Undergraduate research in the Dartmouth Economics Department

ABSTRACT

One of the key components to the undergraduate research enterprise at Dartmouth is the recognition that learning to do research requires both directed instruction and learning by doing. The economics faculty have tailored a fruitful undergraduate research program based on this philosophy, and this article describes these efforts while also offering advice to other programs as they strive to involve undergraduates in research.

KEYWORDS:

• Curriculum
• research
• undergraduate

JEL CODE:

• A22

Notes

1. REPEC rankings of U.S. economics departments, https://ideas.repec.org/top/‌top.usecondept.html

2. These projects generally involve using standard data sources provided by the instructor to ask empirical questions. For example, students might be given a dataset of birth outcomes with explanatory variables like smoking by the mother and gestation age. The data typically require some manipulation and cleaning before analysis. Students work in small groups to formulate questions and choose appropriate techniques for their particular question. In this particular example, the instructor also included cigarette taxes in the dataset so that students could potentially employ an IV strategy if they were interested in the impact of smoking on outcomes.

3. There is obviously significant heterogeneity in the Stata skills among students in these classes. The economics department hires undergraduate Stata helpers to assist students in their work. These students hold office hours throughout the term. Typically the Stata assistants are drawn from the group of students writing honors theses.

4. One project that employed a number of students was a randomized trial on the effect of intensive college counseling on college attendance. Student research assistants traveled to high schools around the state to give advice to high school students on applying to college. Follow-up surveys were conducted to see if this changed college attendance behavior.

5. [1] Jagelka, T. 2013. Bilateral trade and the Eurozone: Evidence from new member countries. The World Economy 36 (1): 48–63; [2] La, V. 2015. Capitalization of school quality into housing prices: Evidence from Boston Public School District walk zones. Economics Letters 134 (September): 102–6; [3] Zhou, R. Forthcoming. Do low-price guarantees guarantee low prices? Evidence from competition between Amazon and big-box stores. Journal of Industrial Economics.