, models and theories we construct take rationality as

the norm. Rationality, in the words of Frank Hahn, is the “weak causal

proposition” that sets all economic analyses in motion. “Economics can be

distinguished from other social sciences by the belief that most (all?)

behavior can be explained by assuming that agents have stable, well-

defined preferences and make rational choices consistent with those

preferences” (Colin Camerer and Richard Thaler, 1995).

Rationality, in the standard sense of the economist, means that agents

prefer more of what they want to less. This may seem like a rather strong

proposition, insofar as it seems to imply that human behavior is

necessarily calculated and self-interested. But the assumption of

rationality does not imply anything about the content of agents’ wants, or

preferences; hence to be rational is not necessarily to be selfish. One can

want others to be better off and rationally pursue this objective as well.

Economists assume that whatever their preferences, agents will attempt

to maximize their satisfaction subject to the constraints they face. And

good economics writing will take the assumption of rational behavior as

its starting point.

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THE THEORY OF INCENTIVES

The theory of incentives posits that individual agents, firms, or people,

make decisions by comparing costs and benefits. When costs or benefits –

the constraints on choices – change, behavior may also change. In other

words, agents respond to incentives.

Many recent developments in economics and public policy are based

on the theory of incentives. For example, recent welfare reforms recognize

that traditional welfare, which guarantees a basic level of income but is

taken away once that level is surpassed, provides incentives for those

below the earnings threshold to stay out of the formal workforce. This and

other criticisms have led to the adoption and expansion of programs such

as the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). The EITC seeks to rectify this

particular incentive problem by making transfers only to working

individuals. Such policy changes suggest that incentives matter for

behavior. Thus, a thorough analysis of any behavior, and a well-written

account of it, must account for incentive effects.

WRITING ASSIGNMENTS IN ECONOMICS 970

In Sophomore Tutorial (Economics 970), you will receive several writing

assignments including a term paper, an empirical exercise, short essays,

response papers, and possibly a rewrite. Below is a description of these

types:

• Term Paper (10–15pp.). In all tutorials , you will be required to write a

term paper that addresses a topic in depth and combines skills

developed throughout the semester. It usually builds on earlier short

assignments, including a prospectus, in which you will propose a

thesis or question and detail how the issue will be addressed. This

term paper may require research beyond what has been assigned to

the group. It typically includes a literature review, an empirical

component, a discussion of results, and perhaps a discussion of policy

implications.

• Empirical Exercise (5–6pp.). All tutorials also assign some kind of

empirical exercise in which you will analyze economic data using a

standard statistical software package (such as STATA). The empirical

exercise will give you experience in answering an economic question

with data and/or drawing conclusions from evidence.

• Short Essays (4–6pp.). Short essays may require you to analyze two

articles and compare their policy implications, explain a model,

criticize an argument, present a case study, extend a theory, evaluate

an intellectual debate and so on.

• Response Papers (1–2pp.). Response papers might involve

summarizing the weekly readings or answering a specific question

about the text. These will help get you thinking and stimulate class

4 | Writing Economics

discussion. They can also build the skills needed for writing successful

longer papers.

Make sure you clear up any confusion about the assignment by asking

your tutor specific questions about what he or she is looking for. The

earlier you get clarification, the be tter able you will be to complete the

assignment (and get a good grade). For longer papers, you may want to

hand in rough drafts. Getting feedback may improve your writing

considerably and generally makes for more interesting papers.

PLAN OF THIS GUIDE

Understanding the way economists see the world is a necessary step on

the way to good economics writing. Chapter 1 describes the keys you need

to succeed as a writer of economics and offers an overview of the writing

process from beginning to end. Chapter 2 describes the basic methods

economists use to analyze data and communicate their ideas. Chapter 3

offers suggestions for finding and focusing your topic, including standard

economic sources and techniques for doing economic research. Chapter 4

tells you how to write a term paper. Finally, Chapter 5 provides a guide to

citing sources and creating a bibliography. Three appendices provide

useful information for developing your term papers. Appendix A provides

a roadmap of fields in economics and can help define very broad areas of

interest. Appendix B lists some standard statistical sources that you may

wish to use for your own research and appendix C lists the relevant

electronic indices to periodical literature, invaluable resources for the

initial stages of any paper.

5 | Writing Economics

One | Writing Economically

Pick up any publication of the American Economics Association and you

will discover a few things about writing economics. First, the discourse is

often mathematical, with lots of formulas, lemmas, and proofs. Second,

writing styles vary widely. Some authors are very dry and technical; a few

are rather eloquent.

You don’t have to be a great “writer” to produce good economics

writing. This is because economics writing is different from many other

types of writing. It is essentially technical writing, where the goal is not to

turn a clever phrase, hold the reader in suspense, or create multi-layered

nuance, but rather to achieve clarity. Elegant prose is nice, but clarity is

the only style that is relevant for our purposes. A clear presentation will

allow the strength of your underlying analysis and the quality of your

research to shine through.

If you’ve ever pulled an all-nighter and done reasonably well on the

assignment, you may be tempted to rely on your ability to churn out

pages of prose late at night. This is not a sensible strategy. Good

economics papers just don’t “happen” without time spent on preparation;

you cannot hide a lack of research, planning and revising behind carefully

constructed prose. More time will produce better results, though returns

to effort will be diminishing at some point. Here, too, the principles of

economy apply.

GETTING STARTED

Getting started is often the hardest part of writing. The blank page or

screen can bring on writer’s block, and sustaining an argument through

many pages can seem daunting, particularly when you know your work

will be graded. Don’t let these concerns paralyze you; break the paper

down into smaller parts, and get started on the simpler tasks. Economics

writing usually requires a review of the relevant literature (more on this

later). Especially if you’re stuck, this can be a great way to begin.

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THE KEYS TO GOOD ECONOMICS WRITING

Writing in economics, as in any academic discipline, is never simply a

matter of asserting your opinions. While your ideas are important, your

job includes establishing your credentials as a writer of economics, by

demonstrating your knowledge of economic facts and theories, identify-

ing and interpreting the underlying economic models, understanding

what others have said about the relevant issues, evaluating the available

evidence and presenting a persuasive argument. Even if you don’t write

particularly well, you can produce good economics papers by attending to

three basic tasks:

Research

Economic research often entails pouring over reams of data from any of a

number of standard statistical sources (see appendix B). For some assign-

ments, you will want to begin your paper with a review of the literature

on the topic. For a term paper, this might entail an exhaustive library

search (see appendix C); for other assignments, you may need to reference

only a single paper your instructor has assigned. In general, your writing

will reflect the quality of your research, and good writing will demon-

strate that you understand the findings that are relevant to your topic.

Organization

Once you have found your sources, you will need to organize your ideas

and outline your paper. Economists usually organize their writing by using

simplified models (such as supply and demand, cost/benefit analysis and

comparative advantage). Therefore, a literature review is often followed

by the presentation of a model, usually one of the standard models or, for

the theoretically inclined, one of your own devising. Models are used to

organize data and generate hypotheses about how some aspect of the

economy works.

Analysis

Reducing something complex into simpler parts is an integral part of

economic rigor. Statistical analysis (or econometrics) takes vast piles of

data and returns useful numerical summaries that can be used to test

various economic models and make predictions about the future.

Mathematics is very helpful here because it is a precise language that can

articulate the way basic economic relations are conceptualized, measured

and defined. Nonetheless, even before you have mastered sophisticated

statistical and mathematical techniques, your goals should be writing

clearly, following a line of deductive reasoning to its conclusion and

applying the rules of inference correctly. These are the marks of good

economics writing.

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AN EXAMPLE FROM THE LITERATURE

Generally, in the first few paragraphs of a paper, economists set up their

research question as well as the model and data they use to think about

it. This style can be useful to both writer and reader as it establishes the

structure of the work that follows. Unfortunately, it sometimes means a

stilted or dry presentation. An excerpt from a piece by two of the field’s

most eloquent authors, Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz (1996),

illustrates a skillful approach to setting up a research question, placing it

in the literature and outlining how the work to follow extends existing

research. Notice, in particular, that these steps need not be completely

independent.

The piece, taken from the authors’ work on the historical relationship

between technology, human capital, and the wage structure, starts by

presenting the facts motivating the question:

Recent technological advances and a widening of the wage structure

have led many to conclude that technology and human capital are

relative complements. The possibility that such a relationship exists

today has prompted a widely held conjecture that technology and skill

have always been relative complements.

Next they explain the existing theories behind this relationship:

According to this view, technological advance always serves to widen

the wage structure, and only large injections of education slow its

relentless course. A related literature demonstrates that capital and

skill are relative complements today and in the recent past (Zvi

Griliches, 1969). Thus capital deepening appears also to have increased

the relative demand for the educated, serving further to stretch the

wage structure.

Then they clearly and simply state their question:

Physical capital and technology are now regarded as the relative

complements of human capital, but have they been so for the past two

centuries?

Next they cite more of the related literature:

Some answers have already been provided. A literature has emerged

on the bias to technological change across history that challenges the

view that physical capital and human capital have always been relative

complements.

Finally they propose how they seek to answer this question:

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We argue that capital-skill complementarity was manifested in the

aggregate economy as particular technologies spread, specifically

batch and continuous process methods of production.

Their paper goes on to establish the empirical evidence that backs up

this assertion. As evide nced by the example above, the clarity of your

prose, the quality of your research, the organization of your argument,

and the rigor of your analysis are the keys to your success as an economics

writer.

