Teaching Activities

“Those who know, do. Those that understand, teach.” — Aristotle

Welcome to this teaching page. Below is an overview of courses (current/past) and links to teaching material and useful resources. (Some course pages may be restricted and require course credentials.)

Current Teaching Activities

Teaching Material and Course Notes

These web pages contain lecture notes from classes taught at RMC. Pages may be restricted; credentials are typically provided at the beginning of the term.

Classes include Econometrics, Statistics, Quantitative Methods, Applied Econometrics, Seminar in Economics, and Graduate Economics for the MPA and MBA programs.

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Teaching Philosophy

As Phil Collins once said, “In learning you will teach, and in teaching you will learn.” My teaching philosophy emphasizes respect for students’ expertise, diversity of learning styles, and educational goals, within a co-learning experience.

Over the years, many students have pursued graduate studies in economics or business administration, and I’m grateful to have contributed to their decision-making process.

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Thesis Writing

Some Guidelines helping you to structure your seminar paper — BA Thesis (ECE/F492)

A critical part of your thesis is relating your work to previous literature (the literature review). The goal is not to simply summarize other papers, but to connect your work to what has been done before. Guidance on writing a good literature review: more advice here.

Short advice on writing research articles by Andrew Gelman: blog post here.

Editing & Proofreading your Work

Resources may be available through a Writing Center to help with editing and proofreading.

Access to Data

US & Canadian data: CHASS-CANSIM access (campus availability may apply).

US macro data is also available via the St. Louis Fed FRED engine: FRED.

Other useful US data sources:

International data sources:

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LaTeX

LaTeX (TeX Users Group) — Using LaTeX to compile your seminar paper.

LaTeX is a typesetting system for high-quality PDF/DVI output, especially strong for mathematical documents and precise typography.

Text editing and LaTeX compiling

A common workflow is a LaTeX distribution (e.g., MiKTeX) + an editor (e.g., TeXnicCenter). Some tools provide equation editing in WYSIWYG style for copy/paste into LaTeX.

  • TeXnicCenter — integrated environment for LaTeX on Windows
  • WinEdt — editor/shell (shareware)
  • MathType — equation editor
  • TeXaide — equation editor (archived)

Other resources

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Writing Economics Papers: some advices

General advice on writing

Writing resources

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Proper Reference and Citation Style for Economics Papers

Two styles are typical in economics manuscripts. References are usually listed alphabetically by first author’s last name. When there is more than one author, only the first author is inverted (last name, first name); subsequent authors are first name first.

Common styles:

Economists generally use the “science” citation convention (author + year in-text). Every work cited in the text should appear in the reference list.

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EViews

In a research seminar, model estimation is often required. EViews is an econometric software package (Windows/Mac) with a GUI for entry, manipulation, and data analysis.

Many operations are accessible via menus (e.g., Help → EViews Help Topics…).

EViews website • EViews tutorials / guide

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Stata

Stata is an integrated statistical software package for data analysis, data management, and graphics. A good starting point is to follow basic tutorials.

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Some links to other useful software

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Economics Working paper and more…

There are many economic packages, databases, and information sites available online, including listings of data, papers, and researchers.

Warning: Some information in this document may be recovered from the internet; thanks to those who provide it.

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