Reference no: EM133719487

Homework: How Wal-Mart Maintains Its Competitive Advantage Essay

Objective

The objective of this homework is to give you an opportunity to:

I. Use analytical and empirical skills together with economic concepts to explore an empirical phenomenon related to economic development.
II. Learn how to use state-of-the art tools to perform exploratory data analysis and write reproducible code for data analysis.
III. Learn how to write a formal technical report underpinned by economic logic and evidence from data evidence.

Expectations

The report consists of an economically informed data analysis related to a development topic. The analysis involves presenting data relevant to the issue you are studying, exploring this data for relationships between the relevant variables, and providing your own explanations of why this data is pertinent. Your analysis must be grounded in material covered in class or in relevant economic literature. Survey reports (reporting other people's work/ideas on issues) or reports centered on hypothetical scenarios are not acceptable. The target audience for your report are college graduates.

Canvas will be used to organize all files related to the writing homework. Late homeworks will only be accepted in special circumstances and with verifying documentation. Late submissions cannot be accepted for the report.

If you have any problem understanding what is expected from you or how to go about completing the writing homework successfully,  contact the instructor or the writing assistant.

Homework Parts

The four parts of the writing homework are listed below:

I. Topic, Theory, and Data
II. Empirical Analysis
III. Full Draft
IV. Report

Certain sections of your homework might need you to submit both the data and code utilized. It's crucial that these submissions are reproducible, ensuring that someone else can precisely replicate your homework solely with the provided data and code.

I. Topic, Theory, and Data

A. You should submit 1,000 to 1,500 words stating the topic, discussing its relationship to theory, and an initial analysis of the data source used to analyze the topic.

B. The submission has five sections:

1. Background (200 to 400 words): State and briefly discuss your chosen question. In your discussion, you should use economic theory and results from class to explain why your question is interesting. Cite at least two papers from the literature or the course readings and discuss how they are relevant to your question. You should also indicate the literature to which the readings belong, that is, the papers that the course readings cite (look at their bibliographies) and the papers cited by them as well. You can also include papers that cite the course readings, which can be easily found using Google Scholar.

2. Hypothesis (one paragraph to 100 words): Based on your background discussion, state a hypothesis in terms of a relationship you expect to see in the data (e.g., "women with higher education have lower mortality among their children"). Also state potential secondary hypotheses that you plan to explore (e.g., "the relationship between education and infant mortality might vary between rural and urban areas").

3. Data source (200 words): State the data source that you will be using. Include a brief description of the data source in terms of data type, coverage, and purpose of the original data collection. You should use a micro dataset, that is, a dataset where the observation unit is individuals, households, or businesses.

4. Measurement (400 words): Explain the variables in your dataset that you will use to test your hypothesis and why you selected them. Explain how you plan to manipulate the data to test your hypothesis (e.g., construct a proxy for infant mortality of a mother's children from age of death of her children; or collapsing measures of educational wage premia onto country level to measures relationship with GDP per capita).

5. Preliminary results (100 words): Construct a plot from your dataset using your selected variables that is relevant to your hypothesis (e.g., a bar plot showing infant mortality by highest attained education level in a particular country and year). Briefly comment on how it relates to your hypothesis; it is okay if your hypothesis is not confirmed.

C. Selecting a topic:

1. A list of suggested topics will be provided for you to choose from.

2. You must get approval for your topic selection from the writing assistant.

3. Topics from outside the suggested topics list may be allowed, but in these cases an in-person meeting with the writing assistant is required in order to receive approval for your topic selection.

D. Forming a hypothesis:

1. Be careful that your hypothesis is not too general or vague. If it is, narrow it to some specific hypothesis related to a more general question. Remember that projects with well-defined topics and hypotheses are easier to complete successfully.

E. Different types of papers:

1. Descriptive question: You are encouraged to write a descriptive paper, e.g., how have fertility rates for literate versus illiterate women evolved over time. If you do this, it is crucial that you connect your findings to economic theory and explain what we learn from these descriptive relationships.

