Doing Research

Notes on Writing, Listening, and Talking

May 12, 1999

Eric Rasmusen

Abstract

These are notes on the mechanics of doing research in economics. They are a series of short, unconnected tips that I think could be widely useful for both individuals and the profession.

Professor of Business Economics and Public Policy and Sanjay Subhedar Faculty Fellow, Indiana University, Kelley School of Business, BU 456, 1309 E 10th Street, Bloomington, Indiana, 47405-1701. Office: (812) 855-9219. Fax: 812-855-3354. Email: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected] (for attachments). Web: php.indiana.edu/~erasmuse. Copies of this paper can be found at www.bus.indiana.edu/~erasmuse/@Articles/Unpublished/write.pdf.

I would like to thank Thom Mitchell for helpful comments.

1. INTRODUCTION

This is the latest version of a set of notes I have been giving my doctoral students for the past ten years or so. I have organized them as follows:

The tone of these notes is informal but dogmatic. The most important idea in communication is that the author should make things clear to the reader and save him unnecessary work. Bluntness aids clarity.

I will assume throughout that the reader knows the following.

(1) Benefits are to be weighed against costs. It is okay for a paper to be somewhat unclear if the alternative is costly, just as it is sometimes okay to use dirty paper and a printer almost out of ink. This draft of these notes is still in list form, with minimal organization, because the opportunity cost of careful revision would be more delay on my other papers.

(2) I am still learning how to write. I have never looked over a paper I have written without finding ways to improve it, even though I am accounted a good writer and do many drafts. Do not be surprised when you look over my published papers and find violations of my own rules.

(3) It is okay to violate any rule, including rules of grammar and spelling, if you have a good reason. Just be sure you do it deliberately. If you know you write poorly, do not even break the rules deliberately. An economist who has drunk an entire bottle of whisky, being rational, refrains from driving home at 90 miles per hour even if he feels perfectly capable of driving safely.

Care in writing is important. Besides the obvious benefit of helping the reader, clear writing fosters clear thinking. If you have to write an abstract, to decide which results to call propositions, and to label all your tables and diagrams, you will be forced to think about what your paper is all about. Writing up the results is not just a bit of fringe to decorate your great idea.

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6. REFERENCES

Basil Blackwell (1985) Guide for Authors. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985.

Bower et al. (1994) "Protocol, Etiquette, and Responsibilities of Reviewers in Finance," Financial Practice and Education (Fall/Winter 1994) pp. 18-24.

Davis, John (1940) "The Argument of an Appeal," American Bar Association Journal (December 1940) 26: 895-899. Appellate argument in the 1920's turns out to be very similar to economics seminars in the 1990's.

Epstein, Richard (1994) "The Struggle Between Author and Editor over Control of the Text: Faculty-Edited Law Journals," IIT Chicago-Kent Law Review 70: 87-94. Law reviews are a special kind of research outlet that more economists should learn about.

Fowler, H. (1965) A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, Second Edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 1965. This is a classic, though I find its own format not as useful as other style guides.

Halmos, Paul (1970) "How to Write Mathematics," L'Enseignement Mathematique (May/June 1970) 16: 123-152.

Harman Eleanor (1975) "Hints on Proofreading," Scholarly Publishing (January 1975) pp. 151-157 . (Sic.) This trade journal is worth reading for any scholar who is thinking of writing a book.

Leamer, Edward (1983) "Let's Take the Con out of Econometrics?" American Economic Review (March 1983) 73: 31-43. This is not about writing, but econometrics, but Leamer's concern is with communicating research results.

McCloskey, Donald (1985) "Economical Writing," Economic Inquiry (April 1985) 24: 187-222. Later expanded into book form, this is an entertaining and extremely useful essay that every economist should read.

Posner, Richard (1986) "Goodbye to the Bluebook," University of Chicago Law Review (Fall 1986) 53: 1343.

Rasmusen, Eric (1994) Games and Information, Second Edition. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1994. See the preface and intro especially.

Roberts, Harry & Roman Weil (1970) "The University of Chicago. Starting Research Early," University of Chicago Graduate School of Business mimeo, August 14, 1970.

Sonnenschein, Hugo & Dorothy Hodges (1980) "Manual for Econometrica Authors," Econometrica (July 1980) 48: 1073-1081.

Stigler, George (1977) "The Conference Handbook," Journal of Political Economy, 85: 441-443. This is humor, possibly with deep meaning (there really are questions that apply to every paper).

Strunk, William & E. White (1959) The Elements of Style. New York: Macmillan, 1959. The classic. Writing hasn't changed.

Tufte, Edward (1983) The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. Cheshire, Conn.: Graphics Press, 1983. What a good graph looks like.

Tullock, Gordon "Does Mathematics Aid in the Progress of Economics?" pp. 201-214, On the Trail of Homo Economicus: Essays by Gordon Tullock, eds. Gordon Brady and Robert Tollison, Fairfax: George Mason University Press, 1994. Good questions for those of us who use algebraic notation.

Weiner, E. (1984) The Oxford Guide to the English Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984. Older style guides such as this are more likely to be correct, given the current popularity of political correctness and gender-neutered language among literature professors.

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Maintained by Eric Rasmusen, Kelley School of Business, Indiana University, BU 456, 1309 East Tenth Street, Bloomington, Indiana 47405-1701, (812) 855-9219. E-mail: [email protected]. Please send me comments and new errors!