Spring 2014 Economics 385 Project Date on last day of class: April 30, 2014 (MW class), May 1, 2014 (TR class) The Journal of Economic Perspectives is a quarterly journal that publishes “symposia” on various subjects.1 Each symposium consists of a small number of articles written by economists for a general audience that collectively attempt to illustrate the profession’s understanding of one subject. Your goal in the assignment is to summarize what the field of economics knows about one topic in labor economics. As in the symposia, do it in a way that someone who has not taken ECON 385 (but is aware of current events and “reads the news”) would understand. 1. Selecting a topic. a. The American Economic Association has a taxonomy for journal articles called the JEL Codes. Since this is a labor economics course, we will confine our interest that section (labor is J)of this list (shown on the attached pages). b. Peruse the JEL Codes and a source such as the Borjas textbook. This will give you an idea of what things are classified as “labor economics”. It is a fairly inclusive subject, but there are still some topics that will make your research difficult because they are insufficiently related to this field. E.g., if your idea does not even appear in the index of Borjas, it might not be the optimal choice. c. Decide specifically what you want to write about. Is there something that you have had an enduring intellectual interest in? Are legislators debating a law that could have significant consequences for labor markets? Is there a section in the textbook that really caught your interest and you want to learn more about it? d. Tips. i. Emphatically, the topic must be specific. “Labor supply” has had at least a thousand papers written on it. So has “human capital” and “unemployment”. You don’t want to read 1000 papers (or even a fraction of them) and I don’t want to read a summary of that many papers. ii. Here’s how specific it should be. An appropriate topic will have 10 to 20 papers written on the subject in academic journals. You should only discuss the most relevant ¼ to ½ of them in your paper. I expect no more than 5 citations of academic papers; if you have more, you’re sacrificing too much quality for quantity. iii. Try to use a topic covered generally in class and explore an “offshoot” that is more specific. For example, “labor supply” could be broken down into sub-topics like: “female labor supply post 1960 in the U.S.”, “the effect of divorce on female labor supply”, or “teen labor supply and academic performance”. These topics are not significant enough to merit a whole lecture, but significant enough for an individual researcher to explore. iv. If you have any doubts about the validity of your topic, consult the instructor before proceeding to write a first draft. You will not have to 1 http://www.aeaweb.org/jep/issues.php ECON 385: Labor Econo.

1. Spring 2014
Economics 385 Project
Date on last day of class: April 30, 2014 (MW class), May 1,
2014 (TR class)
The Journal of Economic Perspectives is a quarterly journal that
publishes “symposia” on
various subjects.1 Each symposium consists of a small number
of articles written by economists
for a general audience that collectively attempt to illustrate the
profession’s understanding of one
subject.
Your goal in the assignment is to summarize what the field of
economics knows about one topic
in labor economics. As in the symposia, do it in a way that
someone who has not taken ECON
385 (but is aware of current events and “reads the news”) would
understand.
1. Selecting a topic.
a. The American Economic Association has a taxonomy for
journal articles called
the JEL Codes. Since this is a labor economics course, we will
confine our

2. interest that section (labor is J)of this list (shown on the
attached pages).
b. Peruse the JEL Codes and a source such as the Borjas
textbook. This will give
you an idea of what things are classified as “labor economics”.
It is a fairly
inclusive subject, but there are still some topics that will make
your research
difficult because they are insufficiently related to this field.
E.g., if your idea does
not even appear in the index of Borjas, it might not be the
optimal choice.
c. Decide specifically what you want to write about. Is there
something that you
have had an enduring intellectual interest in? Are legislators
debating a law that
could have significant consequences for labor markets? Is there
a section in the
textbook that really caught your interest and you want to learn
more about it?
d. Tips.
i. Emphatically, the topic must be specific. “Labor supply” has
had at least
a thousand papers written on it. So has “human capital” and
“unemployment”. You don’t want to read 1000 papers (or even
a fraction
of them) and I don’t want to read a summary of that many
papers.
ii. Here’s how specific it should be. An appropriate topic will
have 10 to 20
papers written on the subject in academic journals. You should

