Section 4: Choosing a topic for undergraduate economic research

This post is part of a series (link) on undergraduate research in Economics  

For the Student:

There are a few good write ups on how to choose a research topic. I really like Doug Miller’s 5 things needed for a good economics thesis topic (link), which I shorten as:  It is economics, it is your idea, It has not been done before, do‐able, and you really care about. This short guide from Bates College (link) suggest thinking of continuing with work you have already done to explore a new question and Princeton has a longer guide (link). I also like this handout by Kristin A. Van Gaasbeck at Cal State Sacramento (link). Don Davis (link) and Steve Pischke (link) have guides geared toward grad students choosing a research question.

Before approaching a professor I agree with Miller’s advice student should come up with a broad topic of interest for their research project. Do not go to professor without anything in mind. The broad topic needs to inspire you enough to keep you motivated to work for an entire year. Think of topics that you have found interesting in your other economics classes or related course work. You might also be inspired by a story in the news or your own experience.

Many applied microeconomics papers are essentially how does something X (e.g. cash payments, credit, or war) effect some outcome Y (e.g. schooling, health, income). A good economics paper will focus on an X  that can be influenced by policy and how it changes Y an outcome that people care about. Another issue is X needs to be exogenous that is independent of other influencers on Y. You also want to avoid something called reverse causality if for example you measuring the effect of health (X) on income (y) for Peruvian farmers, you would need to do more complex analysis since rising income mean people have more money to spend on health so Y could influence X too. Your professor can help you with this issue. You can also look at X and Y in a new setting and that is a good topic too.

The other thing you need to consider is who is your population of interested? In terms of the interest do you have a specific age, gender, or nationality in mind. For students interested in using data from outside of the United States specific knowledge of the country based on research for another class is extremely useful. Even better is experience studying abroad or being from that country.  Personally, I am much more interested in projects if the student I am working with is from or has experience with a country that I am less familiar with.

Once you have a broad research topic I would suggest working on some literature and data searches for a couple of hours, but not much more than that. First, do a regular google search of the topic with the name of the x variable, y outcome, and country (e.g. “microcredit and schooling and India”). Next do a similar search in google scholar. For each search spend about 30 minutes seeing what comes up and giving a quick read to the articles. Finally, do a search in EconLit a database available at most schools to see if you can find relevant papers.

You might also try looking around to see you can find a dataset to work with. The World Bank has an excellent website for finding data (http://microdata.worldbank.org/index.php/home) and the American Economics Association also has a list of data sources (https://www.aeaweb.org/resources/data). JPAL provides data for hundreds of their randomized control trials in developing countries. One thing you can do is iterate. If you have thought of a topic you are interested in and look for data and cannot find it, but you find a dataset that can answer a related question, it is ok for an undergraduate research project to change the question to work with the available data.

In summary you might not get all the way to choosing a topic and finding data. Spend a few hours so that you will be ready to approach the professor.

Student Questions:

  1. What is the relationship I am interested (what is the X influencer and Y outcome)
  2. Can X be influenced by policy? Is Y important?
  3. What population am I interested in studying (age, gender, nationality)?
  4. Can you find a data set?

 

For the Professor 

For the student advice I recommend that the students start by trying to find their own topic. In some cases professors may already have a research topic in mind and be looking for a student to serve as a research assistant. Typically faculty members keep the most promising papers for their own work and use paper ideas with less promise for work with undergraduates. I would recommend against finding a student to address a specific topic. You want to find a student who is driven to answer their own research question. Finding a topic is also a basic signal or screening device of a student’s ability to do research. If you give them the topic to start you cannot reveal the work they are willing to do for the project. Additionally, giving the student less promising paper ideas is means you are likely not motivated by the paper idea or you would be working on it already.

It is important to work with the student to find a question that first meets the standard exogeneity criteria required of empirical work in economics. You can also guide the student to what is a policy relevant and important question. In terms of datasets you might be aware of relevant datasets. Your experience can guide you to see if the question that is being asked can be answered by the dataset of interest.