ACHIEVING CLARITY

Clear writing is easy to read but hard to write. It rarely occurs without

considerable effort and a willingness to revise and rework. As McCloskey

(1985), the dean of economics writing, tells us: “it is good to be brief in

the whole essay and in the single word, during the midnight fever of

composition and during the morning chill of revision” (McCloskey, 1985).

The rules of clear writing apply to the organization of the entire paper, to

the order of paragraphs, to sentences and to words. Few writers achieve

clarity without continual editing. Once you have your basic ideas down, be

sure to reread and revise your work.

Clarity can be achieved in stages:

• Organize your ideas into an argument with the help of an outline.

• Define the important terms you will use.

• State your hypothesis and proceed deductively to reach your

conclusions.

• Avoid excess verbiage.

• Edit yourself, remove what is not needed, and keep revising until you

get down to a simple, efficient way of communicating.

This last stage is crucial. Take, for example, the following excerpt from a

student’s short response paper:

In the beginning of the 1980’s, the problem of homelessness in the

United States became apparent (Richard B. Freeman and Brian Hall,

1989). Since then, the number of homeless in this country has

continued to grow. While the problem of homelessness, in itself, is

obviously a problem that is quite relevant to other fields of economic

study, it has also given rise to a phenomenon that is an interesting

topic for the study of behavioral economics: the donation of money to

help the homeless population.

With a little revision, the author could have achieved a more clear and

concise introduction:

9 | Writing Economics

Early in the 1980’s, increasing homelessness in the United States

became apparent (Freeman and Hall, 1989). Since then, the number of

homeless has continued to grow. While homelessness is studied in

many fields of economics, it has given rise to a particular phenomenon

– the donation of money directly to the homeless – that interests

behavioral economists in particular.

Below are some additional tips to achieving clarity and some examples

that apply them. These and many other useful tips can be found in Strunk

and White (1979).

Use the Active Voice

It turns a weak statement (first one) into a more direct assertion (second

statement):

In this paper, the effect of centralized wage-setting institutions on the

industry distribution of employment is studied.

This paper studies the effect of centralized wage-setting institutions

on the industry distribution of employment.

Put Statements in Positive Form

Many day-traders did not pay attention to the warnings of experts.

This statement is more concisely conveyed as follows:

Many day-traders ignored the warnings of experts.

Omit Needless Words

In spite of the fact that the stock market is down, many experts feel

that financial markets may perform reasonably well this quarter.

A better way to express the same thing is:

Although the stock market is down, financial markets may still

perform reasonably well this quarter.

In Summaries, Generally Stick to One Tense

This study showed that dividend payouts increase when dividend

income was less tax-disadvantaged relative to capital gains.

An improvement uses the present tense throughout:

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This study shows that dividend payouts increase when dividend

income is less tax-disadvantaged relative to capital gains.

MANAGING YOUR TIME

The best laid plans for writing a good paper can be wrecked by poor time

management. Make sure you clear up any confusion about the

assignment right away. Set deadlines for completing each phase of the

project:

• Start the project by finding your topic.

• Begin your research.

• Start an outline.

• Write a draft.

• Revise and polish.

Divide your time, from the moment you receive your assignment to the

moment it is due, into segments allotted to each task. Hold yourself to the

deadlines you set, and allow yourself time to revise and polish the paper.

The payoff will be a better product, a better grade and less anxiety

throughout.

11 | Writing Economics

Two | The Language of Economic Analysis

The economy is a complex web of interdependent elements, and

understanding any part is a significant accomplishment. The price of tea

in the US is determined by many factors, including individual preferences

(or tastes), labor costs, weather conditions and the price of tea in China,

among others. Preferences, labor costs, weather, etc. are in turn connected

to other factors, including the price of coffee, which in turn can affect the

price of tea. All the parts can be moving simultaneously, making it hard to

see what is causing what.

To write effectively about economics, you have to understand how

economists think about such complicated phenomena. In general, to

make their task easier, economists focus on and try to isolate simple

causal connections, often between two variables ceteris paribus, or “other

things being equal.” “Other things being equal,” what is the effect of a

change in labor costs on the price of tea? “Other things being equal,” how

does a change in the price of coffee affect the price of tea?

This kind of analysis allows economists to say something very precise

about well-defined relationships and to run rigorous tests to measure the

strength and direction of their connections. Of course, focusing on just

one relationship at a time means other relationships are artificially held

constant, so that our analyses necessarily diverge from reality. They are

hypothetical. But simplification and abstraction are necessary ingredients

of any theoretical enterprise, and a good economist knows the real world

is more complex.

ECONOMIC MODELS

Economic analysis is characterized by the use of models, simplified

representations of how economic phenomena work. Supply and demand,

cost/benefit analysis and comparative advantage are examples of basic

economic models. A model is a theory rendered in precise, usually

mathematical, terms. Economists build models the way curious scientists

do: Reduce the phenomenon to its basic elements and recombine these

elements so as to produce a model that resembles the original in relevant

12 | Writing Economics

respects. Take it apart, figure out how it works, then put it back together

and see if it goes.

Economic models specify relationships between two kinds of variables:

exogenous variables and endogenous variables (Gregory N. Mankiw,

1997). Exogenous variable s are inputs to the model, factors that influence

what happens but are themselves determined “outside” the model. They

are givens, fixed values that are assumed not to change over the period of

analysis. Endogenous variables are outputs of the model, determined

“within.” Usually, a mathematical function is used to represent the

relationship between exogenous and endogenous variables. Systems of

relationships, in which changes in one part of the economy have different

consequences in others, are often conveniently represented by systems of

functions. For example, we can model the market for compact discs (CDs)

in terms of three functions:

The quantity of CDs demanded depends (negatively) on the price of

CDs and (positively) on income (Y): Q

= D(P

, Y).

The quantity of CDs supplied depends (positively) on the price of

plastic (because CDs are made from plastic) and on the price of CDs:

= S(P

, P

In equilibrium, the quantity of CDs supplied equals the quantity

demanded: Q

= Q

In this model, the price of plastic and the level of income are

exogenous variables; the price of CDs and the quantity of CDs exchanged

are endogenous variables. By plugging data (exogenous variables) into the

model, it is possible to predict the behavior of the endogenous variables,

thus generating hypotheses about phenomena that have not yet been

observed.

Applying basic models allows one to make predictions about the real

world economy, both forward-looking predictions about, say, future

interest rates and backward-looking predictions about, say, the savings

rate during the depression. Models also provide guidance about where to

look for and how to look at data, and they provide a structure on which

the rest of the paper can hang.

HYPOTHESIS TESTING

A model’s predictions about the future or the past are essentially

empirical hypotheses: claims, supported by facts, about how some

economic phenomenon works. Most economists, aspiring to be good

social scientists, would like to test their hypotheses under laboratory

conditions. But this is not ordinarily possible. Instead, we take sample

13 | Writing Economics

data from the real world, by looking at census reports, balance sheets and

the like, and we use statistical methods to test the predictive power of our

models and the hypotheses they generate.

Most economic data come in, or can be easily transformed into,

numerical terms. Prices and quantities are numbers, and economists also

attach numerical measurements to factors such as standards of living

that do not usually come in quantified form. But a long list of numbers is

just that until a relationship among them can be specified that imparts

some order. By building and using models, economists are able to focus on

simple, sometimes subtle, relationships in the data and explain the causal

links at work. Finding the pattern in the data allows one to say something

about how the economy works. A set of well-known models can greatly

simplify the task of organizing and communicating your ideas. But the

real test of a model is how well it helps us understand the workings of the

economy.

REGRESSION: AN EXAMPLE

Say, for instance, you are interested in explaining the causes of inflation.

You study the literature and learn about a connection between the level of

economic activity and the level of inflation. You formulate a simple

hypothesis:

Hypothesis: High levels of employment lead to high levels of inflation.

Observations: Monthly employment (X) and inflation rates (Y) in the

US from 1980–1995. (Two lists of 12x16 = 192 observations)

Regression: Y = a + bX + c. b measures the correlation between X and Y.

If b is positive and statistically significant, the hypothesis cannot be

rejected. (a is a constant; c is an error term.)

In order to run such a regression you will need a fairly large number of

observations. Without enough data you may not be able to decide

between this and the alternative, or null, hypothesis (i.e., high levels of

employment have no relationship to high levels of inflation) by statistical

measures alone. In such cases, there may be better ways to do an

empirical exercise (e.g. case study; experimental methods).

Even with enough data, statistical analyses show correlation, not

causation. A model is needed to explain how things work – for instance,

how high levels of employment lead to high levels of inflation.

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IMPROVING THE FIT

The fit between a model and reality is never perfect. When the fit is good,

we can make better predictions about the future and better understand

the past. In the former case, the passage of time will fail to disconfirm the

prediction; in the latter case, historical research will match our

expectations. As in any science, our theories can really only be disproved.

However, when our predictions are correct, the weight we place on our

models increases. When our predictions are wrong, we are left either

looking for more data or perhaps a new or revised model. That model may

be used to generate new predictions, which can then be confronted with

new data, which may again bring disconfirmation of the prediction and

suggest a revision of the current model.

