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ECON2060 Research Proposal
Instructions
Summary of task
The goal of this assessment is to write an original and interesting proposal for a research
project related to behavioural economics. You will come up with your own research question
and describe a practical and feasible method for how you would go about answering it. The
word limit is 1,500 words, which excludes the title page, abstract, tables and figures,
references, and any appendixes. This is a hard word limit, and you will be penalised for
exceeding it. Submission will be through Turnitin.
In addition to the detailed instructions below, please note two mandatory components to the
assessment that were introduced in 2023, and which must be followed by all students:
1. In the Related Literature section, students are required to reference, in a substantial
way, at least one academic journal article that has been published since 2023.
2. In the Method section, students must include at least one table or figure. This could
be a flow chart of the proposed experimental design or data collection process, or a
table of summary statistics on preliminary data. The table or figure must be labelled
and contain a full caption that provides a self-contained explanation of the table
or figure. (“Self-contained” means that a new reader could jump straight to the table
or figure and its caption, and still understand its meaning.)
We have uploaded some examples of high-scoring research proposals from past students.
Please note that some of these assignments were marked using the legacy marking criteria,
and as such did not include the above additional components.
Getting started
Your first step is to decide your topic, and specifically, your research question. For example,
it could be a test of a mainstream economics concept, an extension of a behavioural
economics concept, or the application of a behavioural economics theory to a novel
population or setting (such as a behavioural ‘nudge’). Typically (but not always), a good
question can be rewritten in the form “Does X cause Y?”, where X and Y are some
characteristics or outcomes of interest. Table 1 gives a summary of such rephrasing of the
questions in some of the papers discussed in this course.
There is quite some flexibility with the format of your proposal, and you should not feel
constrained by the guidelines below if you think you can do it better with your particular
topic. These guidelines are there to help improve the quality of your proposal, but if you can
write a high-quality paper in another way, you will not be penalised for unorthodoxy.
Likewise, feel free to include anything in an appendix that is not an appropriate fit in the
main document but that you do refer to in the text, such as specific experiment instructions, a
variable dictionary for an existing dataset, or other background information or material. Most
proposals will not need an appendix, but, seeing as it does not count for your word limit, you
may wish to exploit it for material that is relevant but not critical to your research proposal.
Regardless of your preferred format, however, your structure must include the following
sections:
1. Title page
2. Abstract
3. Introduction
4. Related literature (with mandatory recent journal article reference)
5. Method (with mandatory inclusion of a table or figure)
6. Conclusion
7. References
You may add other sections or subheadings for readability if you wish, but be careful of your
word limit.
Details of each section
1. Title page
Your title page should contain your proposal’s Title, your name and student number, date of
submission, your abstract, and an accurate word count (which excludes the title page,
abstract, tables and figures, references, and any appendixes).
2. Abstract
The abstract (placed on your title page) should be a four-sentence summary of your entire
research proposal, so make sure it includes what you believe are the absolute key ingredients
of your paper. The structure and content are flexible, but a typical format would be:
• First sentence: jump right into the topic or research question. (In some cases, you
might prefer a first sentence of motivation instead.) It would typically start with
something like “This research proposal…” followed by what it is you are proposing to
investigate/answer.
• Second sentence: State what the contribution is of your research proposal. What has
the previous literature proposed or found, and what will your proposal contribute to
fill the gaps in our knowledge? E.g. “While previous literature has found that/assumes
that/predicts that […], this proposal contributes to our knowledge of this issue by
testing whether […]”
• Third sentence: This should be about how you plan to answer your question. State
your method (or ‘empirical’ approach). E.g.: “I propose…” followed by the method,
e.g. “I propose to run a lab experiment in which I will test how changing X affects
people’s behaviour towards Y.” If there is a treatment/explanatory variable and an
outcome variable (and there should be!), or details of a specific context or sample that
is being tested, they should be clearly specified.
• Fourth sentence: Add any remaining critical details of the method, and/or include
the bare minimum of your analysis plan: what do you plan to test, how do you plan to
test it (e.g. a t-test between control and treatment groups, or a linear regression on
your data), and what conclusions will you draw depending on these results? E.g. “I
will run a t-test to determine whether there are differences in [Y] between the
treatment and control groups, and if the treatment group’s [Y] is significantly larger,
this would support the hypothesis that […]”.
3. Introduction
This section should be started on a new page to your title page/abstract, and should be short,
typically 1-3 paragraphs. Provide a motivation for the broad topic and why you think the
reader should be interested in it, and introduce any relevant economic theories (mainstream or
behavioural). You may wish to highlight where there is currently a gap in our knowledge
(which your research proposal will aim to fill). But don’t dwell for too long on setting up the
context; make sure your research question clearly appears by the end of the first paragraph. If
different school of academic thought predict different answers to your research question, you
may then want to spend 1-2 sentences outlining these predictions, and/or to briefly introduce
which method you are proposing to use to test these predictions.
