Data Analysis

The students should identify potential flaws in and shortcomings of the methodology used, effective decisions in how the researchers presented or analyzed the data and presented the research results, and potential improvements of the methodology and presentation.  Students should think very carefully about their selected paper and all of the issues discussed in class such as endogeneity, unobserved heterogeneity, temporal instability, multivariate analyses, and so on.  Some other items to consider:  1.   Was the statistical approach reasonable? What potential issues exist with the adopted statistical approach?  2.   What do you see as the weaknesses in the paper and the statistical defensibility of the results?  3.   Comment on the authors’ interpretation of model results (e.g., marginal effects) and the conclusions drawn.  4.   If you were given a grant to study this problem, what data would you collect and what modeling approaches would you consider?  5.   What where the effective decisions the authors made? What is well presented and why?    The paper for this assignment:  Construction delay: a quantitative analysis