3. only
discuss the most relevant ¼ to ½ of them in your paper. I
expect no more
than 5 citations of academic papers; if you have more, you’re
sacrificing
too much quality for quantity.
iii. Try to use a topic covered generally in class and explore an
“offshoot” that
is more specific. For example, “labor supply” could be broken
down into
sub-topics like: “female labor supply post 1960 in the U.S.”,
“the effect of
divorce on female labor supply”, or “teen labor supply and
academic
performance”. These topics are not significant enough to merit
a whole
lecture, but significant enough for an individual researcher to
explore.
iv. If you have any doubts about the validity of your topic,
consult the
instructor before proceeding to write a first draft. You will not
have to
1 http://www.aeaweb.org/jep/issues.php
ECON 385: Labor Economics. Ben Van Kammen.
http://www.aeaweb.org/jep/issues.php
Spring 2014

4. worry whether you have a good topic if you gain explicit
approval from
me in advance. This is not required, but it will make your life
easier.
v. Choose something that is interesting—from, say, a public
policy
standpoint. You should be able to explain why a general
audience should
care about your conclusions.
vi. Cruising around the blogosphere can help locate evidence
that people care
about the topic and how they view it. You can even cite a
couple of posts
by choice bloggers if it helps establish the topic’s relevance.
Present your topic to the instructor for approval on or before
Friday March 7. This
counts toward your grade on the paper (see document about
scoring on Katalyst).
When pitching your topic, it would be a good idea to identify 1
academic paper and 1
popular media article that establish both scholarly and general
interest in your topic.
2. Perform the research.
a. You should identify a couple of (written by economists)
sources in the process of
choosing your topic. Read them as well as any of the
anteceding papers they cite
frequently.

5. b. To establish the relevance of your paper, read the current
periodicals and blogs.
The instructor can suggest examples if you are unsure where to
begin.
c. The Borjas textbook may be useful to help you explain the
economic theories
related to your topic.
d. You should be trying to gather a representative sample of
what economists know
about the subject from empirical observation and how they
explain the findings
with theory.
e. The instructor will demonstrate general search methods in
class and be available
to confer with you about finding the best possible sources for
your paper.
3. Writing the review.
a. There is neither a page number nor word number requirement
for this assignment.
It should be as long as necessary and as short as possible. Here
is what is
necessary.
b. An introduction that identifies the topic, explains its place
among the overall labor
economics literature (think “what textbook chapter would this
be in?”), and
motivates the reader to continue through the rest of the paper.
“Why should I

6. care?” is a question you want to answer as early in the paper as
possible. This
means giving the reader a glimpse of how public policy or our
economic welfare
hinges on the findings you will present.
c. One can assume that the reader is sufficiently interested that
he is reading a
symposium about Labor [fill in the blank], but you have to
explain why the facet
you are writing about is so important.
d. Identify the relevant theoretical predictions about the topic,
e.g.: “The
compensating wage differential for a job requiring work-related
travel will be
positive if workers consider travel a disamenity. However if
some workers enjoy
traveling—and they are the only ones who accept the traveling
jobs—the
compensating differential could be negative, as well.”
ECON 385: Labor Economics. Ben Van Kammen.
Spring 2014
i. Explain any jargon that is necessary to your review so
someone not
acquainted with the literature can understand.
ii. You don’t have to write on the same mathematical level as
the authors of
academic journal articles, but you should be able to find the key

7. assumptions of their models and the testable implications. In
terms of
mathematical rigor, the Borjas text is a good target.
e. Summarize any empirical results, i.e., from academic articles,
a textbook, or a
report by a statistical agency such as the BLS, that test the
theory. Explain the
approach, (the kind of data used and/or method of estimation)
applied by
economists who study this topic. Briefly suggest a couple
reasons why the
approach is so useful for empirical evaluation.
i. If this theory is true, what would you expect to observe in the
real world?
Did that happen or not?
f. A conclusion that summarizes what the author has learned
from performing the
research
4. General instructions for the final submission of the literature
review.
a. As a minimum for a good grade, the caliber of written
communication will
befit a college graduate. A paper that is incomprehensible
(because of poor
sentence structure, grammar, using words out of context, or
subject-verb
disagreement, et al.) will earn you no points. I will not (nor
will any reader)
waste time trying to decipher poorly written paragraphs. I have
to read over 100

