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Department of Economics

ECO331: Behavioural & Experimental Economics

Term Paper Assignment

Winter 2024

1 Due Dates and Weights

First Submission Friday March 15, 2024, 11:00 AM (30%)

Peer Assessments Friday March 22, 2023, 11:00 AM (20%)

Final Submission Friday March 29, 2023 at 11:00 AM (40%)

Reflection Piece Friday March 29, 2023 at 11:00 AM (10%)

2 Project Goals

This assignment gives you an opportunity to write a coherent, well-constructed essay thinking critically about 1) the design of one particular experiment (internal validity); and 2) how the choices researchers make in the design of an experiment impact the ability to extrapolate experiment results to related environments (external validity). As part of this exercise, you will also read and provide constructive feedback to your classmates on their writing. Symmetrically, you will receive comments from classmates that must consider in revising your final draft.

3 Overview

Each of you has selected (or has been assigned) a prompt article.You will assess both the internal and external validity of your prompt article. Based on your assessment of the article’s external validity, you will propose a follow-up experiment.

For procedures to use in assessing internal and external validity, I refer you to the reading notes posted on Quercus for Topic 2 (Experiment Design: Internal and External validity).

4 Structure of the Assignment

The final product will be an essay between 900 and 1,100 words. Rather than handing in a single draft, however, students submit a first draft which will receive comments and suggestions from classmates. Based on these comments, and other lessons learned during the peer assessment phase, students revise their paper for final submission. Students will also include a brief explanation of how they responded to their peers’ comments, and what changes (if any) they made to their paper in the revision process. As part of this process, students provide feedback on the first submissions of three of their classmates.

The final grade in this assignment will depend on all four elements, with the most weight on the final version of the essay (see above). Note that your Peer Assessment grade depends on the quality of the feedback you provide your peers. The feedback you receive from your peers does not directly impact your grade.

4.1 Structure Details

First, four double-spaced pages constitutes a very scarce resource. Keep your introduction and conclusions brief. I can assure you that if either exceeds half of a page, it is too long. Relatedly, you should assume that the reader has read the paper. DO NOT SUMMARIZE!

In the first half of your analysis, you address internal validity. Ask yourself why it is hard, even with a controlled experiment, to establish the proposed causal mechanism. Then consider the design details that help them establish causality. Keep the following in mind:

• More clearly arguing fewer points is definitely preferable to making many points but not being able to convincingly make any of them (due to space constraints).

• Convince the reader you understand what the authors did and why they did it. Your reader should leave this section thinking “The experiment design was pretty nifty because . . . ”

In the second half of your analysis, you will focus on external validity. In particular, you will identify one experiment-design choice that plausibly contributed to your prompt article’s main empirical result (your hypothesis). You will concisely argue why this factor is relevant. (Importantly, you should be able to identify whether the identified factor makes the study’s outcome more or less likely.) You will then identify how you would modify the experiment in the prompt article to test your hypothesis.

4.2 An Example

We already have a very good model of this. In lecture, we discussed how Shurchkov (2012) con-ducted a follow-up experiment to Gneezy, Niederle and Rustichini (2003). If I was Olga Shurchkov writing this assignment, this might be my outline.

• The subjects in Gneezy et al. (2003) completed mazes.

• This task is plausibly perceived to be male biased.

– Citing a paper here would be awesome.

• The authors’ preferred hypothesis was that because women were less confident in their ability to complete mazes, they responded with less effort when competing against men.

• We therefore might get a different outcome if the task was perceived to be female biased. In particular, as I expect women to be more confident when the task is plausibly female-biased, I expect the mixed-gender competition will have less of an effect such a competition.

• In my follow-up experiment, the task in both the piece-rate and competitive treatments would be a word task . . .

– Citing a paper here would be awesome.

5 Some Details

It is worth reiterating:

1. More clearly arguing fewer points is definitely preferable to making many points but not being able to convincingly make any of them (due to space constraints). This likely means that you will have ideas and points that do not make it to the final draft. The cuts can be hard. I encourage using the following “tricks”:

• “Possible explanations for this behaviour include XXX theory (Author1 2012), YYY theory (Author2 2011) and ZZZ theory (Author3 2010). I am going to focus on TTT theory (Author4 2009), as I find it most relevant.”