2. Revisiting old question: You are allowed to ask a standard question in the literature. In this case, you should still do an independent data analysis, and apply the analysis to a new country or using a new (or updated) dataset. Direct replications are not acceptable.

3. Causal question: While you are not required to establish causality in the writing homework, causal identification could form the basis of a very successful writing homework if you have a credible way to identify a casual effect. If you have an idea for credible causal identification, speak to your writing assistant who can help you assess whether the idea is feasible to implement.

II. Empirical Analysis

A. You should submit an empirical section of your paper. The primary output should be one figure and one table capturing your key result(s). The figures and tables should be fully polished and professionally formatted.

B. The figure:

1. Should effectively visualize your main result(s). Heterogeneity should not be captured with multiple figures, but by exploiting coloring, line types, shapes, different panels, etc.

2. Should be correctly labelled in line with instructions in the class and should be generated directly within R.

3. Should have a note below it describing the content of the figure in sufficient detail to make it understandable without the accompanying main text.

C. The table:

1. Should use a regression to convey the information displayed in the main figure.

2. Should be outputted from R using a package for regression tables like stargazer or equivalent. If Stargazer is used, we recommend having html output combined with a screenshot. Any other method used should achieve a similar level of professionalism.

D. The figure and table should be supported by 1,000 to 1,500 words of text. The following parts should be included:

1. Polished version of data source section in Topic, Theory, and Data (-'200 words)

2. Methodology section: Explain the construction of all primary and secondary variables used in the analysis. (400 words)

3. Summary statistics of all variables used.

4. Results section: walk through all the results in the figure and table (400 words)

5. Discussion: interpret your results, discuss potential issues and potential further analyses. (200 words)

E. Additional information about the data section will be supplied in class.

III. Full Draft

A. Submit a preliminary version of your report spanning between 2000 to 3000 words (excluding Appendix and References).

B. This draft should expand upon your earlier empirical findings, presenting them comprehensively in a technical report format.

C. A satisfactory initial draft will require only minor adjustments before it can be submitted as your report, without the addition of new content.

D. Your report should be formatted in size 12 font, double-spaced, with one-inch margins on all sides.

E. Adhere to the specified paper structure below and feel free to introduce subsections as necessary.

Your report should contain the following sections.  see the "Paper Structure.pdf" document for more information.

A. Title Page: Make sure to include your report's title, the date of submission, and your full name.

B. Introduction: Clearly describe the development issue you chose and the way you have decided to analyze it. The question that you are trying to answer should be included in your introduction.

1. In the first or second paragraph of your introduction, you must include your main result. This should concisely convey your main finding to the reader.  bold your results statement.

2. The introduction should also explain why you selected the development issue you focus on and the data you use. Why are they interesting?

C. Literature Review: Read at least two or three papers related to your topic and provide brief summaries of them. Make sure you formally and correctly cite them using a standard citation format. You should also comment on how your analysis relates to these papers, both the differences and the similarities.

D. Hypothesis: State your primary and secondary hypotheses based on your literature review.

E. Data source/Methodology/Main results: See Empirical Analysis homework.

F. Extensions: Start from the results in the Empirical Section and perform an extension by exploring some dimension in the results further. For example, consider whether a particular finding is different in urban and rural areas or in rich and poor countries.

G. References: List the references and data used for your report. You must provide a complete list of all references and sources used in your paper. Include only the sources you actually used in your paper and make sure your sources are credible.

H. Appendix: If you'd like to include any additional graphs, tables, or mathematical derivations in your report,  put them in an appendix at the end of your report and clearly reference figures as needed in your main text.

IV. Report

A. Submit a refined and edition of your report, incorporating feedback from previous submissions. The completed report should range from 2500 to 4000 words, excluding the Appendix and References sections.

B. At this point, you should not be required to introduce new content. However, if you have identified elements that significantly impact the rationale or conclusions of your paper, you may include them with discretion.