Economics Undergraduate Research

Undergraduate research is thriving, thanks to curious students and encouraging faculty members. You may become involved in research by working as a research assistant, or by pursuing your own research questions.

In several Economics courses, you learn about research by writing a paper on a topic of your choosing. Some assignments will have you conduct quantitative analysis of your research question. For this you will use data replicate an existing study's findings or to generate new findings based on your own hypothesis. This is common in econometrics courses like ECON 308, ECON 407, and ECON 408. A few of these research papers serve as the starting point for Honors projects or independent study courses.

Sometimes, student and faculty collaborations result in publications presented at conferences or in journals.

There are a lot of research tools available to help identify existing research studies and locate data. The Economics Department offers a research grant to encourage student-faculty collaborative research. There are also some campus grants to support independent research.