Writing Homework Help

Research Paper

This Research Paper is meant to teach you a better understanding of economic research and how to conduct economic research on the topics we have been covering in the course.

Step 1:

As you now realize, wealth and inequality is a very serious and widely studies subject. Thomas Piketty’s book has been widely read and criticized, including the data that he collected and used in this book. In response to some of the criticism, there is a recent paper published in support of his work. The link to the paper is (also found in Pages in “Semester Paper” Tab):

http://gabriel-zucman.eu/files/SaezZucman2014.pdf

Please read the paper or at least the summary (paper gives you more explanation on the data you will be working with):

http://equitablegrowth.org/research/exploding-weal…

Step 2:

The data for the above paper is available online:

http://gabriel-zucman.eu/uswealth/

Step 3:

Look through the data and come up with a research question that you can answer using this data. This does not have to be complicated; I want you to have experience writing a research paper where you use real data. You have read a lot for this class so coming up with the topic should be easy; the topic should be related to the course and you can use what you learned in the course in writing the paper. Please feel free to ask my opinion of your selected topic, however, I am not going to pick a topic for you.

Step 4:

Write a 6-10 page research paper, (excluding references, graphs, and tables – you may and should have some of these, especially citation and references).

General Outline: Introduction

Includes your question and reasoning for your selected question. Provide some background understanding of why this question is interesting and important.

Background Literature

This does not have to belong but spend some time looking up what other people have written about your specific question. It’s fine if you find papers with very similar questions, this does not mean that your selected topic is bad, actually the opposite. Write out a general outline of what others have written and how it is related to your paper; don’t just provide short summaries of their work – not the idea.

Analysis and Results

Talk about what variables you will use from the data set to answer questions. Talk about the variables (refer to their paper). Why are you using these variables and how will they answer the question you selected. Do your analysis, this could be as simple as doing averages or correlations, but be creative and most important due analysis that will answer your question. Talk about your results.