Assignment Requirements
This order is for a THESIS
Please follow the requierements properly while writing..
Font size 12 and Space should be 1,5.
I am ordering 40 pages for my master thesis and please take into consideration that there should be figures,graphs,tables( would be better to use more of those in the case study) as well.Figures,graphs,charts and tables that are referred to in the main text should also be displayed in the main text (and not in the appendix)
Include citations in the text, not in the footnotes, by mentioning the name of the author(s) and the
year of publication. Use “et al.” for more than two authors. Examples: “In a very different framework,
Biglaiser and Mezzetti (1993) find that …” or “… as Corsetti et al. (2005) were able to show.”
Please use footnotes, not endnotes. Try to limit the number of footnotes
All references mentioned in the text must be included in the list of references and vice versa.
The other main requieremts will be available into the folder that i will upload to my account and you can aslo have a look below
How to write a thesis at the Chair of International Economics? (Requierements of my professor)
Main requirements: The master thesis shall not exceed 40 pages in overall length (excluding the literature references and
the appendix)
General purpose:
Your thesis should discuss one clearly defined research topic. In your thesis, you demonstrate that
you are able to independently identify, structure and develop an economic topic and present your
results in a scientific way. Your thesis should be written for an “informed reader” who can be
assumed to be familiar with standard methods and to have a solid knowledge of basic concepts in
economics and business administration, e.g. based on standard textbooks. The whole thesis should
read as one self-contained piece.
Structure follows content:
Do not aim for a detailed table of contents and then proceed to fill little boxes. Rather, write an essay
with a clear logical structure. Generally, avoid a structure with many section headings and an elaborate hierarchy of subsections. On the other hand, having more than five pages without a
(sub)section heading will make the text inaccessible and difficult to read.
A typical structure of a Master Thesis could look as follows:
ƒ Cover page
ƒ Table of content
ƒ List of figures and tables
ƒ Introduction
ƒ (Background information)
ƒ Main text
ƒ Conclusion
ƒ References
ƒ Appendix
ƒ (Data Archive)
ƒ Statutory declaration
1.Introduction:
The introduction should cover approximately 2-4 pages and tell the reader the main (structure of
the) argument. Do neither aim for a long summary, nor a thriller where everything is kept a secret.
The reader needs to know what to expect and where to find it in your document. Write the
introduction last, i.e. after you worked on all the other sections of your thesis.
2.Background information:
If you write a case study, you probably need one or two chapters in the beginning in which you
provide the reader with the required background information. Everything that is required to
understand the argument and the points you are trying to make should be here.
3. Tables, figures, equations, footnotes, references:
Tables and figures must have short captions that tell the reader what the content is. Figures and
tables should also be self-contained so that you understand the information they provide without
having to scan the text for necessary information, like what is on the axis of a graph, or what are the
units of measurement. Figures and tables that are referred to in the main text should also be
displayed in the main text (and not in the appendix).
All equations, except very short mathematical expressions, should be displayed on a separate line
and centered. Equations should be numbered consecutively in the right margin with Arabic numerals
in parentheses.
Include citations in the text, not in the footnotes, by mentioning the name of the author(s) and the
year of publication. Use “et al.” for more than two authors. Examples: “In a very different framework,
Biglaiser and Mezzetti (1993) find that …” or “… as Corsetti et al. (2005) were able to show.”
Please use footnotes, not endnotes. Try to limit the number of footnotes.
4.Conclusion:
The purpose of the conclusion is twofold. Firstly, you want to bring all the threads of your argument
together. Generally, there should not be too many of these (more than three gives the impression
that you do not focus). Secondly, put your work into perspective. What are the limitations of your
argument? Which questions did you not address? Are there additional comments that did not quite
fit in any of the chapters? However, a conclusion should never be long (say, more than five pages),
otherwise you probably need an additional chapter.
5.References:
All references mentioned in the text must be included in the list of references and vice versa. List the
sources alphabetically by the name of the (first) author. In case of multiple works by the same
author, these are ordered chronologically. Please use the following citation style:
-For monographs:
Salanie, B. (2005) The Economics of Contracts: A Primer, MIT Press, Cambridge MA, second
edition.
– For contributions to collective work:
Oyer, P. and Schaefer, S. (2011) Personnel economics: Hiring and incentives, in Orley
Ashenfelter and David Card, editors: Handbook of Labour Economics, Vol. 4b, Great Britain,
North Holland, 1769-1823.
– For periodicals:
Bannier, C., Feess, E. and Packham, N. (2013) Competition, Bonuses, and Risk-taking in the
Banking Industry, Review of Finance 17 , 653-690
– For University papers / unpublished papers:
Acharya, V., Pagano, M. and Volpin, P. (2013) Seeking Alpha: Excess Risk Taking and
Competition for Managerial Talent, NBER Working Paper 18891.
Thanassoulis, J. (2011) Industrial structure, executives’ pay and myopic risk taking,
Department of Economics, Discussion Paper Series, University of Oxford.
– For magazines and newspapers:
The Economist (2013) Under the mattress – German financial habits, November 23
6.Appendix and data archive:
The thesis should be complete in that it does not rely on materials that cannot be checked by the
reader on the basis of publicly available information. The reader should have access to all
documents, so you have to provide access to those that are not publicly available. Similarly,
spreadsheet models, computer programs, or data need to be available, either from a public source,
in the appendix, or in the data archive that you have to include in that case. The ultimate standard of what you should include is reproducibility: With your written guidelines and on the basis of the
materials included, the reader should be able to reproduce your results.
