Is a Thesis Important?

The Introduction should be among the last parts of the thesis for you to compose. It answers these questions: Why is your thesis important to readers? Supply here reasons why your thesis topic is interesting, relevant, important, fascinating. Why should readers care? What is your thesis? State your thesis in one sentence, in as precise but also as simple terms as possible (not in a simplistic way, but not in obscure terms readers may not understand). [Your thesis should be a statement about the relation between at least two economic variables.] What is the question your thesis is supposed to be answering? How do you argue your thesis? Why is your thesis plausible or correct or valid? How are you proceeding to make your case? What well-established facts are you invoking to make your case? If you are not referring to well-established facts, how are you establishing the facts that you invoke in arguing your case? What primary data do you use to derive the facts invoked in your thesis? Quickly summarize the facts here. Also describe briefly the procedures or methods you used in analyzing the primary data. What well-known economic theory or model are you using to argue your case? Then state the theory or model that you are using as your framework. If it is well known, then refer a well-known work (book or article) in which the reader can find a detailed description of the economic theory or model. If it’s not a well-known theory, then describe it very briefly here. (You’ll have a chance to describe it in greater detail below.) How does your thesis relate to other works in the field? No details here, just a general sense of the location of your thesis in the field or topic; how it relates to what other people have done before you. How is your thesis structured or organized? Summarize here the content of each of the chapters that follow. If you use data or facts established by other authors, then you may want to use a chapter to (1) review the literature on the topic and (2) describe these data and facts in some detail. Another chapter should describe the theoretical framework or model that you use in arguing your thesis. If the model or theory is well-known, you do not need to offer much detail, just the references. If you analyze the data yourself, then you should have a chapter describing the methods or procedures (e.g. regression analysis) that you used. Again, if the methods are well-known and widely used, then you don’t need to provide much detail, just references. Only if you are proposing a novel method of data analysis, or something that it is very special about what you’re doing, you’ll need to offer sufficient detail for a diligent reader to be able to replicate your steps and procedures, and get the same results as you. Your results and your discussion of such results, in detail, should go in another chapter. 2. Chapter 2 Write this chapter at the very beginning. This is the chapter in which you provide a review of the literature on the topic or question you’re trying to answer with your thesis (section 2.1) and describe your data set or sets (section 2.2), in particular: • their sources, • data dimensions (sizes of your data tables: how many variables and how many observations or cases are there in your tables? Or, if you don’t analyze data sets, the facts that you use to support your thesis, the sources or detailed references from where those facts are drawn, etc. Note that these facts have to meet certain standards of rigor -- e.g. they have to be supplied by an authoritative source or author. No crackpot stuff from websites with obscure agendas. Why is this chapter (with a section on data description and another section on literature review) necessary? Because your thesis is an argument or case you’re trying to make in answer to your research question. You want to make sure your argument is persuasive. Your answer can only be derived from (1) facts and (2) logical argument. In turn, the facts (events in the world that have a certain degree of objectivity, i.e. that do not depend on your own personal perception or opinion, but that many people “see” and agree that they exist) can only come from these possible places: 1. Your own observation or observations of phenomena in the world, which is unlikely in the case of an economics thesis, because economics is about social phenomena related to markets, prices, income, productivity, etc. Social phenomena means phenomena that results from the behavior or activity of crowds, of many people. Therefore, it is unlikely that you yourself do the observations directly. Chances are you go to a data source (e.g. a government agency like the Bureau of Labor Statistics or the Bureau of Economic Analysis) and then examine the data the source supplies. To examine the data, you need to use proper methods -- e.g. statistical inference, etc. 2. The work done by other people, in which case you have to provide detailed reference of this work -- cite it or refer it properly. That’s about facts. As far as logical argument is concerned, typically “we stand in the shoulders of giants” -- to paraphrase Isaac Newton. That is, we rely on the kind of logical frameworks or theories that other people have developed -- in our case economic theories or models developed by reputable economists. These models can be general or more specifically geared to our particular topic or question. You will describe the theoretical framework you chose in the next chapter. Here, you need to describe and summarize briefly the works (books, articles, etc.) that more contributed to your own understanding of the matter, and to your own