how to write a research proposal economics

The Young Economist’s Short Guide to Writing Economic Research

Attributes of writing economics.

• The discourse is often mathematical, with lots of formulas, lemmas, and proofs.
• Writing styles vary widely. Some authors are very dry and technical while a few are quite eloquent.

Economics writing is different from many other types of writing. It is essentially technical, and the primary goal is to achieve clarity. A clear presentation will allow the strength of your underlying analysis and the quality of your research to shine through.

Unlike prose writing in other disciplines, economics research takes time. Successful papers are not cranked out the night before a due date.

General Guidelines for Quality Research

Getting started.

The hardest part of any writing assignment is starting. Economics research usually begins with a strong understanding of literature, and papers require a section that summarizes and applies previous literature to what the paper at hand. This is the best way to start.

Your writing will demonstrate that you understand the findings that relate to the topic.

Economists use the first few paragraphs to set up research questions and the model and data they use to think about it. Sure, it can be dry, but this format ensures the write and reader have strong grasp on the subject and structure of the work that follows.

Clear and Concise Work

Clarity is hard to achieve, but revising and reworking a paper ensures it is easy to read

• 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
• Use the active voice
• Put statements in positive form
• Omit needless words (concise writing is clear writing)
• In summaries, generally stick to one tense

Time Management

Poor time management can wreck the best-planned papers. Deadlines are key to successful research papers.

• Start the project by finding your topic
• Begin your research
• Start and outline
• Write a draft
• Revise and polish

The Language of Economic Analysis

Economic theory has become very mathematical. Most PhD students are mathematicians, not simply economics majors. This means most quality economic research requires a strong use of mathematical language. Economic analysis is characterized by the use of models, simplified representations of how economic phenomena work. A model’s predictions about the future or the past are essentially empirical hypotheses. Since economics is not easily tested in controlled experiments, research requires data from the real world (census reports, balance sheets), and statistical methods (regressions and econometrics) to test the predictive power of models and hypotheses based on those models.

The Writing Process

Finding a topic.

There are a million ways to find a topic. It may be that you are writing for a specific subfield of economics, so topics are limited and thus easier to pick. However, must research starts organically, from passive reading or striking news articles. Make sure to find something that interests you. Be sure to find a niche and make a contribution to the subfield.

You will also need a project that can be done within the parameters of the assignment (length, due date, access to research materials). A profoundly interesting topic may not be manageable given the time and other constraints you face. The key is to just be practical.

Be sure to start your research as soon as possible. Your topic will evolve along the way, and the question you begin with may become less interesting as new information draws you in other directions. It is perfectly fine to shape your topic based on available data, but don’t get caught up in endlessly revising topics.

Finding and Using Sources

There are two types of economic sources: empirical data (information that is or can be easily translated into numerical form), and academic literature (books and articles that help you organize your ideas).

Economic data is compiled into a number of useful secondary sources:

• Economic Report of the President
• Statistical Abstract of the United States
• National Longitudinal Survey
• Census data
• Academic journals

The Outline

A good outline acts as an agenda for the things you want to accomplish:

• 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

Writing a Literature Review

The literature review demonstrates your familiarity with scholarly work on your topic and lays the foundations for your paper. The particular issues you intent to raise, the terms you will employ, and the approach you will take should be defined with reference to previous scholarly works.

Presenting a Hypothesis

Formulate a question, problem or conjecture, and describe the approach you will take to answer, solve, or test it. In presenting your hypothesis, you need to discuss the data set you are using and 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. In term papers, it may not be possible to reach conclusive results. Don’t be afraid to state this clearly and accurately. It is okay to have an inconclusive paper, but it is not okay to make overly broad and unsupported statements.

Presenting Results

There are essentially two decisions to make: (1) How many empirical results should be presented, and (2) How should these results be described in the text?

• Focus only on what is important and be as clear as possible. Both smart and dumb readers will appreciate you pointing things out directly and clearly.
• Less is usually more: Reporting a small group of relevant results is better than covering every possible statistical analysis that could be made on the data.
• Clearly and precisely describe your tables, graphs, and figures in the text of your results section. The first and last sentence in a paragraph describing a result should be “big picture” statements, describing how the results in the table, graph or figure fit into the overall theme of the paper.