• “Studying this behaviour in a controlled experimental environment poses many chal-lenges. I focus on inducing XXX in the laboratory while still being able to rule out YYY.”

2. Likewise, the paper that does little more than summarize the prompt article will not do well. Think value added . . .

3. Does your term paper show that you have a solid understanding of the experiment (big picture and important details) reported in the article you chose? Does your paper demonstrate an understanding of experimental or behavioural economics that you (likely) did not have in December? If the answer to both of these question is yes, you will do fine.

4. Follow the standard structure (hopefully) drilled into our heads in high school.

Introduction Tell the reader what you are going to do.

Analysis (i.e., Body) Do what you told the reader you are going to do.

Conclusion Summarize what you have done.

5.1 Important Elements

References. You must include properly formatted references to all works cited in your paper. This is not a research assignment per se, and you will be able to earn good marks without consulting external sources. I expect, however, that most of the better papers (e.g., those in the top 25%) will cite three to five sources (from economics journals and recent working papers).

• The default format for references and citations is the Chicago Manual of Style. Other formats are acceptable if they convey the same information.

• The references do not count towards the 1,000 word limit.

Audience. Your paper should be aimed at third-year economics majors who have never en-countered behavioural experimental or behavioural economics, but who has read the journal article. This means, for example, that you will need to clearly but briefly define such terms as loss aversion, present bias, availability bias, etc. It also means that there no need to summarize the article.

6 Grading

• The grading rubric will be posted on Quercus. This describes the basic elements of the paper that will be evaluated, and also how they score and contribute towards your final grade.

• The First Draft will be judged by the same criteria as the Final Version, with some allowance for lack of polish. First drafts must follow exactly the same format as the Final Version (e.g., including annotated references, etc.). Incomplete first drafts will be heavily penalized.

• Peer Assessments will be judged on the quality (and evident effort displayed) of the feedback provided to your peers’ papers.

• The Reflection Piece need not be long. It will be graded by the quality of insight you offer on the revision process (including your assessment of your peers’ comments).

7 References, Citing and Quoting

Academic inquiry is a conversation. As an upper-year student at one of the top universities in the world, you have every reason to be a part of this conversation. In this paper, I want your contribution to the conversation.

7.1 Of Utmost Importance

1. If the idea, piece of evidence or analysis comes from someone else, you must use citations in the text to give credit.

• It you have not credited someone else for an idea, you are claiming ownership of that idea. This is plagiarism if the idea is not in fact yours, and plagiarism is amongst the most serious of violations of the University of Toronto’s Code of Behaviour on Academic Matters.

2. If the words you use are not your own, you must put the words in quotations and attribute the words to the original author.

• You implicitly claim authorship of any and all phrases and sentences that are NOT enclosed in quotes. This is plagiarism if the words are not in fact yours, and plagiarism is amongst the most serious of violations of the University of Toronto’s Code of Behaviour on Academic Matters. If you are using someone else’s words, you MUST quote in addition to citing!

3. Bottom line: Citing gives credit only for the underlying intellectual output (idea, evidence, analysis, etc) but not the words used to express the idea. Therefore if you cite an author but do not enclose the text in quotes, you are saying that while someone else gets credit for the idea, the expression of the idea is yours.

4. Even better: Do not quote at all. See my arguments below.

5. Every citation in the text must have a corresponding entry in the list of references.

6. The Chicago Manual of Style is the default method for citations and references. If you are familiar with an alternative format, please feel free to use it. The bottom line is that it must be clear who is getting credit for an idea, and where I can find the original “document.”

7.2 Details

List alphabetically cited articles and books in a references section at the end of the paper. A standard entry should include the title, author, journal or book title, date published, and page numbers if appropriate. For internet references, include title, author, hosting organization, date published (if possible), and complete URL.

I have included at the end of this document a series of references using a specific style. Honestly, I really do not care whose bibliography style you adopt as long as you adopt a standard style and remain consistent.

In addition to the references at the end of the paper, you must use citations in the text to give credit for any idea, piece of evidence, or quotation that is not your own. Every citation in the text must have a corresponding entry in the list of references. If an idea emerged from discussions with a colleague, include a footnote to the effect of “This point emerged through helpful discussions with ‘Joliet’ Jake Blues.” Here are some examples of acceptable citations:

• “While List (2003, p. 67) does acknowledge the real-world existence of the endowment effect . . . ”

• “Burtless (1991) argues that although international trade has indeed grown as a share of the U.S. economy in recent decades, the increase is too small to explain much of the rise in wage inequality over this period.”

