2.
Introduction and Research Question
- Explain why the thesis topic is of interest (1-2 paragraphs)
o (For instance, think of the following questions: Why is this research question
important to study? What problems would it solve? To whom is it important?)
- Briefly describe one or two important papers on the topic (1 paragraph)
- Formulate the research question. Include any relevant definitions. (1-2 paragraph)
- Briefly describe the approach used to answer the question and include a preview of results
(eg. using data, building an extension on a mathematical model, etc.) (1 paragraph)
- Set-up of the rest of thesis (1 paragraph)
3. Literature review
- Aim to include the most important works that are relevant to your research question.
Relevant questions to answer in this section are: What does the existing research say about
this question? What does a particular study add to this research?
4. Institutional framework
If important, explain the institutional setting relevant to your study. For instance, how
institutions and laws in a particular country may affect behavior of individuals (e.g. when
you write about pensions in the Netherlands, describe the Dutch pension system. When you
write about deforesting in Brazil, explain whether there are any legal actions undertaken
by the Brazilian government when someone commits such a crime).
38, 48, 65
5. Method
- Empirical/experimental theses: Describe the empirical/experimental method in sufficient
detail:
o Explain the estimation method (OLS, LPM, FE, RE, etc.)
o Formulate the key regression equation and pay attention to the subscripts (i.e Ui is
utility function U of individual i).
o Explain the regression in words. What do all the symbols in the regression equation
mean?
o Formulate a hypothesis on the key variable of interest you want to estimate.
6. Data description and Descriptive analysis (Empirical/Experimental theses:)
- Mention the dataset you use and which variables of this dataset you use.
- Describe in words (not code!) the data cleaning process.
- Provide a table of summary statistics. Describe in words what we see in this table. Don’t
forget to mention the units and number of observations.
- If necessary, clarify the definition of variables.
- If possible, provide a figure (bar chart, graph, etc.) that could reveal something
interesting/useful regarding the research question of interest.
7. Results
- (Empirical/Experimental theses:) Provide a regression table and interpret the results clearly.
Include both quantitative and qualitative (sign, significance) interpretation for the important
variables.
- A regression table should look as follows (note these are all made up numbers. No precise
regression is specified here as we are only concerned with how the table should look)
(table)
Checklist for a table:
- Variable names in first column
- Add one or a group of control variables per column and explain in words below the table how
this changes the main coefficient of interest.
- Add one row with (adjusted) R-squared.
- Add one row with number of observations.
- Small text below table explaining: 1) what the regression is about and what the dependent
variable is, 2) how standard errors are calculated, and 3) what the stars (*) indicate.
8. Robustness analysis (Empirical/Experimental theses:)
- Describe in this section any further analyses that were carried out to check the robustness of
the main results. Discuss with your supervisor on possible robustness checks.
- (Note that this could all be moved to the appendix if necessary)
9. Discussion
- Analyze the findings critically with respect to the hypothesis stated at the beginning and the
literature review.
- (Empirical/Experimental theses:) Explain whether your regression may have problems with
omitted variable bias, self-selection issues (i.e. violation of random sample).
- Explain the applicability/limitations of the research results.
- Explain whether your results have any (new) policy implication
10. Conclusion
- Provide a short summary of the main results of the paper and its implications (no new
information, no discussion of literature).
11. References
