This seminar and paper course is on empirical macroeconomics. The topics are wide open and if you already have some idea of what you want to work on, drop in immediately to discuss. The topic can be quite general and we can work together to see if it is viable, with data and some substantive content.
However, in most cases, students will not have a topic and I am asking you to start with a paper written by an undergraduate either from an undergraduate journal or online honours essays in empirical macro. In the past, students have looked at the academic published literature and developed topics along the lines suggested in the paper. The difficulty with this approach is that academic papers are terse and often too technical. In fact most students need to survey a much broader literature to piece together the central ideas. This takes time and is often not that rewarding
I provide a lengthy list of paper sources at the end. These papers will be at a level that should be more accessible and students can make immediate progress. These studies are to be used only as a stepping stone for your own empirical research. In some cases you may take the study and apply it to another data set or in others it will be suggestive of something entirely different. The point is that we should all be able to make immediate advances in a research direction quite rapidly with these papers serving as starting points.
There have been A+ papers in the past that have not been that technical econometrically but the questions posed were unique. Think outside the box initially.
Papers on Covid
In addition to topics of your choice, I include papers on Covid, especially cross country comparisons. Lots of data on this exists and countries have experienced different impact and coping strategies. We can discuss for those interested a way to handle this topic.
Fall
2021/2022
Section
1