Plan B Masters Paper Requirement

 

            Students selecting the Plan B Masters program must complete a final examination as part of their program.  The Masters Paper serves this requirement in the economics department.  A Masters Paper can perhaps best be thought of as a potentially/eventually  publishable journal article.  As is the case for any journal article, the Masters Paper must contain some original element that contributes to the academic literature on a topic.  Although there is no precise minimum or maximum page requirement for the Masters Paper, journal articles typically run 20 to 25 double spaced pages in length, and this can be used as a rough guide for the expected length. 

            In the course of your studies, you will undoubtedly read many journal articles.  These serve as a model for your Masters Paper.  Consider their structure.  Notice that the introduction sets up the research question or hypothesis and places this question in the broader context of the literature on the topic.  The first task in writing your Masters Paper is to review the theoretical and empirical literature, although the Masters Paper must go beyond a simple literature review.  Some of your courses may require that you write a literature review.  This can serve as the basis for identifying a relevant research question and defining a relevant research methodology.  All empirical journal articles include a section detailing and justifying the methodology, a section presenting the results of the empirical analysis, and a section discussing the results and tying them back into the literature.  All theoretical journal articles include a section developing the model, and a section working through the implications of the model and tying them back into the literature. Conclusions should highlight the significance of your contribution. 

            It is the rare journal article that is path breaking, although you are most likely to read those that are in your courses.  Most journal articles advance the literature incrementally.  It is the accumulation of incremental contributions that advances a field.  You are not required to write a path breaking article; one that incrementally advances the literature is fully adequate. 

            Your Masters Paper must be read and approved by three faculty members.  Once you have determined the topic area of your paper, you should contact faculty members working in that area and ask whether they would be willing to serve as readers for your Masters Paper.  Once you have successfully completed your first semester you can form your full committee.  Depending on your preferences and those of the faculty member who has agreed to be the primary reader of your Masters Paper, you can either add two faculty members to your committee retaining the major advisor originally assigned to you on the committee, or form an entirely new committee designating the primary reader of your Masters Paper as your major advisor. 

            Virtually all Masters Papers require three or four rounds of revisions.  This means that if you intend to complete all requirements by the end of the spring semester in May, you must have a full draft of your paper to your committee by early March.  If you intend to complete all requirements by the end of August, you should have a full draft of your paper to your committee by the end of June.  In selecting your advisory committee, keep in mind that faculty members are on 9 month appointments and most will only be able to work with you sporadically over the summer while others may not be able to work with you at all over the summer. 

            Your Masters Paper should be written in a standard academic style, such as APA, MLA, or Chicago.  There are many style guides available on-line.  There are also many books detailing specific academic styles.  Papers must be written in clear, cogent, and grammatically correct English.  This poses a challenge for all students, but especially for those whose mother tongue is not English.  It is quite legitimate to get assistance from the Writing Center on campus (in the CUE building) or other sources.  Some websites that offer information on how to write a journal article are listed below.  Most focus on scientific journal articles, but much of the information is relevant to economics journal articles as well.  For those wanting to sharpen their writing skills, a useful book is Deidre McCloskey’s Economical Writing.  I also keep a file of successful Masters Papers from the past couple of years that you can look at to get a better idea of what is expected. 

 

Web Sources:

www.jhu.edu/~matsci/teaching/510.434/writing_a_research_journal_paper.htm

www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/writeup.php

http://abacus.bates.edu/~ganderso/biology/writing/HTWtoc.html

www.informaworld.com/smpp/authors_journals_submit_write~db=all

www.ifh.uni-karlsruhe.de/lehre/dokkurs/gutes-schreiben/paper_how-to.pdf