Applied Microeconomics Student Workshop Department of Economics University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Spring 2011

The workshop generally meets for an hour beginning at 12pm on Mondays in Gardner 211.  The meeting time and place may change to accommodate the presenters and their advisors.  All changes will appear on the detailed schedule below.

Brian McManus is organizing the workshop during the 2010-11 academic year.  He will update the schedule below and post papers as they become available.  Contact Professor McManus (mcmanusb@unc.edu) with questions or updates.

S = standard meeting, P = proposal defense, J = job talk practice

Time and Place: Mondays 12pm in Gardner 211.

Date	Type	Presenter	Paper	Sched. Changes?
January 10	S	Overview and organization
January 17	xxx	No meeting (MLK holiday)
January 25	P	Ryan Burk	link	* TUES 9:30 *
January 31	S	Arnie Aldridge	link
February 7	S	Nopphol Mink Witvorapong	link
February 14	S	Chris Cronin and Matt Harris	Cronin Harris	30 minutes each
February 21	S	Jeremy Cook	link
February 28	S	Jianfeng Yao	link
March 7	xxx	No meeting (Spring break)
March 14	S	Maciej Misztal	link
March 21	S	John Stuart Rabon	link
March 28	S	Ken Reddix and Bert Grider	Reddix BG-paper BG-slides	30 minutes each
April 4	S	Leonardo Morales	link
April 11	S	Greg McAtee	link
April 18	S	Chris Cronin	link
April 25	S	Matt Harris	link

The workshop is officially Economics 985 (Dissertation Workshop in Applied Microeconomics).  The workshop hosts three types of presentations:

1. Students may give progress reports on their research.  These are described as “standard meetings” on the schedule above.  The research may be at any stage – early or late – in its development, as long as the hour-long workshop is constructive for both the presenter and the audience.

2. Students may defend their dissertation proposals.  Note that this requires the availability of all faculty members on the student’s committee, which may require re-scheduling the workshop meeting to a different time or day.  It is the proposing student’s responsibility to contact all committee members about their schedules.

3. Students who are going on the job market may practice presenting their job market papers.

All enrolled students have the following responsibilities:

1. Students in their fourth year and beyond should present their research at least once per semester.  Third-year students may present during the spring semester.

2. All students should actively participate in the workshop by reading the each presenter’s paper in advance and providing constructive comments during the presentation.  For each presentation, each enrolled student will write a brief document (0.5 - 1 page) providing comments or questions for the presenting student.  These documents are due at the start of the presentation.

3. Three times per semester, each enrolled student will prepare a referee report (~2 pages) for the presenting student, due at the start of the presentation.  The report should include detailed comments on the economic content of the paper to be presented.  Reports also may provide constructive comments on the paper’s style and prose.  Professor McManus will assign students’ refereeing responsibilities.

Students preparing for their presentations have the following responsibilities:

1. Presenters should send their papers to Professor McManus four days before their presentations (e.g. Thursday for our usual Monday meetings).

2. Presenters should focus their presentations on the parts of their research where comments are most valuable.  This will vary across presenters but will generally include some combination of the theoretical model, the empirical model, the data, and the estimation approach.  While often interesting, extensive discussions of the research motivation and prior literature often are not the best use of our time.  (Students presenting proposal defenses and practice job talks may need to provide more background information than students doing standard research presentations.)

Last edited: December 22, 2010

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