answer to the research question. Here, you are trying to convince the readers that you have done your “homework” and studied the main works in the topic -- that you are well aware of these works, of what these authors before you claim or have concluded. You need to summarize here at least twelve (12) works (books, articles, reports, etc.) that have helped you most in your thesis. If you do the bibliographic review required in the course, then you will have no problem composing you literature review. Refer to Charles Lipson’s guide on the specifics of this. 1. Section 2.1 This can be your section on the literature review. For example: Smith (1776) argues that the division of labor is the main source of productivity growth, and that the extent of the division of labor depends on the extent of the market. Keynes (1936) emphasizes the failure of markets to properly coordinate the investment spending decisions of entrepreneurs in the long run. In turn, Huato (2009), Tabrizi (2010), and Quick (2012) fail to recognize the importance of investment spending in the expansion of markets in the developing countries. Then, in the References section below, you have to include proper reference of each of the authors and works listed and summarized above. 2. Section 2.2 This is the section devoted to a description of your data and their sources. 3. Chapter 3 Write this immediately after your chapter 2 draft. In this chapter you describe your theoretical framework or model, and/or the specific procedures that you use to analyze your data sets. Rule: If a method or approach is well-known, you only need to provide the reference. If you twist or adapt the method a little to suit your needs, then you have to describe in some detail the twist or adaptation you add to it. If you develop your own way of examining the data, then you have to provide enough detail for a reader to follow on your steps and replicate your results. Keep it all tight and simple. A theoretical framework or model is a statement about how variables are related. For example: Other things constant, the higher the legal minimum wage of workers in a community, the greater the level of economic activity and overall economic prosperity in such community. Even though a higher minimum wage increases labor costs affecting above all small businesses in the area, the higher labor costs are more than offset by the resulting increase in spending and business activity in the community, given that the better paid workers have a high propensity to spend their wages locally. If the chapter has sections, then they should go like this: 1. Section 3.1 If a section needs (at least two) subsections, then it goes like this: 1. Subsection 3.1.1 Whatever goes here. 2. Subsection 3.1.2 Whatever goes here. 2. Section 3.2 The stuff of section 3.2, whatever it may be. 4. Chapter 4 Working on this chapter after you have completed the drafts of chapters 2 and 3. This is a crucial chapter in your thesis. Here you lay out the results of your work, your answer to the research question. Here, you present the results of your analysis of the data or facts. You also discuss these results, the implications of those results, etc. 1. Section 4.1 In case you need to organize your results into at least two sections. 2. Section 4.2 The stuff of the second section of your results. If chapter 4 becomes very large -- because the results of your work and, therefore, your argument becomes longer, and you want to support your argument with more and more information -- then you can split the material into chapters 4, 5, ... etc. For example, if your thesis is about the comparison between China and the U.S.’s processes of economic development, then chapter 4 can present the results on China, chapter 5 does the same on the U.S., and chapter 6 does a synthesis or wrap-up of the comparison and contrast of the two cases. Another example: If your thesis is about the economic history of the state of New York in the last 50 years, chapter 4 can cover the first 30-40 years and chapter 5 can be devoted to the last 10-20 years. If by mid semester you don’t feel like you have enough material to write this chapter and more, then you need to go back to first base -- and do more reading and reflecting on your research question. Remember: When you read, you have to separate what others write from your own reflections and ideas. Every time you read something from another author, interrogate what you read: Does it make sense to you? Can you refute the argument or sow some doubt in it? Can you make the author’s argument stronger than the author himself? Perhaps you can extend the argument in another direction. It is by doing this interrogation that you develop your own ideas and thesis -- your own answer to your research question. Bottom line: By mid semester, your problem should be to compress or abbreviate the material into your thesis, because you have too much material. Your problem should not be that you don’t have enough material (drawn from others or from your own brain) to write these chapters. 5. Conclusions The Conclusions are not a mere repetition of your thesis or results or the methods you used to support your thesis. Yes, you may briefly restate your thesis. But then you should also explore other angles not discussed in the other parts of your thesis, potential future work following up on your results, weaknesses of your work that you could only figure out after you did all your work, and how you could go about improving on that work, etc. Then you just stop. You’re done! References                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

Sample Solution