APPLYING THE TOOLS

Most of the writing done in economics involves the application of old

models to new data, with the goal of better understanding some real

world economic phenomenon. This may or may not involve analyzing a

large dataset. This example, taken from an Ec 970 term paper, applies

economic tools – namely, game theoretic analysis – to one particular

issue, the role of international institutions in the post Cold War era:

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the continuing role of NATO and

the likelihood of lasting cooperation among the organization’s

member states in a post-Cold War world. Game theory and the study

of strategic interactions, although initially devised as a tool for

understanding Cold War motives and actions, nevertheless are

extremely applicable to a post-Cold War environment. I therefore plan

to incorporate several relevant international relations issues into a

game theoretical perspective – first to discuss the cooperation that

actually occurred in NATO since the 1940s, and then to explain why

similar cooperation may be unlikely among security-based regimes

after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Another kind of writing, the theory paper, involves criticizing the

models we use and proposing better ones. The goal of the theory paper is

to improve the conceptual underpinnings of the particular analytical tools

we use to understand the actual economy. This may be a better model of

how firms behave in uncertain market conditions, or a new way to

measure the level of national economic activity, or a synthesis of existing

theories to produce a new, more general theory.

Because all economic models are crude approximations of a complex

world, it is necessary to assess just how crude the approximations are

before we can say which model better fits the data. Interpreting statistics

and determining what can and cannot be reliably inferred given the

15 | Writing Economics

observations available requires knowledge of economic theory as well as a

healthy dose of mathematics. Mathematical logic is also used to build

new models, both to formalize the logical structure of the model and to

test for its coherence and internal consistency. The mathematics of model

building does not involve numbers, but it does specify quantities

(quantifiers) and uses well-defined operators to combine (sets of)

propositions.

Economic theory was not always so mathematical. And the

mathematization of economic theory has had costs as well as benefits.

The benefits are that, in many cases, more can be said quickly and

precisely, because mathematics is a powerful language and convenient

shorthand. The cost is that not all relevant phenomena are easily cast in

mathematical terms or can be only crudely captured mathematically.

Another cost is that economic theory becomes somewhat less accessible

to students and to the world at large, in which public policy debates are

conducted.

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Three | Finding and Researching Your Topic

Economists view the world through the lens of efficiency, starting from

the assumption that individuals behave rationally and focusing on the

problem of allocating scarce resources. From this common analytical

perspective, economists study a wide range of topics, involving the

behavior of individuals, organizations and nations. The economic

approach can be applied so broadly that choosing a topic to write on can

be difficult. Indeed, once you start looking at the world through the eyes

of an economist, almost anything can be analyzed in terms of choice

under constraint.

Your own research has to meet the terms of the assignment as well as

the time and other constraints you face. You may need to read books and

journal articles in the library or pore over data sets on a computer. In

either case, you will need a topic before you can begin. If your instructor

gives you a list of topics, a review of related research may help you choose

among them. If the research question is entirely up to you, a literature

search is often not the best way to begin. Immersing yourself in the

literature before you have found a topic may convince you that all the

interesting questions have already been tackled. At the very least,

literature searches should be guided by very general topic ideas.

FINDING A TOPIC FOR A TERM PAPER

Though there is no one way to find a topic, thinking of the issues that

interest you is a great place to begin. While the range of possible topics is

large, there are some well-defined fields in economics, and your own

interests are likely to fit into one of these (see Appendix A for an

annotated list of fields). Course materials, textbooks, handouts, and so on

are obvious and convenient places to look, especially since your topic will

most likely have to pertain to the course subject. But reading the

newspaper and keeping an eye on current events can be even more

helpful. Once you have a general idea, you should go to the literature and

see how economists have tried thinking about it.

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For example, say your interest is piqued by recent shootings in both

schools and workplaces. What role has the availability of guns played in

these events? What are the effects of banning guns? Implementing

tougher gun control laws? Though this might initially strike you as a

government or law project, many of the underlying issues are

fundamentally economic – gun control measures explicitly place limits on

supply and attempt to put guns in disfavor or reduce demand. Once you

have identified guns and gun control as an area of interest, do your

literature search (more on this later). Pick out the relevant articles and

scour them for content as well as for additional sources. Try to narrow

down your topic. Have the authors pointed out any future research areas?

Are there any issues that you think have not been fully addressed?

In addition to finding something that interests you, you will also need

a project that can be done within the parameters of the assignment (for

example, length, due date, access to research materials). If the topic

doesn’t interest you, you probably won’t put in the effort needed to do a

good job or ask the right questions along the way. On the other hand, a

profoundly interesting topic may not be manageable given the time and

other constraints that you face.

As another example say you are interested in the stock market and

want to know what determines stock prices. From basic economic theory,

you know that prices are determined by supply and demand, but what

specific relationships do you need to study and what data do you need to

gather? You think about it for a while and realize there are many parts to

your question. What determines the price of a particular company’s stock

is a different question from what determines the level of stock prices in

general (as measured by Dow Jones or another index), though the two

may be related. And what determined stock prices yesterday might be

different from what explains changes in stock prices in the future. Each of

these questions could be the subject of an interesting paper. Your original

topic was overly broad; you should focus on a single, manageable

question.

Get started on your research even if you don’t have a precise topic; it

will evolve along the way. The question you begin with may become less

interesting, and something new may draw your attention. You may be

persuaded by an argument you encounter or find data that pose a

problem you hadn’t considered. You may find no data on one topic and a

goldmine on another. Shaping your topic in this way is perfectly fine, but

don’t get trapped in an endless maze of new, or just slightly revised,

topics. You want your search to converge on a manageable topic in a

reasonable amount of time. Find a question you can answer and begin

your work.

18 | Writing Economics

FINDING AND USING SOURCES

All academic writing involves the use of source materials. Archaeologists

look in the ground for artifacts, about which volumes of research may

subsequently appear. Biologists look through microscopes and write up

the laboratory experiments they perform. Historians study documents;

sociologists interview subjects . . .

Economic research typically begins with a (large) set of numerical data

– say, a list of per capita incomes for every country in the UN or the history

of daily closing prices for shares of XYZ Corporation over the last year. In

these long lists of numbers, economists look for patterns, or regularities,

that reveal some underlying relationship between economic variables and

help explain how some part of the economy works. A data set could

include hundreds or thousands of entries; thus, statistical tools are used

to summarize this information and ease your job of communicating with

your audience. The mean of a large set of numbers conveys important

information in a compact form. Knowing the standard deviation and

other statistical measures can also be helpful when describing the

population under investigation and presenting the results of your

research.

Economic sources come in two types. The first is empirical data: facts

about the real world that come in, or can be easily converted into,

numerical form (for example, prices, quantities, income levels). The second

is academic literature: books or articles that you read in the library that

can help you organize your ideas and make sense of the heaps of data you

have accumulated.

In general you will not have the time or resources to go into the field

and compile your own data – administer questionnaires, study individual

balance sheets, budgets, etc. Instead, you will rely on others to collect

your data, including other economists as well as demographers, auditors

and “official” statisticians. These data are compiled in a number of

standard secondary sources, such as the Economic Report of the President

and the Statistical Abstract of the United States. These volumes and

others (see Appendix B) contain detailed information on public and

private spending, wage and tax rates, and work force size and education

levels, as well as other information grouped by states, industries and

nations. Economists frequently begin their research with these sources;

they will either point you to the proper primary source or contain the

precise data you need for your paper.

You will also want to look at academic journals and other scholarly

literature on your topic. Using scholarly sources will allow you to invoke

the authority of experts in the field to sanction your ana lysis or to

establish the point of departure for your own original contribution. You

need to become familiar with what others have thought and written so

that you can communicate your findings in terms your audience will

recognize. Perhaps you will apply a standard model found in the literature

19 | Writing Economics

to new evidence or compare two models and see which does a better job

explaining the data you have found.

These works will also point you to additional sources. Bibliographies,

citations and footnotes may reveal a single, seminal forerunner. Read it. If

you come across a “review” or “survey” article, you have hit the jackpot. It

will contain an authoritatively complete summary of the literature in the

field.

DOING A PERIODICAL SEARCH

Periodical literature was once indexed in cumbersome hardbound

volumes. Nowadays, there are a number of very useful electronic indices

available on-line and updated frequently. Most are publicly available on

the internet, although some reside on the college’s proprietary system.

Appendix C describes those sources that are used most frequently by

economists.

Depending on the service you’re using, your search can be very deep,

including title, author and subject as well as abstracts, tables of contents

and related topic fields. This makes electronic searching far more

powerful than anything that could be done just a few years ago. Once you

find a relevant article, look at the abstract. Check a few more items and

retrieve from the shelves whatever looks interesting and useful.

TAKING AND ORGANIZING NOTES

The books, articles charts and tables strewn before you are the objects of

your research, the evidence you will marshal to support your argument.

Your first encounter with your sources should be carefully recorded: you

should document your findings and give proper credit to the sources you

use.

First, take down the complete bibliographic record:

Author(s) or Editor (s)

Title

Journal Volume Number

Date Pages

For the Goldin and Katz (1996) example used in chapter 1, your notes

would look as follows:

Goldin, Claudia and Katz, Lawrence F.

“Technology, Skill and the Wage Structure: Insights from the Past”

American Economic Review, 86 (2)

May 1996. pp. 252–257

20 | Writing Economics

Keep a file of notes on each article you read. This should include the

main points of the article and any important results. Make sure to clearly

set off direct quotations by using quotation marks. Avoid paraphrasing,

because it will be difficult to separate the original wording from your own

later on. You can add your own comments afterwards, but it is important

to keep an accurate record of your first encounter with the source.