Discussing Results

The key to discussing results is to stay clear of making value judgments, and rely instead on economic facts and analyses. It is not the job of an economist to draw policy conclusions, even if the research supports strong evidence in a particular direction.

Referencing Sources

As with any research paper, source referencing depends on the will of a professor a discourse community. However, economists generally use soft references in the literature review section and then cite sources in conventional formats at the end of papers.

This guide was made possible by the excellent work of Robert Neugeboren and Mireille Jacobson of Harvard University and Paul Dudenhefer of Duke University.

Mailing Address

Pomona College 333 N. College Way Claremont , CA 91711

Get in touch

Give back to pomona.

Part of   The Claremont Colleges

Browse Course Material

Course info, instructors.

• Prof. Esther Duflo
• Prof. Benjamin Olken

Departments

As taught in.

• Developmental Economics
• Microeconomics

Learning Resource Types

Development economics, research proposal.

The maximum length of the write-up should be 3 pages single-spaced (but less is fine). The goal of this research proposal is to give you a “jump start” on working on a topic that you could (ideally) work on for your second-year paper (or a future paper for your dissertation). If you are in the second year, it is okay for you to talk about the topic that you will be working on for your second-year paper. It should be development though… (but as you know development is a big tent). 

You can co-author the proposal with any student(s) in the program. However, we would like to  see as many proposals as people in the class. 

Note that the deadline is the last possible date that we are allowed to accept assignments under end  of term regulations, so we will not be able to provide extensions. Please therefore budget your time wisely. 

The proposal should include 

•  A clear statement of your research question       
• Brief motivation of your research question       a. Why is this question important?        b. What is the policy implication?        c. What (if any) economic theory it is testing? 
• (Short) Review of the relevant theoretical and/or empirical literature. 
• Description of your proposed empirical strategy and proposed (realistic) data sources.        a. You can propose an RCT where you’d collect the data, as long as it is realistic for a PhD student (not necessarily in the scope of a second year paper).        b. If you project is empirical, write-out clearly and in detail what are the proposed        regression specifications.  
• Clear discussion of your contribution to the prior literature.       
• Clear discussion of what challenges you expect to encounter. 

Think of this project as the shell of a research paper that contains everything but your findings: you will motivate the question; place it in the literature; and lay out your data sources (if any) and your research design. We do not expect to see any preliminary results (for empirical papers) or fully fledged model (for theory paper).

You are leaving MIT OpenCourseWare

School of Economics

Writing a research proposal.

Developing a research proposal is a necessary part of the application process it:

• provides a basis for decision-making;
• helps to make sure that you get the most appropriate supervisor for your research.

Your research proposal does not commit you to researching in a specific area if your application is successful. 

Following a successful application, you need to provide a more comprehensive proposal which will be useful reference as your research develops.

How to write a research proposal

Organise your proposal should around a small set of ideas or hypotheses that you would like to investigate. Provide some evidence of relevant background reading if possible.

A typical research proposal might look something like this:

• Rationale for the research project, including: a description of the phenomenon of interest, and the context(s) and situation in which you think the research will take place; an explanation of why the topic is of interest to the author; and an outline of the reasons why the topic should be of interest to research and/ or practice (the 'so what?' question); a statement of how the research fits in with that of potential supervisor(s) in the School of Economics.
• Issues and initial research question. Within the phenomenon of interest: what issue(s) do you intend to investigate? (This may be quite imprecise at the application stage); what might be some of the key literatures that might inform the issues (again, indicative at the application stage); and, as precisely as you can, what is the question you are trying to answer?
• Intended methodology: How do you think you might go about answering the question? Do you have a preference for using quantitative methods such as survey based research, or for qualitative methods such as interviews and observation?
• Expected outcomes: how do you think the research might add to existing knowledge; what might it enable organisations or interested parties to do differently?
• Timetable: What is your initial estimation of the timetable of the dissertation? When will each of the key stages start and finish (refining proposal; literature review; developing research methods; fieldwork; analysis; writing the draft; final submission). There are likely to overlaps between the stages.

An initial research proposal that forms part of a PhD application should be between 600 and 1,000 words in length.

