Preparing progress report
Outline of a Progress Report C:
Write a Research Proposal
The main purpose of this progress report is to write a research proposal for your senior thesis.
Your research proposal should consist of the following contents.
Research question
Describe the purpose of your research. What is your research question? What would you like to
shed light on? You need to convince me why this is an important research question. Why is it
worth to answer your question?
Institution
In this section, describe the particular institution (an industry, a regulatory or de-regulatory
episode, a government institution or program, etc.) which you plan to do research on. This
section is going to be Introduction section in your thesis. Obviously, you can use your progress
report B on this section.
Existing studies
Summarize scientific background/ existing literature of the research. Knowing what have been
done is very important because your thesis should have some new contributions on academics
(i.e. you cannot just repeat what someone else has done).
Methodology
Describe your ideas of research method. You should show practical ideas. For example, if you
plan to conduct an empirical study, then you should here describe:
Hypothesis (To answer your research question, what kind of hypothesis would you want to
test?)
Data description (Search available data sources for your research)
Estimation model (Which variables to use? Linear model? Etc.)
If you plan to conduct a theoretical study, then you may want to describe here:
What kind of model do you plan to use? Do you want to extend an existing model or
construct a new model?
What kind of assumptions do you have to impose on your model ? What are exogenous
variables and endogenous variables in your model? Etc.
Expected result
Preparing progress report
Write your expected results in this section. Be ready to get unexpected results though. If you get
unexpected results, you should be able to reason them.
Formal-free: A4 not more than 5 pages.