Taking good notes will accomplish several things. First, you will have

all your references at hand when you are writing the paper, so you won’t

have to go searching for a quote or chart when you’re in your dorm room

and the article you need is in the library. Second, you will leave a clear

record for your readers to follow, so that they can go to the originals for

more information or to see the facts for themselves. Finally, you will leave

signposts for yourself so that you can know where you have been and

separate your own ideas and results from those you found in your sources.

This will help you avoid plagiarizing, which can happen inadvertently as

your own ideas blur into what you have “learned” from others. The

unacknowledged use of another writer’s words or ideas is plagiarism,

whether intended or not. Poor note taking and sloppy documentation

mechanics can lead to plagiarism, but such mistakes are easy to correct

and avoid.

Start taking notes right away. A word processor can make things

easier, but even if you use pen and paper, try to develop good note-taking

habits from the outset. Create a note file for each source you find. Group

your notes by topic, alphabetically, chronologically or otherwise. As you

organize them, add comments and summaries, pick out important

themes and focus on issues for further research. These notes should help

motivate your project by shaping the analytical model used and, through

your summaries, form the beginnings of a good literature review.

21 | Writing Economics

Four | The Term Paper

You have chosen your topic, done your research, and settled on your ideas,

and now you have to write the paper. If you have done your job properly

up to now, you should have a topic, some data and plenty of notes on

things you have read. Now your task is to decide how to focus your

question and ideas, assemble the pieces into a structure that hangs

together and present an argument others will find persuasive.

Remember: writing is a process. Start with a few lines, perhaps just

section headings, and then build up detail and flesh out your analysis. The

key to the process is not to become too rigid too soon. While you want

enough structure to get started, you also want to allow the overall shape

of your paper to evolve somewhat along the way.

OUTLINING YOUR PAPER

The outline for your term paper is the agenda you set for the things you

want to accomplish. A good term paper will ask an interesting question

and offer a plausible answer. It should be plausible in that it is (probably)

true, but also not obviously or patently true; and it should be supportable

in that it is subject to factual observation or logical demonstration

(Gordon Harvey, Harvard Writing Program).

No matter what your field or topic, there is a fairly standard set of

things you want to accomplish in the paper:

• Introduction: Pose an interesting question or problem

• Literature Review: Survey the literature on your topic

• Methods/Data: Formulate your hypothesis and describe your data

• Results: Present your results with the help of graphs and charts

• Discussion: Critique your method and/or discuss any policy

implications

• Conclusions: Summarize what you have done; pose questions for

further research

22 | Writing Economics

Not every assignment will require all of these parts, but your term paper

will impress your reader if you have done a good job on most of them. You

might want to write the introduction and conclusions after you have

completed the body of the paper. Few points are given for subtlety or

surprise. You should prepare your audience for what you are going to do,

then do it, then summarize what you have done.

WRITING YOUR LITERATURE REVIEW

Depending on your assignment, preparing a literature review might entail

an exhaustive library search or referencing the single paper your

instructor has assigned. You should have notes, either on index cards or in

files on your computer, on the books and articles you have read. Read over

your summaries and comments and begin to look for common themes

that can organize your review. What is the main point of the article, and

how does it relate to your topic? Do other authors offer a similar position?

An opposing one?

As you think through these questions, keep in mind that the literature

review has two functions. The first is simply to demonstrate your

familiarity with scholarly work on your topic – to provide a survey of what

you have read, trace the development of important themes and draw out

any tensions in prior research. The second function is to lay the founda-

tions for your paper, to provide motivation. The particular issues you

intend to raise, the terms you will employ and the approach you will take

should be defined with reference to previous scholarly works. By drawing

on such sources, you can find sanction for your own approach and invoke

the authority of those who have written on the topic before you.

In some instances, these two functions will pull in opposite directions:

the first toward including as many sources as possible, the second toward

selecting only those that are useful for your argument. In any case, more

research is better than less, and a summary is always selective, insofar as

only some things can be included and others left out. The selections you

make will necessarily reflect your own interests and, hopefully, lead the

reader to take an interest in the argument you will present.

For example, Martin Feldstein begins his article “Social Security,

Induced Retirement and Aggregate Capital Accumulation” (1974) with a

discussion of the development of economists’ thinking on lifetime savings

patterns. He starts with a famous early work in the field:

Ever since Harrod’s (1948) discussion of “hump savings,” economists

have recognized the importance of saving during working years for

consumption during retirement (p. 906).

“Hump-savings” refers to the shape of an individual’s savings curve over

time: low at the beginning, higher in the middle, lower at the end. This

23 | Writing Economics

basic model is used throughout the paper and holds together all that

follows. Feldstein cites a number of authors who have observed this

regularity in empirical data on personal savings patterns as confirmation

of the model. He goes on to argue that while the “hump-savings” model

works well to explain most of the observed data, the effect of certain

government policies on individual savings has never been measured em-

pirically. In particular, he poses the question: What is the effect of social

security on individuals’ lifetime savings? He then cites the work of three

other authors as well as his own earlier work as examples of this neglect.

In this way, Feldstein presents his current research as a necessary

development out of well established research program, the next question

to ask on a line stemming from important ancestors to contemporary

scholarly research. The reader is thus prepared for the empirical analysis

that follows, which shows that “social security depresses personal savings

by 30–50 percent” (Martin Feldstein, 1974).

PRESENTING YOUR HYPOTHESIS

The literature review sets out the issues that motivate your paper and

demonstrates your familiarity with what others have written on the topic.

The next step is to formulate a specific question, problem, or conjecture,

and to describe the approach you will take to answer, solve, or test it.

Often, this will take the form of an empirical hypothesis: “social security

depresses personal savings;” “high levels of employment are related to

high levels of inflation,” etc. An empirical hypothesis makes a claim about

how some part of the economy works, and can be assessed by analyzing

the relevant data.

In presenting your hypothesis, you need to discuss the data set you are

using and, in most cases, the type of regression you will run. You should

say where you found the data, and use a table, graph, or simple statistics

to summarize them. You should explain how the data relate to your

hypothesis and note any problems they pose. If you have only a small set

of observations, or have to use proxies for data you cannot directly

observe, you should explicitly acknowledge this.

For example, in “Employment -based Health Insurance and Job

Mobility: Is There Evidence of Job-lock?,” Brigitte Madrian (1994) writes:

To study the phenomenon of job-lock, one would like information on

individual and family health status, worker mobility, and the health

insurance plans of both the firm for which and individual works and to

which one could move. Unfortunately, information on health status

and health insurance is not widely available in labor force surveys,

information on worker mobility is not typically available in health

surveys, and information on insurance plans of companies for which

an individual could have worked is nonexistent.

24 | Writing Economics

Madrian goes on to offer an alternative method to study job-lock by

looking at two groups of workers who are similar in all respects but one:

one group has employer provided health insurance and the other does

not. She then measures the number of times the workers change jobs and

observes a significant negative relationship between employment-based

health insurance and job turnover.

Madrian is careful not to jump to a hasty conclusion, noting that this

correlation is not itself conclusive evidence of job-lock. Employers that

provide health insurance often provide other benefits that will affect

mobility. In addition, unobserved characteristics of workers’ health status

may independently affect job sorting and mobility because workers with

preexisting conditions may have a harder time getting new health

insurance. Still, Madrian’s careful analysis controls for as many factors as

possible and allows her to conclude: “that there is substantial health

insurance-related job-lock.”

In a term paper, it may not be possible to reach conclusive empirical

results. You may have incomplete data, or your regression coefficients may

not be significant, or you may not have controlled for significantly all the

factors involved. It is better to acknowledge these shortcomings than to

make overly broad and unsupported statements.

PRESENTING YOUR RESULTS / by Chris Foote

One of the more common mistakes made by authors of economic papers

is to forget that their results need to be written up as carefully and clearly

as any other part of the paper. There are essentially two decisions to

make. First, how many empirical results should be presented? Second,

how should these results be described in the text?

How Many Results Should I Report?

Less is usually more. A common mistake made by virtually all novice

researchers (including graduate students) is to include every parameter

estimate from every regression specification that was run. Such a “kitchen

sink” approach is usually taken to show the world that the researcher has

been careful and done a lot of work and that the main results of the paper

are not sensitive to the choice of sample period, minor changes in the list

of regressors, etc. However, pages of parameter estimates usually muddy

the message of the paper. The reader will get either lost or bored. A good

general rule is to present only those parameter estimates that speak

directly to your topic.

For example, suppose you are writing about the effect of education on

wages. Your main regression places an individual’s wage on the left-hand

side and regressors such as education, race, gender, seniority at the

individual’s job, labor market experience, and state of residence on the

right hand side. You believe that the regressor of interest (education) is

25 | Writing Economics

correlated with the error term of the wage equation – more “able” people

earn more at their jobs, i.e. have a high residual in the wage equation, and

also obtain more education. Because of this correlation between the error

term and education, the measured effect of education in the regression

will reflect not only the true causal effect of education on wages but also

some of the effect of ability on wages. To circumvent this “ability bias” you

use a separate measure as a proxy for ability. Though such a proxy is

probably not available, assume for the sake of exposition that a special

dataset contains an individual’s evaluation by his or her second grade

teacher. When presenting your results you want to focus only on the

estima tes of the education effect and the ability effect. Your table might

look something like this:

TABLE I OLS Estimates of the Effect of Education on Wages

Dependent variable: Log of Yearly Earnings 1985–1995

(1) (2) (3) (4)

Years of Education .091 .031 .086 .027

(.001) (.003) (.002) (.005)

Ability Dummy .251 .301

(.010) (.010)

State Dummies No No Yes Yes

Included?

