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A Guide to Writing in Economics

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A Guide to Writing in Economics A Guide to Writing in Economics Prepared by Paul Dudenhefer, writer and editor at Duke University and former writing tutor for the Department of Economics at Duke University March 2014 ©Paul Dudenhefer A Guide to Writing in Economics Prepared by Paul Dudenhefer, Department of Economics, Duke University Introduction 4 Part I: Writing Itself 1. Writing Is Thinking 6 2. Writing Is Messy 7 3. Writing a Paper—a Good Paper 8 4. The Paper as a Whole 11 5. Six Principles of Clear, Cohesive, and Coherent Writing 12 Part II: Researching Economic Topics 6. Finding a Niche and Making a Contribution 22 7. Locating and Getting a Handle on the Secondary Literature 24 8. Making Economic Arguments 27 Part III: Genres of Economics Writing 9. Empirical Papers 31 10. Theoretical Papers 32 11. Economic History Papers 33 12. History of Economics Papers 34 13. Literature Reviews 34 14. Handbook and Encyclopedia Entries 35 15. Book Reviews 35 2 16. Freakonomics and the Like 35 17. Textbooks 36 Part IV: Writing Economics 18. The Empirical Economics Paper 37 18a. The Organization and Composition of Empirical Papers 37 18b. Describing Your Data and Their Sources 38 18c. Describing Your Model 39 18d. Describing Your Estimation Methods and Techniques 42 18e. Reporting—and Interpreting—Your Results 44 19. Writing Introductions 48 20. Writing the Conclusion 53 21. Writing the Abstract 54 22. Designing Tables 55 23. Writing Literature Reviews 57 24. Writing History of Economics Papers 60 25. Writing Book Reviews 63 26. Writing about Numbers 64 Part V: Final Words 67 Further Reading 68 Appendix: Annotated Table 69 3 Introduction When I tell people I was for several years the writing tutor for an economics department, I am usually met with a surprised reaction. And why not? Most people associate writing with English departments and, only to a slightly lesser extent, with the other disciplines in the humanities; they do not normally associate writing with economics and the other sciences. You may be one of them. You may be asking yourself, What does writing have to do with economics? Well, a lot, as it turns out. Economists, as much or even more than other scholars and analysts, write. Although we may think of economics as involving problem sets or mathematics, the fact remains that the results of economic research are “written up.” Economics articles, especially empirical papers, consist mainly of text, not equations or tables. Assistant economics professors must publish articles to earn tenure; economic staffers at research institutes and other financial organizations write reports and other documents; economists hired as research consultants produce written reports detailing their results; members of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers write reports and briefings. The list could go on. “In talking about the economist’s craft,” says Richard Schmalensee, an economist at MIT, “it is almost impossible to overstate the importance of clear and persuasive writing.” Writing is as much a part of economics as are models and data sets. What follows is a writing manual originally written for the Department of Economics at Duke University. As such, it responds in large part to the writing demands of the undergraduate curriculum at Duke. But it also discusses writing in a more general way, for writing in economics involves a mix of general principles of writing and discipline-specific conventions of writing. Most writing manuals are prescriptive in that they tell writers what they should do: be clear, be concise, and so on. Although the present manual offers some prescriptions, the advice found herein responds mainly to how economist-writers actually 4 write; in that regard the manual is primarily descriptive. The present manual deals mainly with those genres and aspects of economics writing that involve normal prose. It is primarily designed to help students understand how economics essays and papers are constructed and the kinds of information they usually contain. It is less helpful when it comes to such things as constructing models (although writing about models is treated in section 17). The guide is thus stronger in its discussion of empirical papers than in its discussion of theoretical ones. The manual is divided into five parts. The first part, “Writing Itself,” addresses aspects of writing in general; the discussion in that part can apply to writing in any discipline. Part II, “Researching Economic Topics,” tries to explain the scholarly and analytical approach behind economics papers. The third part, “Genres of Economics Writing,” briefly surveys some of the kinds of papers and essays economists write. It is in the fourth part, “Writing Economics,” that the manual homes in on discipline- specific writing. What kinds of information are usually contained in an introduction, and how is it organized? How should one end a paper? And so on. Part V offers concluding remarks. 