Browser does not support script.

• Departments and Institutes
• Research centres and groups
• Staff wellbeing

Research proposals

Writing a research proposal requires students to demonstrate a high level of knowledge and analytical thought. Students must choose a specific aspect of the course material to investigate, and ask an original question, which can increase their engagement and interest. This assesses students' understanding of the subject area, their capacity to perform a literature review, their evaluation of possible research tools, and their development of a research question. In addition, the course can require the student to carry out the project they propose, as another assessment task. Assessing the proposal as a separate task earlier in the year ensures the students are on a productive path, helps the students to plan their time, and can also deter academic misconduct by demonstrating authorship. Research-related assessments can support the students' later work on a dissertation.  This can be in terms of skills alone or both skills and content the research proposal informs the final-year dissertation.

Advantages of research proposals

Learning through research can lead to more engaged, critical and informed students than teaching by more didactic methods.

Learning about research methods can help students understand other courses more fully, and the 'nuts and bolts' of their discipline.

Becoming 'expert' in an area can increase students sense of autonomy in their learning, and can develop their confidence in articulating original arguments.

Developing a wider variety of types of writing and communication is useful for students' longer-term employability skills.

As a research proposal can be relatively short, it can be combined with peer feedback or presented in a different format such as a poster or an oral presentation.

Can be a good opportunity to introduce group work

Challenges of research proposals

Students more used to exams and essays may find a new format initially confusing.

Students may feel unsure of how to excel in this assessment method.

When students choose their own specific area to investigate, it carries the risk that the area will not be as productive as one pre-determined by their tutor as existing research literature on a topic may be sparse, for example.

How students might experience research proposals

Students may value the autonomy of creating a research proposal, and appreciate the insight it offers into their other courses, but experience anxiety at the novel assessment format. When students have undertaken specific, personal work, they can appreciate the opportunity of sharing their work with peers. LSE students in this situation report a sense of pride in their own and their cohort's work.

Reliability, validity, fairness and inclusivity of research proposals

As with any assessment, the learning outcomes of the course need to be well served by the method - setting clear criteria and communicating them with students. The weighting of the task also requires consideration. An essay may be a more substantial writing task, but a research proposal requires additional time to find relevant readings, and understand and evaluate research tools. If peers are expected to comment on one another's work, guidance on this should also be provided. As the projects will be varied, students may make more use of office hours or other one-to-one guidance from tutors. Students from educational backgrounds which do not prioritise 'original argument' may particularly struggle to understand what is required of them by an open-ended and personalised project. Putting students in contact with their relevant library liaison is another form of support for when they are locating material.

How to maintain and ensure rigour in research proposals

Research proposals should be marked and moderated in accordance with departmental practice. Criteria should be established in advance and shared with students. Research proposals can provide a chance to excel in one area and underperform in others (e.g. a strong original argument combined with weak use of sources) therefore a clear marking system should help keep students (and staff) working (and marking) in line with the expected outcomes. Individual markers should take steps to avoid the problems which affect batch marking, such as the 'halo' effect where one or two positive characteristics of a student overly influence the marker.

How to limit possible misconduct in research proposals

Possible misconduct is comparable to other written assessment methods. The requirement for students to select their own sub-topic to work on means that assistance from previous cohorts will be of less use. As it is a novel form of assessment, students will also be less able to find existing examples online. Requiring students to submit early stages of the project – for example, an area of interest, an early research question - will require students to demonstrate authorship (and also allow tutors to intervene in projects which appear off-topic). Final submissions can make use of Turnitin to check against other student submissions, and against other possible sources (for example, article abstracts).

LSE examples

SO221 Researching London: Methods for Social Research

AN298 Research Methods in Social Anthropology

MY428 Qualitative Text and Discourse Analysis

Further resources

Healey, M. and Jenkins, A. (2009) Developing undergraduate research and inquiry

https://www.heacademy.ac.uk/knowledge-hub/developing-undergraduate-research-and-inquiry

Back to Assessment methods

Back to Toolkit Main page

Contact your Eden Centre departmental adviser

If you have any suggestions for future Toolkit development, get in touch using our email below!

Email: [email protected].