The structure of the course reflects the above-mentioned goals and is divided in two weeks.
The illustrations used during the lectures are mainly in the domain of monetary economics, financial economics and finance; however, the basic strategy can be applied to any area of research.
The first week presents the research strategy and consists of five lessons.
Lesson 1
The importance of theory for applied research: This lesson is designed to show researchers the importance of economic, finance, and econometric theory is for identifying important research projects and for designing an appropriate research strategy. The importance of these factors is illustrated with a few examples of how researchers obtained the wrong conclusion by not carefully considering these basic factors.
Lesson 2
The importance of institutional detail and market structure: The importance of institutions and market structure for empirical research is illustrated with a few examples of how researchers obtained the wrong conclusion by ignoring this fact. There are aspects of lessons 1 & 2 that overlap.
Lesson 3
What constitutes empirical evidence?: It is well known that empirical analyses never prove anything. Hence, the important question in any empirical analysis is: How strong is the evidence? This lesson covers a variety of topics about what constitutes empirical evidence and discusses how one should evaluate the strength of empirical analyses. The importance of doing so is illustrated with examples of published research that did carefully evaluate the strength of the empirical evidence.
Lesson 4
Be your own referee: Lesson 4 is closely related to Lesson 3 in that it discusses how the research strategy can be applied to one’s own research. This approach is illustrated with a couple of examples of published research.
Lesson 5
When is a research project complete?: It may seem odd but many researchers don’t know how to determine when a research project is complete. Many researchers submit papers for publication well before the research is complete (which leads to many rejections, revisions, and, in many cases, publication in journals of lower quality than where the paper might have been published if the project is complete), while others never submit papers or submit few papers because they never believe the project is complete.
This is the capstone lesson which shows that if you understand the research strategy discussed in the four previous lessons, you should know when a project is ready to submit to a journal for publication.
The second week gives participants an opportunity to use the strategy by finding examples in the literature where researchers have failed to use the strategy. Specifically, the participants will use the weekend between weeks 1 and 2 to find published work or working papers that appear not to have followed the research strategy taught in this course.
The participants will be encouraged to work in groups of 3 or 4. One or two of the best examples will be analyzed by the entire class. Ideally, this exercise will result in some participants writing a paper (or papers) that correct the deficiencies found in these works.
The remaining three days of week two will be devoted to applying the applied research strategy to the research projects of participants. Participants will have an opportunity to present their research projects and the class will discuss various ways that these projects could be improved by following the strategy taught in the class.
Audience:
In essence the course targets all type of participants embarked in analytical works with a strong interest in publishing research-type articles in academic journals.
It is not exclusively directed to Ph.D. holders but having a Masters degree is highly recommended. Therefore, Ph.D. students, young Ph.D. researchers or business analysts working in private company are eligible to the course.
To ensure interaction between the lecturers and the participants, a maximum of 15-25 participants for this two-week programme is envisaged. A selection of participants will be based on their dossier