No. of Obs. 35,001 35,001 19,505 19,505

No. of Persons 5,505 5,505 4,590 4,590

Adj. R

.50 .55 .76 .79

TABLE I.

Notes to Table I. Standard errors are in parentheses. Data are from the Tennessee

Second Grade Ability Survey and Wage Follow-up, and include individuals

evaluated between 1962 and 1971. The “ability dummy” equals one if the

individual’s second grade teacher classified the individual as “able,” zero other-

wise. Each regression also includes yearly dummies, 10 one-digit industry and 20

Census defined occupation dummies, labor market experience (defined as age – 6),

experience squared, seniority on the current job, seniority squared, Census region

of current residence, marital status, race, gender, and a dummy variable denoting

whether the individual lives in a city of more than 100,000 persons. Columns (3)

and (4) have fewer observations because state of residence is not available for

some individuals.

Note that Table I does not present the parameter estimates of your

control variables, regressors such as marital status and seniority, but

presents any detail that helps interpret the parameters of interest

(including the identification of the dependent variable, which is

annoyingly left off of many tables). For example, explain how you define

labor market experience as well as why the third and fourth regressions

have fewer observations than the first and second regressions. The notes

26 | Writing Economics

to your table should be extensive enough so that the reader does not have

to look back at the text to understand what is being presented. The

cardinal sin, to be avoided at all costs, is to report your estimates in terms

of “a” or “b” (the actual Greek letters from your equations) without stating

what these coefficients mean. Using eight-letter abbreviations from your

Stata or SAS program (YEDUCT1 or ABIL25A) is not much better.

Don’t worry about repeating yourself in the text and the notes – this

will often be necessary so the reader can understand your table without

looking back at the text. You should present enough information in total

so that a researcher could replicate your results. For very detailed projects,

this may require a data appendix. Finally, the notes to the table should

indicate whether you are reporting standard errors or t-statistics in the

parentheses underneath the coefficients. Both are seen in the literature,

so you must be clear which you are using. As a general rule, it is better to

report standard errors. That way, your readers can more easily choose the

statistical method they would like to use in evaluating your numbers.

After presenting these results you may want to discuss any additional

robustness checks that you performed. The third and fourth columns of

Table I are robustness checks of sorts; they show that the effect of

including ability in the regression is the same whether or not we include

state level dummy variables. We may also have checked whether the

estimate of the education effect is lower when ability is included, if we

subset only on male household heads or if we restrict the sample to the

1990s. Sometimes all that is necessary is to let the reader know in the text

that you performed these tests and that the main results were

unaffected. For a single robustness check, this information can even

appear in a footnote keyed to the relevant portion of the text. If there are

many robustness checks however, you may want to present these results

in another, more parsimonious table.

How Should I Describe My Empirical Results in the Text?

After you decide how to make your tables, graphs, and figures, you should

clearly and precisely describe them in the text. Establish the main point of

the table in the topic sentence of a paragraph. For example, you can

describe the above table like this:

Table I shows that including a measure of ability in the wage equation

dramatically lowers the predicted effect of education on earnings.

Column 1 does not include an ability measure and indicates that a

year of education raises wages by 9.1 percent. Column 2 adds the

ability measure and the education effect drops to 3.1 percent.

Columns 3 and 4 show that this general pattern is repeated even when

state level dummy variables are included. The estimates in Table I are

therefore consistent with the hypothesis that the OLS estimates suffer

from an upward ability bias.

27 | Writing Economics

Note that the first and last sentences in this paragraph are “big picture”

statements, describing how the results in this table fit into the overall

theme of the paper.

Too often, authors do not pay close attention to the paragraphs that

describe their results. The results are already in the table. What difference

does it make how they are described in the text? The reason to craft these

descriptive paragraphs carefully is that any well-designed empirical

project is complex; a lot of factors must be considered in order for any

single factor to be precisely estimated. You want to guide the reader and

focus his or her attention on the important parts of the table, and in the

right order. Moreover, no empirical paper turns out perfectly. Usually the

data do not resoundingly support each and every idea. In these cases, it is

crucial to discuss your results as honestly and carefully as possible.

For example, assume that you are studying the effect of the

population share of lawyers in a city on the subsequent growth rate of

that city. Your theory says that cities with lots of lawyers will grow more

slowly than other cities, but the same is not true of cities with lots of

other highly education professionals, such as doctors. You get data on the

population percentage of both doctors and lawyers in 25 cities in 1950

and on the growth rates of these cities as well as the Census region for

each city (Mountain, Pacific, Mid-Atlantic, etc.) from 1950 to 1990. Your

regression places the 1950-1990 growth rate of the city on the left hand

side; the regressor of interest is the “lawyer share” of population. The

results are presented in the table below:

TABLE II Estimates of the Effect of Lawyers on City Growth

Dependent variable: City’s Population Growth Rate, 1950-1990

(1) (2) (3)

Share of Lawyers -.09 -.08 -.07

in Population, 1950 (.01) (.03) (.05)

Share of Doctors .05 .05

In Population, 1950 (.03) (.05)

Region Dummies No No Yes

Included?

No. of Obs. 25 25 25

Adj. R

.10 .12 .50

TABLE II

Notes to Table II. Standard errors are in parentheses. The shares of doctors and

lawyers are taken from the Five Percent Public Use Micro Sample of the 1950 U.S.

Census and are defined as the share of each profession among employed persons

in the population aged 25–64. A “city” is defined as Standard Metropolitan

Statistical Area; constant SMSA definitions are used from 1950 to 1990. Region

dummies correspond to the 10 “major regions” as defined by the Census Bureau.

28 | Writing Economics

A bad way to write up this table is:

The first column of Table II shows the main effect predicted by theory.

The second column shows that doctors do not have the same effect on

city growth. Finally, the inclusion of regional dummy variables does

not significantly affect the main point estimates, though statistical

precision is lost.

A better way to write up the table is like this:

Table II shows that a high share of lawyers in a city’s population

appears to lead to slower growth. Yet, when all the determinants of

city growth (such as Census Region growth) are accounted for, the

estimate of this effect becomes less precise. The first column shows

that a 10 percentage -point increase in the lawyer share of population

decreases the future city growth by about .9 percentage points.

Column 2 shows that, by contrast, a high doctor share does not lead to

lower growth. In fact, the point estimate for the doctor share is

positive, though not statistically significant. Note however that the

estimates in Column 2 are less precise than those in Table 1, as the

standard error for the lawyer effect rises from .01 to .03. Since the

doctor and lawyer share are strongly (positively) correlated,

multicollinearity reduces the precision of the regression. Statistical

precision becomes even more of a concern in Column 3, when we add

dummy variables for Census region. The size of the lawyer effect

remains about the same (-.07 compared with -.09 and -.08), but

adding so many new regressors causes the standard errors to rise to

the point that the lawyer effect is statistically indistinguishable from

zero. The implication is that lawyers do have a negative effect on city

growth but that although the point estimate is robust to the inclusion

of other relevant variables it is not precisely estimated because of the

small sample size.

The Bottom Line

When writing up your empirical results focus only on what is important

and be as clear as possible. You may feel that you are repeating yourself

and that the reader may be offended at how closely you are leading him

or her through your tables and graphs but, to paraphrase John Kenneth

Galbraith, both smart and dumb readers will appreciate your pointing

things out directly and clearly. The dumb readers need the help, and the

smart ones will take silent pleasure in the knowledge that they didn’t

need your assistance!

29 | Writing Economics

DISCUSSING YOUR RESULTS

Many of the topics that interest economists have real world policy

implications. Your own research may present strong findings about the

effects of existing or proposed policies. While this is fine, you should not

conclude that “this should be done” or “this should not be done.” You

should avoid making value judgments and rely instead on economic facts

and analyses. Even when you have reached your own conclusions about

which policy is desirable, your reader should be able to consider the facts

and make the policy decision for himself or herself.

For example, you may find that substituting policy X for current policy

Y would raise GDP by 2 percent. That is an appropriate conclusion in a

term paper. Be careful, however, not to simply assert that policy X should

be substituted for policy Y. For one thing, it can be very difficult to

measure the welfare consequences of a given set of policies. Dollars and

cents may be easy to measure, but individuals’ well being is not. In addi-

tion, your own research may not have accounted for certain distributional

issues, legal issues, matters of national sovereignty or any number of

other things that ultimately affect the desirability of a given policy.

In the discussion of your result, you should also point out the

limitations of your research, say the relatively small number of observa-

tions you have or the simplicity of the functional form you have tested. In

an undergraduate term paper such limitations are expected. In general, it

is better to show your instructor that you understand the limits of your

method than make broad claims you do not support. You can also suggest

questions or alternative approaches for further research.

Once you have completed the discussion of your results, you can add a

short conclusion summarizing what you have done. Then go back and

write an introduction that provides a roadmap for the reader. If you have

budgeted your time, you should have a chance to revise the paper, with

the goal of achieving greater clarity. Finally, ask a friend to proofread your

work. Make necessary corrections and then submit.

30 | Writing Economics

Five | Formatting and Documentation / by Kerry Walk

Citing the sources you use when you write a paper in economics is a

matter of honesty, credibility, and courtesy. When you indicate to your

reader that a fact or theory derives from a source, you are being honest by

giving credit where it is due, i.e., not falsely claiming to have originated

the fact or theory yourself. You are gaining credibility by showing your

readers that you’ve done your research. And you are behaving courteously

by letting your readers know where they can find the same information,

in case they want to do further reading on the topic.

