Project
Research Project
A Fact About the World
From an observation to an economic argument
The course project asks students to begin with something they have noticed in the world of work, organizations, or economic life, then build an explanation using economic theory and evidence.
Basic Idea
There is no single assigned research question. Instead, students devise a question inspired by a fact about the world: something observed in news articles, podcasts, videos, social media, personal experience, public data, or another credible source.
The fact should connect to the workplace, organizations, firms, labor markets, or work broadly defined. The project then asks what economic theory helps explain that fact.
What the Project Should Do
Describe a fact about the world and cite the source if it requires one.
Explain why the fact is interesting, puzzling, important, or consequential.
Turn the observation into a research problem and a clear research question.
Connect the problem to concepts such as transaction costs, incomplete contracts, external effects, strategic interaction, rents, or constraints.
Use a model to clarify behavior, constraints, equilibrium, inefficiency, or distributional consequences.
Discuss what evidence or data would help evaluate the argument and connect the project to relevant literature.
Brainstorming Questions
- What are some things I have observed about the world that interest me?
- Do these observations have something to do with workplaces, organizations, or work broadly defined?
- What supporting evidence could I identify?
- If I needed to collect data, how would I do that?
- What makes the fact interesting enough to study?
- Why is the problem significant? What is the answer to "why should I care?"
- How can I connect the fact to economic theory, personnel economics, organizational economics, or social-scientific models of decision-making and strategic interaction?
Scale of the Project
This is not meant to be a PhD-level project. It is an undergraduate research project in an applied microeconomics course. The aim is to show that a fact about the world can be made clearer by economic concepts, models, and evidence.