Research paper resources

Getting started with IPUMS

You will need an account to use IPUMS, and there can be some wait time for approval. So it’s a good idea to set up your account before you need your data, so you don’t get slowed down.

Writing a research paper

• Writing Tips for Economics Research Papers (Plamen Nikolov) - This is very good, but it targeted for graduate students
• Structure of Economic Research Papers (Plamen Nikolov) - This is another, very good, take on how to structure an undergraduate economic research paper.

Suggested topics

Grab and go, or iterate from here.¹

• How has COVID-19 affected mothers’ labor supply in the United States?²

• How do spouses negotiate in a crisis? Are there gender differences in how parents’ labor supply changed in light of COVID-19, and did these changes differ in states with more or less intensive school closures? What does this tell us about household bargaining?

• Did generous unemployment benefits keep Americans from returning to work post-COVID? You can consider state-level variation in unemployment benefit policies and unemployment rates using the CPS.

• How did the Affordable Care Act affect access to health insurance in states with and without Medicaid expansions? (See Courtemanche et al. (2016), who use the ACS).

  • Relatedly, how did Medicaid expansion affect consumer health care expenditures? You could use the same distinction between states that did and did not participate in Medicaid expansions, but instead use the MEPS

• Minimum wages: What is the impact of minimum wages on {something}? For example:

  • **What is the effect of minimum wages on teen employment? For this, you would want state-level minimum wages over time. You can use the CPS to calculate teenage employment rates over time and get data on other factors that might affect employment. See Solon (1985) and Castillo-Freeman and Freeman (1992).

  • **Do minimum wages alleviate poverty? The ACS should have the information that you need. You would also need data on state-level minimum wages over time. See Neumark and Wascher (1995).

• ** What factors might explain racial/ethnic and gender differences in employment and wages? For example, Holzer (1991) reviewed the evidence on the “spatial mismatch hypothesis” to explain differences in employment rates between blacks and whites. Korenman and Neumark (1992) examined the effects of childbearing on women’s wages, while Hersch and Stratton (1997) looked at the effects of household responsibilities on men’s and women’s wages. Push harder than just identifying whether gender or racial/ethnic wage gaps exist (they do!).

• ** Do parental consent laws increase the teenage birthrate? You can use state level data for this: either a time series for a given state or, even better, a panel data set of states. Do the same laws reduce abortion rates among teenager? The Statistical Abstract of the United States contains all kinds of state-level data. Levine, Trainor, and Zimmerman (1996) studied the effects of abortion funding restrictions on similar outcomes. Other factors, such as access to abortions, may affect teen birth an abortion rate.