There is no standard style of acknowledging sources in economics

papers, but a good model to emulate is the style used in one of the field’s

most influential journals: The American Economic Review. We will call this

the AER documentation style. Use this style when you write an economics

paper in which you have cited one or more sources.

In the AER style, writers briefly indicate sources in the text of the

paper and provide fuller bibliographical information in a REFERENCES

section at the end of the paper. Footnotes are reserved for such

substantive matters as suggestions for further reading, an elaboration of

a point, an interesting but not germane rebuttal of a source’s opinion, and

so on.

PLACING CITATIONS IN YOUR PAPER

When deriving a theory or fact from a source, cite the source in the text of

your paper. Your in-text citation will contain the name of the author(s)

and the year of publication. The way this information is formatted

depends on (1) whether you wish to draw attention to the source and (2)

whether you have referred to the author(s) previously in your paper.

Loud Reference

If you wish to acknowledge the source of an idea explicitly, cite the name

of the author(s) in the body of your sentence and place the publication

date in parentheses. The first time you cite the name of the author(s),

provide both first and last names:

31 | Writing Economics

Vincent P. Crawford and Hans Haller (1990).

Thereafter, refer to the author(s) by last name only:

Crawford (1998)

Thus, a first-time reference:

Sender-receiver games, introduced by Jerry Green and Nancy Stokey

(1980) and Vincent P. Crawford and Joel Sobel (1982), provide the

simplest stylized environment in which communication is essential.

A reference to authors previously mentioned:

These theories come in two guises: explicit dynamic theories, i.e.,

Canning (1992) and Nöldeke and Samuelson (1992), and static

solution concepts, i.e., Blume et al. (1993) and Wärneryd (1993).

• Use “et al.” (et alias = and others) when authors number three or more.

• Place punctuation, if any is called for, after the parenthetical date.

Soft Reference

To evoke a source that substantiates a claim you make, cite the name of

the author(s), as well as the date, in parentheses. As above, the first time

you cite the author(s), provide both first and last names:

(Vincent P. Crawford and Hans Haller, 1990; Matthew Rabin and Joel

Sobel, 1996)

Thereafter, refer to the author(s) by last name only:

(Crawford and Sobel, 1982; Crawford, 1998)

• Authors are listed in order of publication date.

• Separate sources with a semi-colon.

Thus, in an article that has already cited Andreas Blume:

Such “babbling equilibria” are proper (Roger B. Myerson, 1978; Blume,

1994), and even strategic stability (Elon Kohlberg and Jean-Francois

Mertens, 1986) does not rule out uninformative equilibria in general.

32 | Writing Economics

LISTING YOUR REFERENCES

When readers want to know more about a source – what its title is, where

it was published, when it appeared – they will look at your list of

REFERENCES at the end of your paper. The bibliographical information

there makes it possible for readers themselves to track down the source.

Note that the word REFERENCES is capitalized – because AER Style

demands that it be so. Indentation, capitalization, punctuation, and the

ordering of information in REFERENCES define a particular documentation

style and should be scrupulously followed. Even boldface, italics, and

spacing count.

Three Types of Sources

The information contained in a REFERENCES entry and the way in which

this information is formatted depend largely on the type of source it is. Is

the source an article in a journal? a reference work? a book by a single

author? an essay in a collection? a working paper? an unpublished

doctoral dissertation? In order to format the entry correctly, you need to

know.

There are three main types of sources: journal articles, books, and

unpublished sources.

• Journal articles appear in publications that are issued at regular

intervals, or periods; hence “periodical,” the synonym for “journal.” A

telltale sign of the journal is the publication date: month (or season)

and year. Another sign is the absence of a publisher’s name (such as

“Cambridge University Press”).

• The opening pages of a book will give such information as author (if

there is one), title, name of the publisher, and place and year of

publication. A book that is a collection of essays (also known as an

“anthology”) will give the name(s) of its editor(s) and will feature a

Table of Contents listing the essays in the collection. Such a collection

should not be confused with a periodical.

• Unpublished sources, which are available from the individuals who

wrote them or the institution that sponsored them, are of various

kinds: the mimeograph (a photocopied paper or report), the

unpublished doctoral dissertation, the working paper, and so on. Other

unpublished sources include course lectures, websites, and e-mail

messages.

See below for sample entries according to these three types of sources.

Basic Guidelines

Whether a source is a journal article, a book, or an unpublished source,

you should follow these basic guidelines when formatting it for your

REFERENCES.

33 | Writing Economics

• Alphabetical listing. Sources are listed in alphabetical order, according

to the last name of the author (or the last name of the primary author,

if there’s more than one). If the source has no author – for example,

U.S. Bureau of the Census – it should be listed alphabetically according

to its initial letter.

• Formatting author(s)’ names. Authors’ last names are always listed

before their first names. The punctuation separating individual

authors’ names changes depending on the number of authors.

One author:

Davis, Donald R.

Two authors:

Kohlberg, Elon and Mertens, Jean-Francois.

Three authors:

Kandori, Michihiro; Mailath, George J. and Rob, Rafael.

Four authors:

Berg, Joyce E.; Daley, Lane; Dickhaut, John and O’Brien, John.

Note the semicolon (;) used to divide some, but not all, of the names in

the three- and four -author examples.

• Repeat authors. Sometimes your REFERENCES will contain more than

one source by the same author or authors. In this case, do not spell out

the author’s or authors’ name(s) after the first entry; instead, use an

underscore (___) to signify the name(s). List sources by the same

author(s) in order of publication date.

Krugman, Paul R. and Venables, Anthony J. “Integration and the

Competitiveness of Peripheral Industry,” in Christopher Bliss and

Jorge Braga de Macedo, eds., Unity with diversity in the European

economy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990, pp. 56–

77.

___. “Globalization and the Inequality of Nations.” Quarterly Journal of

Economics, November 1995, 110 (4), pp. 857–80.

Note that the second source above was written by exactly the same

authors as the first source. If the second source had been written by

Krugman and, say, Young, their names would have to have been

spelled out.

If the second source had been a book written during the same year

(1990) as the first source, the first source would be listed as 1990a, the

second as 1990b.

34 | Writing Economics

• Inclusive page numbers. Page numbers are inclusive – that is, they

refer to the pages on which the entire source may be found, not just

the page or two from which you drew a fact or theory. If the first and

last page numbers share an initial numeral, drop the initial numeral of

the last page number: for example, pp. 367–98 (and not pp. 367–398).

SAMPLE REFERENCES ENTRIES

When formatting your REFERENCES section, use the following sample

entries as models. If you don’t find the type of source you’re looking for,

pick up a copy of the American Economic Review in the Lamont Reference

Room and try to find a model there, or emulate the closest approximation

you can find.

Article Published in a Journal

An entry for a journal article will contain the following information,

formatted as you see:

Author. “Title of the Article.” Name of the Journal, Month Year, Issue

Numeral (Issue Number), pp. X–Z.

Note the boldfaced author name and the italicized journal name and issue

numeral. The “pp.” stands for “page numbers.” The second line is indented,

as are all lines after the first one.

• No author:

Economist. “The Economist Survey of China.” November 28, 1992, 325

(7787), pp. 1–22.

• One author:

Davis, Donald R. “Intra-Industry Trade: A Heckscher-Ohlin-Ricardo

Approach.” Journal of International Economics, November 1995, 39

(3–4), pp. 201–26.

• Two authors:

Kohlberg, Elon and Mertens, Jean-Francois. “On the Strategic Stability

of Equilibrium.” Econometrica, September 1986, 54 (5), pp. 1003–

37.

• Three authors:

35 | Writing Economics

Kandori, Michihiro; Mailath, George J. and Rob, Rafael. “Learning,

Mutation, and Long-Run Equilibria in Games.” Econometrica,

January 1993, 61 (1), pp. 29–56.

• Four authors:

Berg, Joyce E.; Daley, Lane; Dickhaut, John and O’Brien, John.

“Controlling Preferences for Lotteries on Units of Experimental

Exchange.” Quarterly Journal of Economics, May 1986, 101 (2), pp.

281–306.

Books

In its most basic form, a book will contain the following information,

formatted as you see:

Author. The title of the book. City of Publication: Name of the Press,

Year of Publication.

Note the boldfaced author name and the italicized title. Only the initial

letter of the title is capitalized. The second line is indented, as are all lines

after the first one.

• Reference works:

U.S. Bureau of the Census, Department of Commerce. U.S. census of

manufactures. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office,

1992.

National Science Foundation/Division of Science Resource Studies.

Research and development in industry. Washington, DC: U.S.

Government Printing Office, 1992.

Even the period after Studies is in boldface.

• By a single author:

Rosenberg, Nathan. Perspectives on technology. New York: Cambridge

University Press, 1976.

Helpman, Elhanan and Krugman, Paul R. Market structure and foreign

trade. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985.

MA, the abbreviation for “Massachusetts,” is used with “Cambridge” to

avoid confusion with the first Cambridge – Cambridge, England.

• An essay in an edited collection:

36 | Writing Economics

Whinnom, Keith. “Linguistic Hybridization and the Special Case’ of

Pidgins and Creoles,” in Dell Hymes, ed., Pidginization and

creolization of languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

1971, pp. 91–116.

Krugman, Paul R. and Venables, Anthony J. “Integration and the

Competitiveness of Peripheral Industry,” in Christopher Bliss and

Jorge Braga de Macedo, eds., Unity with diversity in the European

economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990, pp. 56–

77.