7.Statutory declaration:
At the end of the thesis, there must be a statutory declaration, in which you confirm that you have
written the work on your own and no additional materials have been used, other than the ones you
have mentioned.
Copying from sources that are not quoted in the text will lead to a failing grade on your master thesis
and entails further legal consequences. Copying from sources that are cited lead to a reduction in the
grade because this cannot be counted as an independent contribution. Literal translations from other
languages are equivalent to copying.
8. Length and format:
All formatting should aim at generating clarity and transparency. The reader has only a limited
amount of time to spend on your document, and should not spend it on searching for information
because of a poor organization of your text. The page limit is 40 pages of text on A4, 1.5-spaced, 12pt
proportional width fonts (this does not include the literature references and the appendix). You may
add up to 20 pages of additional information (spreadsheet calculations, balance sheets, profit and
loss accounts, manual for content of data archive, etc., see the section “appendix” below). The
appendix may not be used for information that belongs into the text in order to circumvent the page
limit. You can overrun the page limit for good reasons. If you exceed the page limit without justifying
this with the inclusion of relevant content, then you will receive a lower grade, so you do this at your
own risk.
Guidelines for specific types of theses:
Literature reviews:
-Structure
The contribution of your review comes from the structure you generate and the links between the
articles and books that you survey. The worst type of literature review is a long sequence of
unstructured summaries of the type “he said this, they said that.” The reader does not learn anything
from that and simply gives up. In most cases, the reader would then be better served by just reading
the abstracts of the papers. Try to group the papers you read into problem areas and analyze the
contribution each paper makes to the overall literature: Which answers are convincing, which
answers are superseded by more recent advances? What are the main results, which questions are
still open?
-Completeness
You should aim to cover the literature somewhat comprehensively. In each area of the literature,
there are important papers and less important contributions. The important papers should be
identified clearly and they need to be covered. Some studies are replicated on different datasets
and discovering and listing all of them is sometimes useful in order to demonstrate cross-country differences. Sometimes, however, we learn very little from replication studies and you may
need to be selective.
-Sources
It is always a good idea to start with a survey article on the subject or a handbook article in order to
get a grasp of the subject. Keyword searches in databases of articles (e. g. EconLit, www.jstor.org) are
useful. It is also important that you cover articles that are not yet published – the publication gap is
often as long as 5 years, so any review that covers only the published literature might very well be
already out of date. The most important sources are www.ssrn.com and www.scholar.google.com .
Case-studies:
– Theory
You do not need to reproduce standard textbook methods. However, more often than not you will
need to refer to some theory in order to explain your analysis. Therefore, it is often useful to tie this
in with the background material (see above). You may just as well earn some extra points by also
providing additional structure and understanding (like “This industry is characterized by high barriers
to entry as all companies in this industry run high advertising budgets.”).
-Analysis
Aim for a concise, in-depth analysis. In particular, do not just reproduce facts and figures. The
difference between a mediocre thesis and a good or even excellent one rests ultimately on the
quality of your original contribution. It is easy to be overly impressed with glossy brochures, analyst
reports, company websites, and annual reports. However, credit is given for your analysis. You
should see through these veils and show independent judgement. Hence, while you read you should
be alert to conflicts of interest and reporting biases that may influence the quality of your sources.
-Materials
You probably have access to some materials that are either not publicly available or at least not
known to the hypothetical “knowledgeable reader”. You want to make your thesis self-contained, so
you need to cite these and give meaningful summaries (see “background information” above). In
some cases, you may want to include extensive summaries or even reproduce some of this in the
appendix (see below). Also, please make clear where you rely on materials available to you, and
where your own analysis starts. Separate facts and comments.
-Structure
A fair amount of your work should be to structure the materials and you should spend some time
thinking about how you want to organize the content of your thesis. Ask yourself what belongs
together and which parts naturally relate to each other. Weak theses typically try to just organize the
material into subheadings and then lose sight of the relationships between different parts of the
thesis.
-How to get a good grade:
You need to make a contribution with your thesis and provide a well-reasoned analysis of your topic.
The difference between a satisfactory thesis (in terms of German grades, the 2.7-3.0-range) and a
good thesis (1.7- 2.3) range is basically whether your thesis has significant analytic content or not.
The distinguishing feature of a very good thesis (1.0-1.3) is that you really exceed expectations. As a
base rule, a thesis that is good without major errors or problems and which deals satisfactorily with
all the tasks that were agreed at the beginning without going into much depth would be a 2.7.
This is where you should seek your contribution:
Case studies: Aim for some analytic content and a thoughtful quantitative analysis. This could be a
valuation (DCF, multiples) of a company, an event study to analyze stock market reactions, a Monte
Carlo analysis or a flow of funds in an internal capital market. A purely verbal analysis of a company’s
strategy and carefully collected excerpts from company reports supported by light commentary do
not qualify as analysis.
Empirical studies: Try to understand your dataset and carefully collect your data. Apply statistical
methods thoughtfully and interpret your results. Intelligent commentary of results is more important
than many tables.
Literature reviews: You need to cover your subject comprehensively but the number of papers you
reference is not the yardstick for evaluating your contribution. Try to understand methods,
distinguish questions that were addressed successfully from those that were not and convey a new
understanding of the field to the reader.
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