In terms of your writing, try to avoid flowery language, embellishments, or ambiguities.
Write clearly and matter-of-factly. Academic papers are often considered ‘dry’ in style,
which can be true; the purpose of an academic paper is not to entertain with the writing, but
to convey the material as clearly as possible; how ‘interesting’ an academic paper is will be
typically judged on the worthiness of the topic and the quality of the research.
Here are some examples of introductions of behavioural economics papers that broadly
follow the structure that is expected of you.
Most children think of their potential future occupations in terms of what they will
be (firemen, doctors, etc.), not merely what they will do for a living. Many adults
also think of their job as an integral part of their identity. At least in the United
States, “What do you do?” has become as common a component of an
introduction as the anachronistic “How do you do?” once was, yet identity, pride,
and meaning are all left out from standard models of labour supply. This omission
is understandable: identity, pride, and meaning are difficult to quantify and are
thus hard to incorporate into the empirically driven field of labour economics.
In this article, we focus on minimal perceived meaning by the labour producing
force and investigate how it influences labour supply in controlled laboratory
experiments. Our intention is to compare situations with no meaning (or as low a
level of meaning as we can create) with situations having some small additional
meaning. Thus, our investigation will focus not on occupations highly endowed
with meaning, like medicine or teaching, but on the least-common denominator of
meaningfulness that is shared by virtually all compensated activities.
– Ariely, Kamenica and Prelec (2008)
Neoclassical models include several fundamental assumptions. While most of the
main tenets appear to be reasonably met, the basic independence assumption,
which is used in most theoretical and applied economic models to assess the
operation of markets, has been directly refuted in several experimental settings
(Knetsch 1989; Kahneman, Knetsch, and Thaler 1990; Bateman et al. 1997).
These experimental findings have been robust across unfamiliar goods, such as
irradiated sandwiches, and common goods, such as chocolate bars, with most
authors noting behaviour consistent with an endowment effect. Such findings have
induced even the most ardent supporters of neoclassical theory to doubt the
validity of certain neoclassical modelling assumptions. Given the notable
significance of the anomaly, it is important to understand whether the value
disparity represents a stable preference structure or if consumers’ behaviour
approaches neoclassical predictions as market experience intensifies.
In this study, I gather primary field data from two distinct markets to test whether
individual behaviour converges to the neoclassical prediction as market
experience intensifies.
– List (2003)
Charitable contributions in the United States were estimated to exceed $300
billion annually in 2007, 2008, and 2009. This is roughly $1000 for each person
in the US, a not insignificant amount. Given the reliance of charitable
organizations on these contributions, it is quite important to try to identify and
implement effective methods for enhancing the revenue received. There has been
some recent work on suggested donations to public radio, and some study of the
notion of paying-what-you-want as a pricing device. We extend both of these
notions to fund-raising in a restaurant venue, exploring whether the suggested
amount (if any) mattered with respect to the contributions raised.
Businesses like grocery stores and restaurants often ask customers (typically
through having a donation jar at the check-out register) to donate money to a
certain charity organization. One often sees a suggested certain donation level.
But there has been little by way of systematic and controlled study regarding how
the suggested donation level affects behaviour in this environment. Our research
question is to attempt to determine the optimal amount to suggest, or whether it is
better to make no suggestion.
– Charness and Cheung (2013)
Improving energy efficiency reduces costs for firms and mitigates CO2 emissions.
This is particularly important in the transportation sector, which is responsible
for approximately 25%–28% of greenhouse gas emissions in Western
industrialized countries (cf. EEA, 2018, EPA, 2018). Fuel accounts for around
40% of variable costs for transportation companies. We conducted an analysis to
determine if loss aversion helps motivate drivers to drive in a fuel-efficient
manner. If successful, this could reduce fuel consumption by about 22%.
– Hoffman and Thommes (2020)
Nudging has been found to affect human behavior across a wide range of
domains. In particular, it has been used to improve the payment morale of citizens
when they owe money to public institutions. While the traditional view (Allingham
and Sandmo, 1972) considered citizens’ tax compliance as a matter of audits and
harsh fines, it is by now well understood that tax morale is also a very important
factor for compliance (Kirchler, 2007). In fact, nudging has been frequently
applied to improve tax morale, even though with mixed results. In the realm of
taxation, taxpayers are very likely to anticipate, however, that the government will
ultimately enforce correct tax payments, which is why nudges might have a good
chance to work. In other situations, however, public institutions may not want to
enforce the collection of citizens’ payments for social or ethical reasons. Whether
or not nudging also works in such a setting and whether it can have persistent
effects even after abolishing the nudge again are the key questions of this paper.
– Sutter, Rosenberger and Sutter (2020)