1 Course Overview

This course is designed for students seeking to explore the quantitative research process and learn the skills used by economists to produce fascinating and high quality research. By the end of the course, students will have developed a research project that investigates a question within economics. This will include understanding economic theories and using them to frame their research, preparing and analyzing data to answer research questions, and documenting the research process so that others may understand their results.

Past student-research teams have examined questions such as…

1.1 Day-to-Day in ECN 310

Students will learn the research process through readings and short lectures as well as through hands-on workshops and challenges. Prior to class, students will engage with readings as a primer to the activities for that day. Brief reading quizzes (completed on Blackboard before class) will ask about the main ideas and important details from the reading. During class, Professor Buzard will briefly review the ideas from the readings and then jump into a short lecture on the related skills students will learn that day. Then, class-time is given for hands-on engagement with the topics, and students will receive support from Professor Buzard, the teaching assistant, and each other.

Only about a dozen students will be in one section of ECN 310, which gives Professor Buzard and the TA the ability to support students as they learn research skills. Other than readings, work outside of class time will consist of completing assignments from the in-class workshops (if necessary), and working on the team research project.

1.2 Course Project and Skills

The best way to learn how to do research is to do it yourself! At the beginning of the course, students will learn about potential research questions posed by economists at Syracuse University and then will team up with classmates to form a research team that seeks to answer their chosen question. The team’s work will culminate in a research report that describes the context of the topic they studied, how they performed their analysis, and what their results mean for the issues they studied and for future research on the topic. The team will also detail the steps they took to achieve their final results so that other researchers can replicate their results and understand their decisions.

Once students complete this course, they will have expanded their skills so that they can perform research at a higher level in the future. ECN 310 provides a foundation for those who intend to be engaged with research in their academic and professional careers.

1.2.1 Research Tools

  • GitHub is the software used in this course that helps us communicate, document, and organize the research process. We can store files with code and data for our own records and to share with others. We can discuss the latest updates in our research. We can also keep track of the research process. When we write something on GitHub, we use Markdown, which means we use short commands to format our writing. See more in the GitHub section.
  • LaTeX is a tool that helps you write documents, especially ones with math and figures, in a neatly formatted way. Instead of clicking buttons to make text bold or add equations like in Word or Docs, you type short commands that tell the computer how you want the document to look. You give the computer instructions for how your paper should appear, and then it puts the whole document together for you. See more in the LaTeX section.
  • Stata is a powerful app with a user-friendly interface that is used widely by researchers in economics, sociology, political science, public health, and more. We will use it extensively for data management, analysis, and visualization. See more in the Stata section.

1.2.2 Technical Skills

  • Coding just means giving the computer a set of instructions using a specific language so it can do something for you — like analyze data, make a graph, or format a document. In programs like Stata, R, GitHub, and LaTeX, you’ll write these instructions in a structured way the computer understands.
  • Students will work with data analytics tools to explore their research question. These include statistical tests, data visualizations, and more. We use code to produce these results, but students will also learn what these tools are and when to use them.
  • Comprehending economic research is critical for framing a research question and hypothesizing what relationships may exist between the factors being studied. Students will learn how to read economics papers, identify economic theories, and use those theories to guide their research.
  • Academic writing, especially when working with data, is different from the types of writing students may be familiar with. Students will learn how to carefully describe their data and analysis in the context of the research question and in the context of previous findings related to their project.

1.2.3 Soft Skills

  • Presentation: There will be many opportunities for students to present parts of their research to classmates, Professor Buzard, and the TA. This gives students the opportunity to receive feedback on their work and to hone their presentation skills.
  • Collaboration & teamwork: The research project in this course takes place in a team setting. Research teams consist of three to four students that will work together to answer their research question and document their findings.

1.3 Course Purpose and Benefits

Now, you should have a better understanding of what you will learn and accomplish in ECN 310: Economic Research in Practice. This course will prepare you to be successful in future research endeavors and courses, as well as education beyond past college.

Syracuse Economics

This course prepares students to succeed in the methods courses they will encounter later in the Economics degree. B.S. students will be ready for ECN 521 and 522, which emphasize applied research techniques in econometrics. B.A. students will be prepared for ECN 422, which focuses on foundational econometric methods suited to the (non-research) B.A. track. Students who aspire to pursue research in Economics (including the Distinction Program and Honors Thesis) are recommended to follow the B.S. path.

Economics Degrees Beyond Undergrad

Students interested in graduate school will be better prepared by learning about the fundamentals of research. Most graduate degrees–most Master’s and all Phds–involve a significant research portion. By taking ECN 310, you can build up research skills that will be helpful in graduate school. You can also build your research portfolio so that graduate schools can see you have research experience. If you are interested in earning a Master’s degree in Economics, Syracuse University offers an accelerated program with the B.S. track. More on this here.

Research Careers

Many careers, within economics and beyond, rely on research. ECN 310 will give you many transferable skills, like working with data and communicating your findings, that are critical for succeeding in a career that involves research–in any industry. You will be given hands-on experience to learn these skills, and by the end of the course you will have a paper that demonstrates your skillset.

1.4 What You Can Do Now

ECN 310 is designed to be accessible to students with zero coding or research experience. That means you are not required or expected to do anything with this information before starting ECN 310.

At the same time, here we provide some resources so you can get comfortable with the tools we use in ECN 310 if you want to. The easiest first step is to learn about Markdown (instructions here), which is a set of commands we will use to format text on Github.

You could also put your Markdown skills to work by accessing Github (instructions here), although you may not see most of the benefits of Github until we start using it for collaboration once class starts.

If you like that and want to go a step further, you can try out LaTeX (instructions here). LaTeX does a lot of the same things as Markdown, but it can do much more. That is why we use it to write the final papers! These commands are a little more complex than ones used on GitHub.

Another possibility is to start experimenting with Stata. There are instructions (here) to get access to the app, and (here) to follow the textbook we’ll use this fall to try out some of what Stata can do.