5 Part I: Writing Itself Let’s not kid ourselves: Writing a paper can be stressful, especially when your object is to get a good grade, which nowadays means no less than an A. To many students, getting an A is less a matter of writing a good paper and more a matter of “figuring out” what the professor or instructor “wants.” As long as writing is graded— and personally, I do not think it should be, but that is a different subject altogether—students will have to write to please an audience of one. But although writing a paper can be stressful, it can also be one of the most intellectually exciting, satisfying, and challenging enterprises you will undertake as a student. It is also a highly complex cognitive and scholarly task that requires planning and a felicitous attitude. Our writing problems often arise when we fail to acknowledge and respect the writing process for the sophisticated, unpredictable, and time-consuming endeavor that it is. In this part of the manual, I will offer a few tips that I hope will help you write a successful paper—or at least help you retain your wits as you go through the process. 1. Writing Is Thinking Let me begin by stressing something that is fundamental to good writing: we write in order to learn what we want to say. To some readers, that may seem obvious; but many inexperienced writers have a different—and I think debilitating—conception of the purpose of writing. For many inexperienced writers, writing, they imagine, is something you do only after you figure out what you want to say. I cannot think of a single attitude that is more antithetical to the writing process. The attitude is particularly prevalent in the sciences, including economics. “Let me get my results first,” I often hear graduate students say, “and then I’ll ‘write them up.’” Rather than seeing writing as a final step in the research 6 process, I ask you to see it as part and parcel of the research process from the very start. I ask you to consider that writing is thinking. The economist Deirdre McCloskey, in her provocative short guide Economical Writing, explains the idea nicely. “Economically speaking,” she writes, “the production function for thinking cannot be written as the sum of two subfunctions, one producing ‘results’ and the other ‘writing them up.’ The function is not separable. You do not learn the details of an argument until writing it in detail.” Many an argument or line of thought sounds good in our minds until we try to express it in writing. It is not until we write that we discover if we really know what we want to say or if we have anything to say at all, or if what we thought were brilliant, lucid arguments are actually only confused and ill-formed ideas. With all this in mind, writing—the actual process of writing—should be held in warm regard. It is a useful tool for discovering what you want to say. 2. Writing Is Messy There is an old notion that writing is a step-by-step process—first you make an outline; second, you write a draft; third, you revise the draft; and so on. Some people may write like that; but for most people, writing is a highly idiosyncratic, circular, and circuitous process, a chaotic, mysterious enterprise that can involve all kinds of strategies and techniques and tools. When it comes to writing, be ready to experiment and try whatever works: brainstorming ideas with pen and paper; talking through your ideas out loud and recording what you say; keeping a small notebook in your pocket and jotting down thoughts when they arise; writing a “letter” to a close friend or relative in which you try to explain what you are thinking. 7 3. Writing a Paper—a Good Paper Writing a paper—a good paper—takes time. By good, I don’t mean an A paper: lots of papers get A’s that are not necessarily good. (The relationship between the grade a paper receives and the quality of the paper is a separate issue that I will not discuss here. Any good paper is quite likely to earn an A; but not all A papers are good.) By a good paper, I mean a paper that fulfills its potential, meets the expectations established by you the writer, and, most important, communicates with its intended reader. It is worth repeating: To produce a good paper takes time. How much time? I can’t say for sure, but probably more than you may realize or want to accept. To give you the right order of magnitude, for a term paper of twenty pages or so, I’m talking dozens of hours: hours spent thinking about the paper, researching the paper, trying things out on paper (free-writing, or brainstorming, or just plain noodling around), writing a first draft of the paper, revising the paper, revising the paper again, proofreading the paper—and not necessarily in the order listed here.
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