Maskus, Keith. “Comparing International Trade Data and Product and

National Characteristics Data for the Analysis of Trade Models,” in

Peter Hooper and J. David Richardson, eds., International economic

transactions: Issues in measurement and empirical research. NBER

Studies in Income and Wealth, Vol. 55. Chicago: University of

Chicago Press, 1991, pp. 17–56.

The name of the essay is in quotation marks. Note the capitalization

scheme. An editor is “ed.,” editors are “eds.” Inclusive page numbers

help the reader easily locate the essay.

Unpublished Sources

• Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation:

Clausing, Kimberly A. “Essays in International Economic Integration.”

Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1996.

• Working paper or discussion paper:

Kramarz, Francis. “When Repeated Cheap Talk Generates a Common

Language.” Working paper, Institut National de la Statistique et

des Etudes Economiques (INSEE), 1992.

Sopher, Barry and Zapater, Iñigo. “Communication and Coordination in

Signalling Games: An Experimental Study.” Working paper, Rutgers

University, 1994.

Wei, Shang-Jin. “How Reluctant Are Nations in Global Integration?”

National Bureau of Economic Research (Cambridge, MA) Working

Paper No. 5531, April 1996.

Green, Jerry and Stokey, Nancy. “A Two-Person Game of Information

Transmission.” Harvard Institute of Economic Research Discussion

Paper No. 751, Harvard University, 1980.

• Mimeograph (i.e., photocopied material)

37 | Writing Economics

Fujita, Masahisa; Krugman, Paul R. and Venables, Anthony J.

“Agricultural Transport Costs.” Mimeo, MIT, December 14, 1996.

• Class lecture or speech:

Foote, Christopher L. “Introduction to Economic Theory.” Lecture in

Economics 970, Harvard University, 12 February 1999.

• Website:

U.S. Census Bureau. <http://www.census.gov/> cited 21 February

1999.

• E-mail message:

Neugeboren, Robert. [email protected] “Economic Models.”

Personal e-mail, 16 January 1999.

A Sample AER REFERENCES page is on the next page

38 | Writing Economics

A Sample AER REFERENCES page:

39 | Writing Economics

Appendix A | Fields in Economics

The economic approach is applicable to a wide range of social

interactions, which can make finding a topic for your paper particularly

difficult. Perhaps your instructor has provided a list of potential topics.

Which should you choose? Perhaps the assignment leaves the choice of a

topic entirely up to you. How should you get started? Below you will find a

list of fields in economics that should help narrow the scope of your

choices.

COMPARATIVE/REFORM ECONOMICS

Now that the cold war is over, interest in reform economics is on the rise.

Today, many nations around the world are trying to shift from economic

systems based on hierarchical principles of command and control to

market systems based on the principles of free exchange and competition.

Comparative economic systems attempt to explore, using pertinent

theoretical models where possible, how “socialist” economic life has been

organized in practice. Particular attention is paid to the development

strategies pursued and the actual functioning of economic arrangements,

as well as the balance between plans, bureaucracies, and informal sectors.

Why did “planned” economies appear to function effectively for so long?

Why did so many suddenly conclude at the end of the 1980s that they had

failed? What, precisely, is wrong with trying to organize economic life on

the hierarchical principles of command and control? How can these

countries make the transition to market-based systems without

undermining the political stability needed to implement reforms?

DEVELOPMENT

Annual per capita income in the United States today is $24,000, while half

the world’s population subsists on less than $1,500 a year. Economists and

others have long tried to understand the factors contributing to this

enormous gap between rich and poor nations and have long sought

effective ways to accelerate growth in developing economies. Over the

40 | Writing Economics

past thirty years, development economics as a field has dealt with the

specific economic problems of relatively poor countries. Understanding

development means understanding the political and social conditions

that impel and constrain it. For instance, fear of Western imperialism led

the rulers of Meji Japan to overthrow the Tokugama Shogunate and

embark on an ambitious economic program that turned medieval Japan

into a nineteenth-century industrial power in two generations. In Africa,

perhaps most acutely, it is difficult to understand cycles of growth

without an appreciation of political patterns and customs. Today, most

development economists apply the standard analytical tools of economics

to the specific problems confronting developing countries, modifying

those tools where necessary.

ENVIRONMENTAL ECONOMICS

Few areas of economics have grown so rapidly in recent years as

environmental economics. As people have more fully realized that

important natural resources are in finite supply, attempts to conserve and

to recycle have steadily gained momentum. Since very few questions of

environmental policy can be cast purely in terms of black and white,

economists, with their long tradition of analyzing trade -offs, have played

important roles in designing environmental regulations. Questions asked

include: Does it make most sense to reduce pollution by setting emission

standards or through using tax policy to create incentives for emissions

reductions? How can we decide which species have the greatest priority

for protection? What does "sustainability" consist of?

ECONOMIC HISTORY

It is hard to gain a coherent picture of what the economy is without

understanding how it evolved and what history teaches us about how

different economies function. It is important to learn about qualitative

and quantitative consequences of the industrial revolution for levels of

wealth, the sectoral distribution of production, the distribution of income,

the state of technology, the role of government, and the development of

commerce. It is important to learn which of current economic institutions

and behavioral relationships have persisted over long stretches of time

and which are relatively new. It is also important to be exposed to the

wide range of past economic problems, so they can know how standard

micro and macro techniques apply, and where they fail. Things change,

but it can look as if the institutions and practices of today have existed

forever. A historical perspective can help bring the issues of today into

better focus, just as it can help explain events in the past and offer a

trajectory toward the future.

41 | Writing Economics

FINANCE

Robert Merton and Myron Scholes won the 1997 Nobel Prize in Economics

for their options pricing model, a relatively simple equation that spawned

the field of financial economics. Financial economics studies the behavior

and structure of financial markets and institutions, including commercial

banks, insurance companies, investment banks, mutual funds – players in

the stock and bond markets. Some research focuses on corporate finance

and the capital structure of firms, the kinds of analyses that go on inside a

corporate finance department of a Wall Street investment bank. Others

look at portfolio management and the analysis of risk, arbitrage, and time

discounting applied to the valuation of various financial assets. Financial

economics has taken on an increasingly international perspective,

comparing the financial systems of the US, Germany, and Japan, for

instance, or analyzing the links between the development of local capital

markets and the real economy.

GAME THEORY

In the last twenty-five or so years, theorists have made great advances in

characterizing the behavior of households, workers, and firms. Among the

most active areas of current research are considerations of the roles of

imperfect information, uncertainty, and strategic behavior in shaping the

way that many economic interactions take place. Game theory is often

used for such analyses. These lines of research have been helpful in

explaining situations in which for example, involuntary unemployment is

persistent or people cannot get loans despite being willing to pay the

going interest rate.

INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZAT ION

Industrial organization seeks to apply economic theories of markets to

actual industries and firms in the United States and other developed

industrial economies. The inquiry starts by comparing the motives and

organizations of actual enterprises to those that economic models as-

sume the firm possesses. The industrial organization field is built around a

structure-conduct-performance framework. The constraints imposed on

firms by their environments and their competitors lead them to certain

strategic choices and activities, which have impacts on the performance

of markets as social allocation devices. Research in industrial organization

proceeds along two lines: statistical investigations (to make sure that the

cases cited are representative) and case studies (to make sure that

statistical investigations are really asking the right questions and

producing meaningful answers). It is less business-oriented than policy-

and theory-oriented – although the analyses of industrial organization

hold considerable relevance for those planning business careers.

42 | Writing Economics

INTERNATIONAL ECONOMICS

Both historically and today the field of international economics has been

and is policy-oriented: What should governments do? How should they

regulate the cross-border economic relationships that their citizens enter

into? As world trade and finance becomes more salient, international

economics threatens to become coterminous with the study of economic

policy in general. Today, even in such a large economy as the United

States, it is very difficult to examine issues in public finance,

macroeconomics, industrial organization, or labor economics without

paying very close attention to the international context.

LABOR ECONOMICS

Labor economics applies basic tools of microeconomics to the analysis of

labor markets and the determination of the wage rate. What are the

arguments for and against a minimum wage? What factors explain wage

differentials? It distinguishes itself by two features. First, it is an intensely

empirical sub-field, in which students are expected to analyze data –

often from very large computerized data sets – as part of their study.

Second, it is one of the few subfields where actual empirical fieldwork –

visits to companies and unions – is encouraged. Labor economics requires

a good knowledge of price theory and a sound grasp of statistics.

MONETARY AND FISCAL POLICY

The two principal ways that public policy affects the course of the

economy in the United States are the government's monetary policy –

implemented in financial markets by the country's central bank, the

Federal Reserve – and fiscal policy, implemented through the taxing and

spending decisions that Congress and the President make (or fail to

make). Politicians assume, and economists believe, that such monetary

and fiscal policies can exert very strong influences on such determinants

of economic welfare as the rate of inflation, the rate of the economy's

growth, the level of employment, and ultimately the standard of living.

PUBLIC FINANCE

Topics stressed in this field include efficiency and equity arguments for

government "interference" in market economies, what it means for the

government to provide a level playing field on which private economic

activity can take place, theories advanced to explain actual choices by

representative governments, the effects of government tax and

expenditure decisions on the allocation of resources, and the distribution

of well-being. Special attention is given to the fiscal institutions of the

United States.

