1. Capstone

2. Capstone assignment Objective: students learn to
identify an empirical research question
relate it to what is already known
analyze it using econometric tools
present their analysis.

3. What is assessed?
Report, length 5 – 10 pages.
Presentation

4. What is a good topic? Any topic you find interesting...
Any topic you can convince others to be important.

5. Key ingredients – Introduction
Research question – be specific.
Motivation of the research question – why should one bother?
What is already known – any contribution is relative to what we already know  establish prior art.

6. Key ingredients – Data & Theory sections
Source(s)
Variables & definitions (are you in line with the literature?).
5. Economic theory
What is your hypothesis and where does it come from?
Don’t necessarily need a model, but need a theoretical argument.

7. Key ingredients - Analysis
7. Econometric model
Your empirical specification
What is the key source of variation (experiment, law change, DiD).
Results
Report results
Economic and statistical significance
Robustness
Potential sources of misinterpretation
Conclusions
What did we learn?

8. Practicalities vis-a-vis data
Check your data:
plots of variables
visual inspection of the data
mins and maxes
measurement units.

9. Other practicalities Be careful to correctly cite your sources.
Mark direct citations.
Check your reference list.
See Tomas Dvorak (2007) An Annotated Sample Paper in Econometrics, The Journal of Economic Education, 38:1, , DOI: /JECE

10. Earlier topics Bitcoin and financial markets
Foreign direct investment (FDI) and host country growth
Price of electricity and household consumption
Determinants of Finnish firms’ FDI
Student satisfaction, hours studied, and free weekends
Energy consumption and economic growth
Higher education and income in post 1970 Finland

11. Earlier topics Okun’s law in Finland and the EMU area
ECB interest rates and EU economic growth
Institutions and economic growth in developing countries

12. About teams Team size 2-3. If still students without teams
 form new team
 join existing 2 student team