Final Exam of “GR5250: Industrial Organization”
Due: May 6, 2025 (by 11:59PM ET)
Individual response and submission by each student; Total points: 20 points
Your final exam assignment consists of a research proposal. The goal of this research proposal is to give you the opportunity to think about and thus “jump” start on working on a topic that you could “ideally” work on as a research project of yours.
Please organize your research proposal such that this attempts to answer the questions listed below. Even if you do not have a fully developed idea, it is important to show that you have thought about each question seriously. Thus, if you get stuck on answering a particular question, try to describe what you got stuck on and the potential alternative solutions you considered. Please mark on your proposal where you answer for each ofthe I. through IV. starts (no need to mark down questions a, b, c etc.). Please refrain from using ChatGPTor similar tools. The graders will be subtracting 50% of the points whenever they suspect your submission is written by any LLM.
The length of your research proposal cannot exceed 2 pages, single-spaced, Times New Roman with font size 11.
I. Research Question [3 points]
a. What is the question your research project is trying to answer?
b. Why is this question interesting and important?
c. Why is it important for an economist to answer this question?
d. How does answering this question contribute to the existing economics literature?
e. Does your question contribute to a public policy debate?
II. Institutional Setting [2 points]
a. What is the institutional setting your research question will focus on (e.g., a country; a certain industry; a particular market)?
b. Are there papers in the economics literature that study this setting? List a couple of examples and specify the questions they examine and the setting in which they examine this question?
c. Could a similar question be asked in other settings? Would your answer to your research question and the method via which you study this be applicable to other settings as well?
III. Data [5 points]
a. What data exists, or could be collected, to answer your question?
b. Are there any specific steps you should take to collect or obtain this data? Describe these steps and methods used (e.g., experiment; scraping a website; applying/requesting from a government agency).
c. Would building the dataset for your analysis require processing the raw data you collect? Will constructing this dataset involve, for instance, linking datasets or other cleaning steps? Specify these.
IV. Research Design [10 points]
a. Would you use a structural or a reduced form approach? Why?
b. If you are using a structural model, describe the main building blocks ofthis and:
i. Specify the key assumptions of the model and whether these would credibly reflect the institutional setting (i.e., empirical facts) you aim to capture by your model.
ii. Specify identification assumptions, and in particular highlight those that could be the least credible or questionable, and explain how you expect these would impact your results.
iii. Describe the estimation approach you would use, and how you would implement this estimation.
iv. Specify the key parameters you will need to estimate.
v. Describe the counterfactuals you would need to run to answer your research question.
c. If you are using a reduced form. approach, describe:
i. Type of the approach (e.g., IV, DiD, regression discontinuity design);
ii. Identification strategy and any assumptions you need to make for this identification.
iii. Estimation method used.
iv. How you will calculate standard errors.
v. Robustness checks.
vi. Describe how you are planning to use the model and the effect you estimate through your model to answer your research questions.