Download Replication Assignment: Instructions

Replication Assignment: Instructions
Ian M. Schmutte
ECON 8410: Graduate Labor Economics
Fall 2016
Objective
This assignment has two objectives. First, replication is a very useful research tool.
When you are new to a data source, estimation strategy, or computer program,
replication is a great way to learn since the original research provides a target. For
instance, when I started reseach on the minimum wage, my first step was to replicate
estimates of the minimum wage elasticity in the CPS reported by Burkhauser, Couch,
and Wittenburg (2000). Second, replication is an important part of the scientific
method. In economics in particular, the ability to reproduce the results reported in a
paper is an important, but neglected, part of research. By attempting to reproduce
existing research results, you will make a marginal contribution to the economics
profession, while developing an appreciation for, and the skills needed to, generate
reproducible research.
Assignment
Your should select an article that used publicly-available data and attempt to replicate the results of the analysis. Your article should deal with labor economics in some
capacity. You should also choose an article for which a replication archive already
exists – that is, an article for which the authors have made their code and data available. The article you choose should use only data which are, in principle, publicly
accessible, such as the Current Population Survey. Do not choose articles for which
the authors collected their own data (like Camerer et al. on taxi drivers), or articles
for which access to the data is restricted. You should also select your article from
one of the top journals in economics or labor economics. These include top general
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interest journals and field journals. Finally, look up the article on Google Scholar,
Web of Science, RePec, or EconLit to get a citation count. The article should have
at least 200 citations unless it was published recently.
Please send me a list of at least three potential articles by Friday September 26. I
will help you narrow it down from there. It will be wise to make this exercise overlap
with your paper proposal.
Replication Tasks
To complete this assignment, you must submit a write-up along with an archive of
all code and data you used for the replication. The write-up should be no more
than 12 pages, double-spaced. This page limit does not include references, tables,
or figures. In the write-up, you should outline the goal of the original paper. Then,
describe the data together with any sample selection restrictions the authors used.
Next, describe the basic empirical method. Finally describe your efforts to replicate
the results. Your replications should include, at a minimum, summary statistics
describing the data, and any tables/figures characterizing main results.
Highlight key decisions made by the authors (how they selected observations,
removed outliers, etc) and whether results were sensitive to those assumptions. Also
describe and estimate one model you think the authors should have included. Explain
why they should have included it. You can include as many figures and tables as you
need.
To conduct the replication activities above, you should proceed without using the
replication archive provided by the authors. This means you need to get the raw
data and write estimation code on your own. Then compare your results with the
results obtained when using the data and code provided in the replication archive.
Add a section to your write-up that characterizes any discrepancies you discover in
the replication archive.
Timeline
1. Submit list of potential replication papers by 5pm Friday September 23
2. Submit table of descriptive statistics comparing your sample to the original
sample: Friday October 7.
3. Submit table comparing your results to original paper: Friday October 14
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4. Final Writeup Due: Friday October 21
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