1. Assignment Description

The assignment weights 50% of the total mark for this module and it is an individual piece of work.

The aims of this assignment are to develop practical skills in presentation of economic data, conducting statistical analysis, developing evidence-based recommendations and implications for further research. Students will also improve the report writing skills.

Students are provided with data on the incidence of tuberculosis (TB) for the period 2000-2020 and the poverty rate collected by the World Bank (http://data.worldbank.org/indicator) to answer the following question:

Does the poverty rate affect the distribution of TB?

The data files are available on BB:

Incidence of tuberculosis (per 100,000 people): API_SH.TBS.INCD_DS2_en_excel_v2_3737287.xls
Poverty headcount ratio at $3.20 a day (2011 PPP) (% of population): API_SI.POV.LMIC_DS2_en_excel_v2_3754837.xls

Each student will have to use data for specific years (different year for each student) to answer the above question. The results will be year/student specific. The Annex lists two consecutive years for each student. The first (most recent) year to be used to identify data on the Incidence of tuberculosis variable. The second year – for the data on Poverty. For example, the years 2021/2020 means that the TB data should be for year 2021 and the data on Poverty should come for 2020.

2. Requirements and Deadline

You have to produce and submit via Turnitin on Blackboard two documents by 01^st Nov (11:59am):

A report (80 marks out of 100) as discussed below (you can use the following link for submission or submit via a link on the Blackboard: https://vle.dmu.ac.uk/webapps/turn-plgnhndl-bb_bb60/links/submit.jsp?course_id=_601169_1&content_id=_5750732_1&tii_assign_id=15627466&orig_id=_5750732_1 ;
An Excel worksheet (20 marks out of 100) that contains the data you have analysed and each analytical output you have produced and presented in your report (you can use the following link for submission or submit via a link on the Blackboard: https://vle.dmu.ac.uk/webapps/turn-plgnhndl-bb_bb60/links/submit.jsp?course_id=_601169_1&content_id=_5750733_1&tii_assign_id=15627472&orig_id=_5750733_1 ).

1000 – 1200 words (not including the title page, table of contents, table of figures, tables, figures, reference, appendix); be in size 11 Arial font, with 1.5 line spacing; I expect students will use several graphs and tables.

Your report should be in MS Word format. You do not need to submit a hard copy, just an electronic copy via the Turnitin link as specified above. Your work should be returned within 20 working days. Detailed feedback will be available and can be discussed with the lecturer.

Note that the normal requirements for academic quality will be applied in accordance with the university policies. More details in terms of referencing, plagiarism, late submission can be found in the module handbook.

Late submissions will result in the loss of 10 marks per day of delay if no deferral is granted prior the original deadline. Reporting on a wrong data set will be penalized by 20 marks.

3. Guide for the structure and format of report

The report should present the results of your analysis and contain the following sections:

(5 marks) Introduction: state the research question, why it is important, what data you are using to answer the question.
(10 marks) Background and hypothesis: Review at least one article published in an academic journal that studies the same or similar question. What are the key findings and recommendations. Based on the reviewed paper state the null and an alternative hypothesis which you will test with the data.
Statistical Analyses:
- (5 marks) Describe your data source: Describe the source of data, year(s) of analysis, variables you will use for the analysis, their meaning, units of measurement of each variable and the units of observation. For more information visit the web site where the data was obtained (e.g. http://data.worldbank.org/indicator ) and check meta data for each variable.
- (10 marks) Data management: provide a clear description of each step in constructing the data set for your analysis, assessing data quality and cleaning procedure. What is the original number of observations and how many observations you will use for the analysis. Why? The suggestions for the data cleaning include but are not limited to the following: do you have missing values or duplicates? Do all the data points represent the same units of observation (what does it mean for your analysis, e.g. do all the observations represent countries)? Are there any typos or other errors? Are there any outliers? If yes, for which variable, how many and what are the examples? How should the data be arranged for further analysis? Are you analysing data on a sample or on a population?
- (15 marks) Descriptive analysis:
  - Provide the key descriptive statistics for your data. It is a good practice to present the results in a table with an explanation in the text of your report. Which of the statistics is affected by the outliers and by how much? Use graphical representation of your data. Does the statistics differ by the regions of the world? You can use pivot tables to demonstrate these differences.
  - Construct two-variable descriptive analysis using the scatter plot and correlation. Does it provide an evidence in support of your hypothesis? Is it affected by the outliers?
- (25 marks) Regression analysis and hypothesis testing: conduct the regression analysis of your data and produce a table with results. Which is a dependent and which is an independent variable in your analysis? How high is the explanatory power of your model? Describe the economic meaning (interpretation) of the results. Discuss the results of hypotheses testing. Do you reject the null? At what level of confidence? Is your result affected by the outliers?
- (5 marks) Conclusion: You should summarise what you have done, how you have done it and what your results suggest. You should also suggest whether there any limitations with your data and analysis and how you might improve your analysis. Can you suggest other variables or data sources to test the same hypothesis? Are your results in line with the findings in the literature? What would you recommend for policy makers and other stakeholders based on your results?
- (5 marks) Quality of writing: Be careful that any figures/tables you use are labelled and titled appropriately and are correctly referred to in the text. The content should be clear, well organized, with clear focuses, coherent presentation and logical progression.

For a nice additional guide on how to carry out an empirical project Chapter 19 of Wooldridge (2013) (available on BB).

4. Assessment Criteria

The above marking distribution will be used for the assessment of your report. I will be looking for the following things when awarding marks for this assignment:

A well-presented report, which clearly highlights the main results.
A clear structure, with an introduction and a conclusion that summarizes the main findings.
The ability to use the statistical techniques we have studied in this course to present and analyse data in a meaningful fashion.
The ability to relate your statistical findings to some basic theory about the functioning of the economy and economic events in order to make sense of the statistics.