43 | Writing Economics

URBAN ECONOMICS

The phrase "urban crisis" is again found on the pages of major

newspapers, often linked to issues of poverty, crime, and the breakdown

of the family. Detroit has lost more than half its population in the past

thirty years. Poverty, crime in inner-city neighborhoods, infrastructure,

racial discrimination, friction between immigrant and other ethnic

groups; and the gap between the desires for public services and the

willingness to pay for them play an even more important role in the

American drama today than they did in the late 1960's when studying

urban problems was at a fore. Many urban problems have their roots in

market processes. Space or location plays a central role in urban markets

both in creating value and in generating positive and negative

externalities. Ease of transportation is a good, but nearness to high-crime

areas is a bad. Open space is a good, but long commutes are a bad. And so

forth. You get what you pay for. But you rarely pay for what you(r actions

lead other people to) get.

44 | Writing Economics

Appendix B | Standard Statistical Sources

SECONDARY SOURCES

The Economic Report of the President

Published annually, The Economic Report of the President includes:

(1) current and foreseeable trends in and annual goals for employment,

production, real income, and Federal budget outlays; (2) employment

objectives for significant groups of the labor force; and (3) a program for

carrying out these objectives. Reports from 1996–1999 are available on

the web at w3.access.gpo.gov/eop/.

Statistical Abstract of the United States

Published annually, the Statistical Abstract is a collection of statistics on

social and economic conditions in the United States. Selected

international data are also included. It is your best source of information

on relevant primary data sources available from the Census Bureau, other

Federal agencies, and private organizations. The 1998 Statistical Abstract

is available on the web at

www.census.gov/prod/3/98pubs/98statab/cc98stab.htm

World Tables

Published annually by the World Bank, the World Tables provide

standardized data on GDP, population, government deficits, trade, social

indicators, etc. for numerous individual countries (161 in the 1994 edition)

and are thus a key reference for international comparisons. A Supplement

containing revised data is published approximately six months after the

main volume. Data are presented as annual times series covering multiple

years (1972–1992, 1994 edition), as well as by topics and country.

45 | Writing Economics

PRIMARY SOURCES

Census

Conducted every ten years, the census serves as a vital statistical

database. It collects information on an individual’s place of birth,

ethnicity, native language, family history, annual income, etc., and thus

gives a picture of who is living in the United States.

Consumer Expenditure Survey (CES)

Conducted since 1889, the CES obtains data on frequently purchased

items, such as food or housekeeping supplies, as well as on major items of

expense, such as property or vehicle purchases. This is a key source of

consumption data.

Current Population Survey (CPS)

A monthly survey of about 50,000 households, the CPS has been

conducted since 1968. It is the primary source of information on the

characteristics of the US labor force. In addition to providing estimates of

employment, unemployment, earnings, and hours of work by occupation,

industry, and class of worker, it also sheds light on a variety of

demographic characteristics including age, sex, race, marital status, and

educational attainment of the labor force. Supplemental questions

provide information on a variety of topics, including school enrollment,

income, previous work experience, health, employee benefits, and work

schedules.

National Longitudinal Survey (NLS)

The NLS currently provides 6 panels of information about the labor

market experiences and other aspects of the interviewees. The surveys

also include data about a wide range of events such as schooling and

career transitions, marriage and fertility, training investments, child-care

usage, and drug and alcohol use. The breadth of these surveys allows for

analysis of a variety of topics such as the transition from school to work,

job mobility, youth unemployment, educational attainment, and the

returns to education, welfare recipiency, the impact of training, and

retirement decisions.

THE INTERNET

The internet is increasingly a source for economic data. There are a

number of sites that provide a wealth of information. These include the

following:

• The Bureau of Labor Statistics, stats.bls.gov, reports on a diverse set of

indicators including unemployment, the consumer price index as well

46 | Writing Economics

as lesser known data on work stoppage, collective bargaining,

occupational injury, and illness rates, etc.

• Bureau of Economic Analysis, www.bea.doc.gov, an agency of the

Department of Commerce, provides data on GDP, industrial output

and investment as well as international trade.

• Fedstats, www.fedstats.gov, makes public data from over 70 different

federal agencies. Data cover such diverse issues as natural resources

and the environment, motor vehicle accidents, and wages and weekly

earnings.

• FRED, or the Federal Reserve Economic Database,

www.stls.frb.org/fred/, provides historical US economic and financial

data, including daily U.S. interest rates, monetary and business

indicators, exchange rates, balance of payments, and regional

economic data for Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi,

Missouri, and Tennessee.

• Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR),

www.icpsr.umich.edu. ICPSR culls a wide variety of data on topics as

diverse as education, aging, mental health, criminal justice, etc. It is an

invaluable source of on-line data.

• National Bureau of Economic Research,

www.nber.org/data_index.html, provides a wide variety of both

current and historical macro, industry-level, and individual data. Their

listings include the CPS and extracts from the CES.

• The Harvard MIT Data Center, hdc-www.harvard.edu/hdc/, the

universities' official representative to ICPSR, the Roper Center for Public

Opinion Research, and the National Center for Health Statistics

(NCHS), provides access to Murray Center and Social Sciences Program

Data and is a central contact point for many other archives and data

suppliers.

• The Harvard Economics Department’s website

www.economics.harvard.edu/links.html, provides links to some of the

most widely used data available on the web. See the section entitled

“Data Sources and Information.”

• Bill Goffe’s Resources for Economists on the Internet,

rfe.wustl.edu/EconFAW.html, categorizes data by research topics,

making it extremely useful for finding data that is relevant to a new

research project.

47 | Writing Economics

Appendix C | Electronic Indices to Periodical Literature

EconLit

The primary index to economic periodical articles, EconLit is an indexed

bibliography with selected abstracts of the economics literature produced

by the American Economic Association. It covers over 400 major journals

as well as articles in collected volumes, books, book reviews, dissertations,

and working papers licensed from the Cambridge University Press

Abstracts of Working Papers in Economics. It is available through Hollis

Plus at lib.harvard.edu/e -resources/details/e/econlitx.html; a valid

Harvard ID is required.

NBER Working Papers Database

The NBER’s website indexes the working papers of affiliated faculty. This is

an excellent source for empirical work in progress. Full copies of working

papers are available free to subscribers and for a small fee to others from

the website or through the mail. They are also available in many academic

libraries. Searches are possible at papers.nber.org.

Social Science Research Network (SSRN)

The SSRN Electronic Library has an Abstract Database containing abstracts

on over 25,700 scholarly working papers and forthcoming papers and an

Electronic Paper Collection currently containing over 11,600

downloadable full text documents. It includes working papers from the

NBER as well as economics departments around the country. Searches can

be made at papers.ssrn.com/sol3/search.taf.

Statistical Universe

A bibliographic database that indexes and abstracts the statistical content

of selected United States federal and state government publications, state

as well as business and association publications. The abstracts include a

detailed description of a publication’s statistical contents and primary

bibliographic information. This database is available through Hollis Plus at

lib.harvard.edu/e -resources/details/s/statuniv.html and requires a valid

Harvard ID.

48 | Writing Economics

JSTOR (Journal Storage)

Many of the articles you will need are available on-line through JSTOR.

JSTOR holds 13 of the top economics journals as well as numerous others

in political science, demography, history and statistics. Unfortunately,

JSTOR contains only those articles that were published prior to or during

1993 (or 1995 in some cases). This resource is also available through Hollis

Plus at lib.harvard.edu/e -resources/details/j/jstorage.html and requires a

valid Harvard ID.

RePEC (Research Papers in Economics)

This website calls itself a “decentralized database of working papers,

journal articles and software components.” Searches can be made at

www.repec.org.

Individual Economics Departments Websites

Many economics departments make faculty working papers available on

their websites. They can be particularly good sources for theoretical work

in progress or for empirical work done by researchers not affiliated with

the NBER. For links to economics departments around the world, see

ideas.uqam.ca/EDIRC/index.html.

49 | Writing Economics

REFERENCES

Camerer, Colin F. and Thaler, Richard H. “Ultimatums, Dictators and

Manners.” Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 1995, 9 (2), pp.

209–20.

Feldstein, Martin. “Social Security, Induced Retirement, and Aggregate

Capital Accumulation.” Journal of Political Economy, September-

October 1974, 82 (5), pp. 905–26.

Freeman, Richard B. and Hall, Brian. “Permanent Homelessness in

America?” in R. B. Freeman, ed., Labor markets in action: Essays in

empirical economics. Cambridge and London: Harvard University

Press, 1989, pp. 134–56.

Goldin, Claudia and Katz, Lawrence F. “Technology, Skill, and the Wage

Structure: Insights from the Past.” American Economic Review, May

1996, 86 (2), pp. 252–57.

Griliches, Zvi. “Capital-Skill Complementarity.” Review of Economics and

Statistics, November 1969, 51 (4), pp. 465–68.

Madrian, Brigitte C. “Employment -Based Health Insurance and Job

Mobility: Is There Evidence of Job-Lock?” The Quarterly Journal of

Economics, February 1994, 109 (1), pp. 27–54.

Mankiw, Gregory N. Principles of economics. New York: The Dryden Press,

1997.

McCloskey, Donald. “Economical Writing.” Economic Inquiry, April 1985, 23

(2), pp. 187–222.

Popkin, Samuel L. The rational peasant: the political economy of rural

society in Vietnam. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1979.

Robbins, Lionel. The nature and significance of economic science. London:

Macmillan Press, 1984.

Strunk, William Jr. and White, E. B. The elements of style. New York:

Macmillan Press, 1979.