Course info

Description

The course aims at providing students with the practical knowledge to conduct empirical analysis in the field of international trade policy. Students will be provided by few tutorial sessions as a preparation classes for empirical trade analysis.

The tutorials will be dedicated to cover the following topics:

• Gravity model
• Data availability for empirical trade analysis
• Data reshaping tools in Stata

(Student’s attendance at the tutorials is not obligatory)

The presentations of the research project (two presentations together) will account 50% of the final grade of the course.

Grading Scheme

Presentation of research topics - 20%

Presentation of research findings - 80%

 Deadlines

Presentation of research topics – April 9, 2021

Presentation of research findings - April 30, 2021

 Methods of analysis

Student of the University of Warsaw should use econometric techniques, while Erasmus students are free to conduct any kind of analysis.  For instance, Erasmus students are free to run some small (Partial Equilibrium) calibrations (you can find some simulations by Joseph Francois at: http://www.i4ide.org/people/~francois/Models/index.htm) or data analysis in graphs. Erasmus students may also follow a specific model and a specific policy measure introduced at the lectures to conduct the analysis for the selected countries (country groups).

 

Suggested Materials

Students should follow the literature related to their research topic specifically.

Practical materials related to estimation of gravity model and employing panel data in econometric analysis could be found at the following web-site provided by the WTO and UNCTAD: https://vi.unctad.org/tpa/index.html

The development of the literature on the gravity models are well summarized by Head & Mayer (see below). Students working on gravity equation are strongly encouraged to review this paper to better specify empirical equation and to choose relevant estimator.

Head, K., and T. Mayer (2013): Gravity Equations: Toolkit, Cookbook,Workhorse, vol. 4 of Handbook of International Economics. Elsevier.

Structure of the research project

Presentation of research topics should:

·       Justify selected topic and motivate research;

·       Present one slide on literature around the selected topic;

·       Present research hypotheses;

·       Present estimation equation;

·       Present selected methodology to conduct empirical analysis;

·       Present data sources and verify data availability.

Presentation of research findings

·       Justify selected topic and motivate research;

·       Present one slide on literature around the selected topic;

·       Present research hypotheses;

·       Present estimation equation;

·       Present selected methodology to conduct empirical analysis;

·       Present data sources;

·       Present  estimation results – estimation results should be presented in nice, easy to follow tables ( no print screens are allowed);

·       Present conclusions - students need to find reasoning behind the obtained results: besides singling out statistically significant variables, students should discuss the economic/political implications of their empirical results in the context of international trade policy.

 Teambuilding

Students should work in pairs of two or three students. The idea is to combine the different types of knowledge in an efficient way. For instance the teamwork of two students, when one of them is strong in econometrics and the other one in the literature review could provide a very good research project.