8. papers from the class, and I reserve the right to award a zero to
any paper that
is too hard to read for grammatical or mechanical reasons.
i. If you are concerned about your writing ability, visit the
writing center.2
Get a friend, sibling, or co-worker to read your paper and
proofread it.
Run spellcheck (!) and search your paper for incorrect
homonyms
(spellcheck won’t find these). Do whatever it takes to avoid
handing in a
poorly written paper.
b. Cite your sources in the text, (Author year) and include a
works cited page.
c. Use active voice.
d. Avoid the following phrases: “I think”, “I believe”, “I feel”.
You’re writing the
thing; you wouldn’t be writing it if you didn’t think it.
e. Double space your submission.
i. It should go without saying, but type your assignment and
hand in a
printed paper copy. Hand-written submissions are not
acceptable.
f. Generally do all the other good things you learned in English
composition classes.
Remember it’s your job to communicate your thoughts to the
reader—not the
reader’s job to divine what you are trying to say.
5. Overall the paper comprises 30% of the course grade.

9. 2 http://owl.english.purdue.edu/writinglab/servicesoverview
ECON 385: Labor Economics. Ben Van Kammen.
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/writinglab/servicesoverview
Spring 2014
Attachment: JEL Codes
J - Labor and Demographic Economics
J1 - Demographic Economics
J11 - Demographic Trends, Macroeconomic Effects, and
Forecasts
J12 - Marriage; Marital Dissolution; Family Structure; Domestic
Abuse
J13 - Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth
J14 - Economics of the Elderly; Economics of the Handicapped;
Non-Labor Market
Discrimination
J15 - Economics of Minorities, Races, and Immigrants; Non-
labor Discrimination
J16 - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
J17 - Value of Life; Forgone Income

10. J18 - Public Policy
J2 - Demand and Supply of Labor
J21 - Labor Force and Employment, Size, and Structure
J22 - Time Allocation and Labor Supply
J23 - Labor Demand
J24 - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor
Productivity
J26 - Retirement; Retirement Policies
J28 - Safety; Job Satisfaction; Related Public Policy
J3 - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs
J31 - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
J32 - Nonwage Labor Costs and Benefits; Private Pensions
J33 - Compensation Packages; Payment Methods
J38 - Public Policy
J4 - Particular Labor Markets
J41 - Labor Contracts
J42 - Monopsony; Segmented Labor Markets
J43 - Agricultural Labor Markets
J44 - Professional Labor Markets; Occupational Licensing
J45 - Public Sector Labor Markets
J47 - Coercive Labor Markets
J48 - Public Policy
J5 - Labor–Management Relations, Trade Unions, and
Collective Bargaining
J51 - Trade Unions: Objectives, Structure, and Effects
J52 - Dispute Resolution: Strikes, Arbitration, and Mediation;
Collective Bargaining
J53 - Labor–Management Relations; Industrial Jurisprudence
J54 - Producer Cooperatives; Labor Managed Firms; Employee
Ownership
J58 - Public Policy

11. J6 - Mobility, Unemployment, and Vacancies
ECON 385: Labor Economics. Ben Van Kammen.
Spring 2014
J61 - Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers
J62 - Job, Occupational, and Intergenerational Mobility
J63 - Turnover; Vacancies; Layoffs
J64 - Unemployment: Models, Duration, Incidence, and Job
Search
J65 - Unemployment Insurance; Severance Pay; Plant Closings
J68 - Public Policy
J7 - Labor Discrimination
J71 - Discrimination
J78 - Public Policy
J8 - Labor Standards: National and International
J81 - Working Conditions
J82 - Labor Force Composition
J83 - Workers’ Rights
J88 - Public Policy
If you are unsure what each description means, go to the AEA’s
website to retrieve a more
thorough explanation of the kind of papers that would fit under
a given JEL Code.3
3 http://www.aeaweb.org/jel/guide/jel.php
ECON 385: Labor Economics. Ben Van Kammen.

12. http://www.aeaweb.org/jel/guide/jel.php