Treatment Effects and Program Evaluation ECOM90023
Assignment 1
Research Proposal and Plan
DUE BY: 4pm, Friday 27 March, 2026.
Research Proposals are to be submitted via the LMS by the due date and time.
This assignment is worth 10% of the overall grade for the subject.
Answers not received by the due date and time – and if no formal assignment extension
has been granted by the Faculty (see the Subject Guide for information regarding applying
for assignment extensions) – will have 1 point (out of 10) taken off for every weekday the
assignment is late. Assignment submissions will not be accepted after 4pm on Friday 3 April
(students will receive zero for the assignment if not received by this date and time).
Your Research Proposals should be a maximum of 1,000 words in total (about two to three
pages), excluding references and acknowledgements of the appropriate use of AI.
Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools
1. You may use AI or other software tools to help you structure or plan your work, and to
help with coding tasks. Outputs of these tools used in this way may not be submitted
as part of the assessment, and you must identify and properly acknowledge the
tools you used in this way.
2. You may also use AI, other software tools or other people’s assistance to help you edit
and refine your work. This type of assistance may only be for the purposes of correcting
grammar, spelling and clarity and must be acknowledged appropriately.
Failure to acknowledge the use of AI, or assistance that is beyond these two appropriate
limits, will be reported as potential academic misconduct and subject to appropriate
penalties.
RESEARCH PROPOSAL AND PLAN
Your proposals will ideally cover the following eight elements.
1. What is the main research question that your Research Project will try to answer?
This research question should be micro-empirical estimation of the causal effect of
some “treatment” variable on an outcome of economic interest.
Provide the following details:
(a) What is the “treatment” variable you wish to analyze?
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Treatment Effects and Program Evaluation ECOM90023
(b) What is the outcome or outcomes of economic interest?
(c) In plain language, describe the intuition for why your “treatment” variable should
cause the outcome(s) of interest to change.
2. Why are you planning to answer this particular research question?
That is, why would or should readers want to know the answer to your question?
3. How do you plan to provide a causal estimate answering your research question?
(a) What micro data are you planning to use?
(b) What is the source of variation in the “treatment” variable that you will rely on
during estimation?
(c) What estimation method might you be able to use to generate a causal estimate?
This will ideally be one of the methods we will cover this semester.
A list of methods is provided in the document titled “Research Project Details”.
4. Provide a few details of the empirical economic research literature that is related to
your research question.
5. Note how your Research Project will potentially add to this research literature.
6. Briefly describe the data you already have access to that you will use to answer your
research question.
7. List and briefly describe the variables that you believe you still need to gain access
to for you to complete your Project.
8. Briefly describe what you still need to do (your plan) to complete the project.
Perhaps provide this in the form of a work plan with timings for meeting specific
milestones up to final report submission at the end of semester.
END OF ASSIGNMENT
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