14.33 -- Research and Communication in Economics: Topics, Methods, and Implementation
Course Description: Exposes students to the process of conducting independent research in empirical economics and effectively communicating the results of the research. Begins with an econometric analysis of an assigned economic question and culminates in each student choosing an original topic, performing appropriate analysis, and delivering oral and written project reports. Spring term is structured around a series of lectures and readings on several major substantive topics in experimental social science, such as race discrimination, gender differences in behavior, persuasion, and corruption. Lectures cover methodological topics that aid students in designing, conducting, analyzing, and presenting a field or laboratory experiment.

This class is at the Undergraduate level
An example of a syllabus: 1433_Fall2007.pdf
Instructor: Fall: Ellison Spring: D. Autor, E. Duflo
Open courseware website: http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Economics/14-33Fall-2004/CourseHome/
Prerequisites: 14.03 or 14.04; 14.05 or 14.06; 14.32

Insider's Wisdom

14.32 is a strict prerequisite for this class. Students use what they've learned in 14.32 and choose their own economics problem to work on. They collect data, formulate hypotheses, and test them. Examples of past projects include determining the factors of economic growth in developing countries, understanding the effects of hurricane Katrina on natural gas and petroleum firms by analyzing stock markets data, and studying housing market data in Newton to assess whether MIT economics professors who bought houses there got better deals than typical homebuyers.

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