ECON 4200

Senior Seminar

Lecture 1: Getting Started

Carl Heese

University of Hong Kong

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Today’s Plan
▶ Course Information

▶ Getting Started:

▶ How to find good topics and questions?

▶ What are research contributions?

▶ Academic Conduct

▶ Finding Allies or Enemies

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Contact Information

Instructor: Carl Heese

▶ Office: K.K. Leung, Room 802
▶ Email: heese@[Link]
▶ Primary research areas: microeconomic theory, political
economy
Lectures: Monday 9:00-10:50 in MB247 (Main Building)
Tuesday 10:10-10:50 in KKLG105

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Course Objectives

▶ Learn to apply knowledge to analyze policy issues and make

recommendations
▶ Learn how to develop concepts to describe human interaction
and decision-making.
▶ Develop presentation and teamwork skills
▶ Experience and nurture leadership skills
▶ Sharpen analytical tools and ability to work on independent
research project.
⇒ Writing a research paper to graduate!

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Evaluation

▶ (Online) ethics quiz: 10 %

▶ Attendance: compulsory (you cannot miss meetings except
with justification)
▶ Introduction writing: (Due: September 11th)
▶ Proposal Presentation: 20% (Date: September 29th)
▶ 12 % for presentation
▶ 8 % for peer evaluation: asking questions and writing
comments for the other groups.
▶ Midterm progress Report and Presentation: 30 % (Due: Nov
10th)
▶ Final report: 40 % (Due: December 10th)

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Miscellaneous

▶ Students with Special Education Needs should inform the

instructor during the first week (or as soon as possible) to
facilitate timely support and accommodation.
▶ Plagiarism and misconduct cases will be permanently
recorded.
▶ Deadlines will be strictly enforced.
▶ Be considerate of others in class and individual meetings.
▶ You are expected to attend all meetings.

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Course Schedule: Meetings (tentative outline)

Week Date Topic Method

1 Sep 1 Course Information In-Class
1 Sep 2 Research topic development Invidivual Consultation
3 Sep 15 Introduction Writing In-Class
3 Sep 16 Research Topic Development Individual consultation
4 Sep 22 Discussion of Draft Introductions Individual Consultation
5 Sep 29 Proposal Presentation In-Class
5 Sep 30 Proposal Feedback Individual Consultation
6 Oct 6 Academic Writing 1 In-Class
7 Oct 20 Work on project Individual consultation
8 Oct 27 Academic Writing 2 In-class
9 Nov 3 Work on project Individual consultation
10 Nov 10 Midterm Report Presentations In-Class
11 Nov 17 Feedback on Midterm Report Individual consultation
12 Nov 24 Work on project Individual consultation*

Individual consultation*: based on request

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Material

▶ Course material on Moodle:

▶ Syllabus
▶ Slides from in-class sessions
▶ Ethics quiz
▶ Additional material

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How to get started on research? (Pischke, 2012)

▶ (Good) Research is hard!

▶ Even for the best researchers (Production cycle of a paper in
the top 5 > 5 years.
▶ Learn by trial and error
▶ Most ideas fail
▶ Talk to people
▶ What makes a good research topic?
▶ Relevant, original (!), and feasible.
▶ Feasible means:
▶ Empirical project: Relevant data is available, and
statistical/econometric analysis is feasible.
▶ Theory project: One can develop a suitable model and the
model is analytically tractable.
▶ How do I find a good topic?

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Suggestions to find a good topics

Some general advice:

▶ Read papers but don’t read too much
▶ Read the newspaper
▶ Talk to each other
▶ Never take any finding or argument for granted
▶ Think about why you study economics or finance in the first
place

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Suggestions to find a good topic
From my personal experience:
1. Find what field interests you
2. What topic in that field makes you excited?
3. Most successful researchers have a broader question and goal
that they develop a research agenda around.
4. Think about how you would approach or solve (an aspect) of
the question.
5. Compare your approach to that in important papers on the
topic (or similar topics).
7. If your approach improves on existing work, you likely can
make a real contribution (what does this mean? See next
slides.)
8. There is no linear and unique way for ideas to arise.

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Top 5 Economics Journals

▶ American Economic Review

▶ Econometrica
▶ Journal of Political Economy
▶ Quarterly Journal of Economics
▶ Review of Economic Studies

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Top Field Journals in Economics (examples)

▶ Theory: Journal of Economic Theory, Theoretical Economics,

AEJ:Micro
▶ Macro/International Trade: International Economic Review,
Journal of International Economics, Journal of Monetary
Economics, AEJ:MAcro
▶ Applied Microeconomics: Journal of Public Economics, AEJ:
Applied Economics, AEJ: Micro, AEJ:Applied Economics
▶ etc.

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Which papers to read and how to learn about style from
others?

▶ Do not find your topic or try to learn how to write by reading

unpublished work by non-professionals (e.g. other students).
▶ Try to constrain reading from the journal list I put onto
Moodle
▶ Looking at the publication list of the top 5 journals can give
you a good idea of what topics are “hot.”
▶ Use “Google scholar” to find papers; maybe also use AI (but
AI is not good in this, so be very cautious).

