Writing an Economic Paper

1
Writing an Economic Paper

• Noer Azam Achsani
• Departemen Ilmu Ekonomi FEM
• Program Pascasarjana Manajemen dan Bisnis
• InterCAFE

2
Outline

• Introduction
• Step by Step of Writing Papers
• Some important things

3
Introduction

• Writing paper is fun..!
• Step-by-step of writing papers
• Selecting topics
• Designing and structuring our activities
• Set-up the paper
• The style
• finishing

4
Selecting Topics

• Select the topic yourself
• Originality is the most important thing
• Find something new
• New idea
• Old idea with new angle, new data, new
  methodology
• Important resources
• Journal of Economic Literature
• Journal of Economic Perspectives
• (Applied) Economics Letters, (Applied) Financial
  Letters
• Elsevier, World Publishing, Wiley Interscience,
  Internet resources

5
Designing and structuring our activities

• Find the relevant models
• Data required?
• Other views on the topic?
• Write an abstract
• Problem statements
• Short review of literature
• Description of the research design (model
  testing, empirical etc)
• Contribution of the research
• In this step ? read, read and read the current
  journal and working papers

6
Finding the data

• Macro data
• World Bank, IMF, OECD, ECB, ASEAN, BI, BPS etc
• Micro Data
• Susenas, Podes, IFLS, Banks Data, Own Data

7
Outline of the paper

• Front page (title, authors, affiliations,
  abstract, JEL Classification, keywords)
• Introduction (basic problem, motivation,
  potential benefits, briefly content of the paper)
• Review of the literature (summarize and table of
  previous papers, key concept, inconclusiveness)
• The Data and Model (explain the model clearly,
  the data and sources, descriptive statistics and
  explanations)
• Results and Discussion
• Concluding Remarks
• References

8
Finishing touches

• Check the style (depends on the journal we want
  to submit), consistency, mathematical formula,
  definitions etc
• Completeness and consistence of the references
• Take a rest (1-2 days) and read it again

9
Some important things

• KISS (Keep it so simple)
• Use tables and figures
• Comparative analysis is more advantages
• Use international conferences or seminars as
  entry point (i.e. PBFEA)
• Acknowledgements
• Write our own relevant publication on the
  references
• Do it now or never..!

10
Check again

• Description of the goal
• Originality and the new things from the paper
• Theory, Methods, Data
• Structure and style
• Presentation and participation on the seminars

11
References

• Anonim. 2009. How to Write An Economics Paper?.
  Institute of Economics and Econometrics. The
  University of Groningen. The Netherlands
• Duffy, J. 2009. How to Research and Write an
  Economics Term Paper. Department of Economics,
  The University of Pittsburgh.