ECON47715 Microeconometrics
Summative Assignment
Dr Hugo Kruiniger
Room 339, Mill Hill Lane
Email: hugo.kruiniger@durham.ac.uk
Consultation Hours: TBA
Summative Assignment
Summative Assignment
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• The summative assignment (and your dataset) are now
available on the Microeconometrics section of Learn Ultra
under ‘Assessment/Summative Assessment’
• This is worth 100% of the overall mark for the module
• The deadline for submission to Turnitin is 11:59am on
Wednesday 26th April
• The word limit is 3,000 words
Summative Assignment
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The country of Raritania hosted the table tennis world championship in 1966. This was a major event in
Raritania and all towns and cities wanted to host some matches because they anticipated economic
benefits from increased tourism expenditure. Because there were only fifty matches and there are 200
towns and cities in Raritania, the government decided that venues must submit a bid if they wanted to
host a match. The bids were then scored according to three criteria - vision, infrastructure and safety.
The mean of these scores was then calculated and the cities scoring in the top 50 hosted a match.

Firstly, the government would like you to provide an analysis of the determinants of the mean score (40
marks). Secondly, it would like you to find whether hosting a match had a causal effect on tourism
expenditure (60 marks).

To allow you to undertake such an evaluation, it has provided data from all 200 towns and cities in
Raritania (see Table 1 for a description of the variables in the dataset). The sample includes observations
on towns and cities that hosted matches and on towns and cities that did not host a match. Each of you
will analyse a different sample (so your results will be different to those of your colleagues).

Summative Assignment
Variable Description
id Town/city identification number
tour_exp Tourism expenditure (thousands GBP)
vision Score on vision criterion (0-100)
infrastructure Score on infrastructure criterion (0-100)
safety Score on safety criterion (0-100)
population Number of residents (thousands)
temperature Mean temperature (celsius)
Table 1. Variable Descriptions
Summative Assignment
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• Performance in the summative assessment is judged
against the following criteria:
– Relevance to question
– Organisation, structure and presentation
– Depth of understanding
– Analysis and discussion
– Use of sources and referencing
– Overall conclusions
Structure
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• Your report should follow the standard structure of an empirical paper:
1. Introduction
2. Data
3. Methodology
4. Results
5. Conclusion
• If you wish, you can switch or combine the data and methodology sections
• The style should be similar to that of the Economics Letters papers you
have read for the seminars
Introduction
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• The introduction should set out clearly the
aims of the report and provide some
motivation
• You may wish to refer briefly to the relevant
literature but a literature review is not
required due to space constraints
Data
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• This section should contain a brief discussion of the dataset to
be used in the analysis
• Usually, this would contain a description of how the data was
collected but, in your case, this is not necessary
• You should include descriptive statistics if they contribute to
the analysis. For example, you may wish to show whether
there are differences in the mean of the covariates across
treated and untreated groups
Methodology
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• This section should include an explanation and justification for the
estimators that will be used to answer the questions posed
– I.e. Why are they most likely to provide unbiased estimates?
• You should also provide application-specific information on how they will
be implemented. In particular, you should set out the equations to be
estimated
• You do not need to provide general information on how estimators work
or give the Stata commands that you are using
Results
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• This section should provide both statistical and economic interpretation of
the results
• If you have used more than one estimator to answer either question, you
should indicate which, if any, are the ‘preferred’ results. You should also
try to explain any difference in the estimated effects
• Do not copy and paste the tables of results from Stata (you can copy and
paste graphs). Instead, create tables showing the relevant information.
The tables in the papers read for the seminars should be used as a guide
Conclusion
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• The final section should be a conclusion which briefly
summarises the main findings
• You should discuss shortcomings of the analysis
– For example, you can mention if the dataset prevented the
use of some estimators or did not contain variables that
would have helped the analysis
Questions from Previous Years
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• Should I log any variables?
– No, the data has been constructed in such a
way that no variables need to be logged
Questions from Previous Years
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• Do I need to check for heteroskedasticity/
normality of the errors?
– No, the data has been simulated so that the error
terms are normally distributed and homoskedastic
Questions from Previous Years
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• Where can I find additional help with Stata commands?
– Help files can be accessed in Stata by typing ‘help’ and then the
relevant command in the command window (e.g. ‘help teffects
psmatch’ or ‘help ivregress’)
– In the unlikely event that this does not solve your problem, your
question may have been asked on the Stata Forum
(https://www.statalist.org/)
– You may also find the following textbook useful:
• Cameron, C. & Trivedi, P. (2010), Microeconometrics Using Stata, College
Station, Texas; Stata Press.
Questions from Previous Years
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• How do I decide which estimator is most likely to
give valid results?
– The estimator that gives ‘valid’ results will be the estimator
for which the underpinning assumptions hold. You
therefore need to think carefully about these assumptions
in order to reach a decision about your preferred estimates
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• Do we need to provide an abstract/executive
summary?
– No
Questions from Previous Years
Questions from this Year
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• I will update these lecture slides with
‘Questions from this Year’ as I receive them so
please check these slides (which will be
uploaded to Learn Ultra) regularly