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ASB-3316 Applied Economics

Assignment

Since the 1990s, economists have produced a large amount of theoretical and empirical       research on the determinants of economic growth. Attention has been focused on a range of factors, including (but not limited to) the following:

•   The effectiveness of a financial system as a conduit for the flow of finance from savers to investors.

•   The role of the educational system in improving the quality of human capital, and the contribution of human capital accumulation to economic growth.

•   The influence of legal origins on laws, regulations and economic outcomes.

Your task for this assignment is to write a research paper that makes a contribution to this    empirical literature. You might decide to update or extend one of the earlier studies, using   data for a more recent period or a different selection of countries. Alternatively, you might  decide to estimate an empirical model which, although grounded in the existing literature, is based on a specification that has not been reported previously.

To assist you in your preparation for this task, a few key sources from the previous literature  are listed at the end of this document. This is not a comprehensive list of references; but it      will give you a start towards finding the relevant previous literature. The list includes some of the most influential early studies, as well as a couple of reviews of the topic.

Your principal suggested source of data for this task is the World Development Indicators published by the World Bank:

https://databank.worldbank.org/source/world-development-indicators

From the World Development Indicators, you can easily download into an Excel spreadsheet a customized data set. You can choose the countries, the time period or individual years, and individual series selected from a wide range of choices (grouped together under heading such as Economic Policy and Debt, Education, Environment, Financial Sector, Health, and so on). Although this data source is highly recommended, you are free to use data from other sources if you wish, either alongside or as an alternative to the World Development Indicators. Please remember to document carefully and quote in your report the sources of all data you use in    your research.

The task is broken down into four components, each of which will be graded separately. Each task carries equal weight in determining your overall grade for the assignment. This                assignment is the only piece of assessment for the module. Your final written submission       must cover these four components; but they do not have to be addressed in the same order or  in separate subsections of the report corresponding to the components. The four components  are as follows:

1) Specify an appropriate research question, and demonstrate how it relates to the previous theoretical and empirical literature on your topic (25 marks).


2) Choose, explain and implement the appropriate econometrics methodology to address your research question (25 marks).

3) Download the relevant country-level data from an appropriate source into an Excel spreadsheet, and organize the data into a format that can be read by Stata (25 marks).

4) Write up your work in the format of a research paper suitable for publication in one of the leading economics journals (e.g. American Economic Review, Quarterly Journal of               Economics, Journal of Political Economy). The write-up should include an introduction,      literature review, description of the methodology, presentation of the results, and conclusion (including the policy implications of your findings). Please pay close attention to

presentational aspects such as layout, written style, graphs, tables and references (25 marks). You should submit two files through TurnItIn:

•   The final research paper, covering components 1, 2 and 4 above. Please paste your   Stata do-file into an Appendix of your research paper. The Stata do-file should         contain all commands needed to replicate the empirical results reported in the paper. Failure to include your do-file as an Appendix to the paper will carry an automatic   penalty of 25%.

•   The Excel spreadsheet file containing the data, after it has been organized into a format suitable for upload into Stata, in accordance with component 3 above.

Please ensure that your Excel spreadsheet file and Stata do-file are compatible, so that the Stata do-file reads the data correctly from the Excel file, and reproduces all your empirical results when it is executed, without any error messages.

There is no word limit for the research paper. However, please note that journal editors prefer to receive submissions that are concise but comprehensive. You need to include all necessary information, but written in a style as clear and concise as possible. Citations and references    should be presented using the Harvard referencing style. Please ensure that all sources cited   in the text are included in the list of references; and no sources are included in the list of        references that are not cited in the text.

The submission deadline for the final report and Excel spreadsheet file is Friday 6th May      2022. Late submissions will be capped at 40% if submitted within one week after the due      date. Submissions more than one week after the due date, or failure to submit, will result in a mark of zero for the module.