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Topics in the previous years

▶ Game Theory in the novel “Romance of the Three Kingdoms”

▶ Modeling Task Allocation in a Heterogeneous and Distributed
System
▶ Decoding Investors’ Frenzy in Macau Gaming Industry
▶ Relationship of Superstitions and Hong Kong Property Price
▶ How did COVID change the relationship between housing
transaction price and the distance to city center in Hong Kong
and Singapore?
▶ The Effectiveness of the UK’s Quantitative Easing in 2020
▶ Effects of Firearm Policies in the United States
▶ The Effect of Stock Market Performance towards the U.S.
Presidential Election Outcomes

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What are contributions in economic research?

▶ There are many ways how a research paper can make a

contribution.
▶ Your paper could improve on existing work
▶ by taking a different approach (originality in method and
concepts),
▶ by providing new or maybe even conflicting insights
(relevance),
▶ etc.
▶ The evaluation of a paper may also be highly subjective; that
is, people have different tastes.
▶ Below, I will talk more about the different types of
contributions that economic theory papers may make:

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What are contributions of theory papers? (Board and
Meyer-ter-Vehn (2018)
When writing a theory paper, one must prepare to answer the most
basic question: Why should I care? The answer usually falls into
the following categories:
1. The paper asks a new question. A paper should answer a
question. Occasionally the contribution of the paper will be to
ask a novel question rather than writing down the model or
doing the analysis. These are often the most cited papers -
once you have a new hammer, lots of things start to look like
nails. For example, Kamenica and Gentzkow (2011) ask what
is the optimal way for a principal to design an information
structure for an agent. The contribution is to ask not just
whether a particular signal can make the principal better off,
but what is the best the principal could do if they could
choose any experiment.
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What are contributions of theory papers? (Board and
Meyer-ter-Vehn (2018)

2. The paper posits a new model. A model is a lens through

which we see the world, and there are different lenses that
allow us to focus on different aspects of the problem. Most
models contain something new, but some are a sufficiently
large conceptual step that it promises to bring new headway
(even if the results of the paper are not that exciting). For
example, Sannikov (2008) paper on the continuous time
principal-agent problem showed how we can model these
classic problems in a different way that has the potential to be
much more tractable.

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What are contributions of theory papers? (Board and
Meyer-ter-Vehn (2018)

3. The model speaks to an important application. For example,

applying matching theory to school choice is important
because of the economic significance of the application;
without this the comparison between Boston and
Gale-Shapley algorithms would be a dry theoretical discussion.

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What are contributions of theory papers? (Board and
Meyer-ter-Vehn (2018)

4. The model identifies some interesting economic force. The

model may be unrealistic in many dimensions, but it isolates a
new feature of a family of problems that changes the way we
think. Much of the value from economic theory is in honing
our intuitions and understanding the qualitative nature of
economic forces. For example, once one understands Spence’s
model of signaling, one can happily talk about bankers
building large granite buildings.

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What are contributions of theory papers? (Board and
Meyer-ter-Vehn (2018)

5. The model develops new empirical predictions. The classic

Friedman view is that a theory should be evaluated on the
basis of its predictions. For example, a reasonable model of
peer effects would posit that schools sort children of different
ability assortatively into different classes, placing smarter kids
into larger classes; this may then explain why regressions of
class size on child performance have historically found
relatively weak correlation.

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What are contributions of theory papers? (Board and
Meyer-ter-Vehn (2018)

While the main contribution of the paper could be any one of the
five criteria above, these different objectives overlap. For example,
if one is writing a paper that speaks to an interesting applied
question, the model should be reasonable and the economic forces
persuasive within the context of that application. On the other
hand, a more abstract paper where the contribution is the model
need not look as “realistic” but should promise to deliver some
new insights.

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Resources on “How to do research” (some I uploaded onto
Moodle)

▶ Pischke, 2012
▶ Board and ter-Vehn, 2018
▶ “The Economist’s Craft” by Michael Weisbach, 2021
▶ “How to build an economic model in your spare time” by Hal
Varian, in “Passion and Craft: Economists at work”, 1997

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Academic Conduct: Plagiarism quiz (online)

▶ Location: HKU Moodle

▶ Quiz will be announcement on the common Moodle website.
▶ Example of a past announcement:
▶ The common Moodle website is now available to students.
The plagiarism quiz will start at 9am on March ** (Monday)
and ends at 5pm on ** (Friday), which is shown on the
Moodle website. Students can try as many times as they want
until they get full marks, which is 10. After that, you will get a
report on the grades of each individual in your subclass.

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Conducting Group Research

▶ Is doing group research a good idea?

▶ Pros?
▶ Cons?
▶ Normally, it is a good idea to work with someone else if it’s
your first research
▶ How to find someone to work together?
▶ Good vibe (so the whole thing will be fun)
▶ Share similar research interests
▶ Can complement each other in terms of knowledge and skills
▶ Needs mutual respect.
▶ You should form teams of 2 or 3.

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Group Matching

Time to find your ally!

Send me an email naming all your group members!

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