• “Although international trade has indeed grown as a share of the U.S. economy in recent decades, the increase is too small to explain much of the rise in wage inequality over this period (Burtless 1991).”

• If a series of sentences draw on the ideas or arguments of a particular author, you should make it clear in the text exactly which parts of your paper are drawn from which author’s writing. For example, put the arguments in a single paragraph started with “Burtless (1991) makes the following set of arguments . . . ”

To reiterate (and reiteration is a device used to indicate importance), if you must quote directly, enclose in quotes any words written by anyone except you, and include in the text a proper citation to the source. If you explain another author’s idea in your own words only, you just need to provide a citation. However, if you use any sentences, sentence fragments or phrases written by someone else, you absolutely must put them in quotes. Just as not citing the source of an idea is an implicit ownership claim on the idea, you implicitly claim ownership of all text not in quotes. If you claim ownership of text not in fact your own original writing, this is a violation of the University of Toronto’s Code of Behaviour on Academic Matters.

7.3 Artificial-Intelligence Tools, including Generative AI (e.g., ChatGPT)

I am authorizing the use of Artificial Intelligence tools, including Generative AI (e.g., ChatGPT) for the Term Paper. If you choose to use artificial intelligence tools for your Term Paper:

• You are ultimately accountable for the work you submit.

• Any content produced by an artificial intelligence tool must be cited appropriately. See, for example, https://style.mla.org/citing-generative-ai/.

• Your must document the use of these tools in an appendix. This appendix must include what tool(s) were used, how they were used, and how the results from the AI were incorporated into the submitted work. The appendix does not count towards any assignment word limit.

• You must also upload upload any and all transcripts from your interactions with the tools.

The grading rubric includes a large penalty for the inclusion of incorrect facts and assertions consistent with generative AI “hallucinations.”

8 Thoughts on Good Writing

8.1 Good Practices

The following “rules” greatly improve writing quality.

• Each paragraph should contain one self-contained thought or idea and start with a sentence “introducing” that idea. Break up any paragraph with multiple points or ideas.

• Reserve the word “prove” (or disprove) for theory papers. Authors of an empirical paper (such as one reporting the results of a human-subject experiment) will have results. These results may support a particular theory, or they may be inconsistent with that theory. These results, however, neither prove nor disprove anything.

• Authors make points and report findings, not papers or articles. I thus prefer “Chen and Gazzale (2005) present experimental evidence that . . . ” or “The authors present evidence that . . . ” rather than “Their paper presents . . . ”

• In general, you need not provide page numbers when citing the works of others. One exception to this rule might be the case where a casual reader might miss an idea very specific to a particular page.

• In general, avoid direct quotes. Assume that when you quote directly, the reader infers that you are too lazy to do your own writing. You should therefore limit direct quotes to those cases where it is clear that your use of quotes is not due to laziness. I can think of three valid exceptions to “no-quote” rule:

Eloquence   However, economists write little so eloquent that only the original words do justice to the idea.

Outrageousness

Subtlety

A good rule of thumb: unless use of the exact words is necessary, do not quote.

8.2 Some Final Pet Peeves & Words of Wisdom

Notwithstanding the exceptions to every rule . . .

• Avoid the verb “to be.” For better, this rules out the passive tense.

• Include something resembling a thesis sentence in your introduction. If your intro-duction does not make reading your conclusion somewhat unnecessary, you need to re-work your introduction.

– “Tell the reader what you are going to do. Do it. Tell the reader what you have done.” Perhaps a little formulaic, but a good place to start.

• Avoid nosism (i.e., the use of “we” in referring to oneself). If you are the sole author of a piece, follow the advice of Mark Twain: “Only kings, presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to use the editorial ‘we’.”

• Avoid Scrabble and SAT words like nosism.

• Go back over your text. Break up half of your compound sentences into simple declarative sentences. You have just greatly improved the readability of your paper. While the marginal benefit of each round diminishes, try it again.

• A table or figure should contain all the information (in legends, captions, etc.) required to understand it. A table or figure should appear just before you reference it.

• A tiny minority can write quickly and well. For the rest of us, good writing does not come easily. Do not underestimate the time and effort required to write well.