Purpose of Assignment
The purpose of this assignment is to:
- Introduce you to basic economic/policy research.
- Familiarize you with the presentation of statistical analysis, as it is performed in actual research papers.
- Enhance critical thinking skills. The idea is to help you take the first step in critically assessing the claims/arguments made in published research.
1.GM Theorem Assumptions
- Were the GM Theorem assumptions verified? What tests were used to verify each assumption?
- Which assumptions were not verified/met?
- What are the implications of any assumptions that were not verified/met? Are the estimators BLUE? Are the standard errors of coefficients unbiased?
- Can the model be used for hypothesis testing, or prediction, or both?
- Do the coefficients have the expected signs?
2.Critically assess the conclusions reached by the authors. Was the authors’ conclusion in line with their data? Or did they over/understate their case?
- Remedial Measures recommended by you
- Critique the data, modeling problems, arguments/assertions presented in the article. How does your critique affect the reasonableness/validity/claims of the results, if at all? What are some things that you would have done differently?
- How would you address the weaknesses of this paper, particularly with respect to meeting the OLS assumptions? E.g., are there any other variables you would like to include? Would you transform variables? Which statistical and/or diagnostic tests would you recommend adding to the paper?
- This section could also mention what you liked/did not like about the paper. Something that the author did well/could have done better, e.g., motivated the topic in a different way (be specific), presented descriptive statistics, shown graphs that were illuminating (what kind of graphs, be specific), contribute to the literature in a more interesting way
