\[ \DeclareMathOperator{\E}{E} \DeclareMathOperator{\mean}{mean} \DeclareMathOperator{\Var}{Var} \DeclareMathOperator{\Cov}{Cov} \DeclareMathOperator{\Cor}{Cor} \DeclareMathOperator{\Bias}{Bias} \DeclareMathOperator{\MSE}{MSE} \DeclareMathOperator{\RMSE}{RMSE} \DeclareMathOperator{\sd}{sd} \DeclareMathOperator{\se}{se} \DeclareMathOperator{\rank}{rank} \DeclareMathOperator*{\argmin}{arg\,min} \DeclareMathOperator*{\argmax}{arg\,max} \newcommand{\Mat}[1]{\boldsymbol{#1}} \newcommand{\Vec}[1]{\boldsymbol{#1}} \newcommand{\T}{'} \newcommand{\distr}[1]{\mathcal{#1}} \newcommand{\dnorm}{\distr{N}} \newcommand{\dmvnorm}[1]{\distr{N}_{#1}} \newcommand{\dt}[1]{\distr{T}_{#1}} \newcommand{\cia}{\perp\!\!\!\perp} \DeclareMathOperator*{\plim}{plim} \]

Chapter 15 Writing Resources

15.1 Writing and Organizing Papers

• Chris Adolph. Writing Empirical Papers: 6 Rules & 12 Recommendations

• Barry R. Weingast. 2015. CalTech Rules for Writing Papers: How to Structure Your Paper and Write an Introduction

• The Science of Scientific Writing American Scientist

• Deidre McCloskey. Economical Writing

• William Thompson. A Guide for the Young Economist. “Chapter 2: Writing Papers.”

• Stephen Van Evera. Guide to Methods for Students of Political Science. Appendix.

• Joseph M. Williams and Joseph Bizup. Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace

• Strunk and White. The Elements of Style

• Chicago Manual of Style and APSA Style Manual for Political Science for editorial and style issues.

• How to construct a Nature summary paragraph. Though specific to Nature, it provides good advice for structuring abstracts or introductions.

• Ezra Klein. How researchers are terrible communications, and how they can do better.

• The advice in the AJPS Instructions for Submitting Authors is a concise description of how to write an abstract:

  The abstract should provide a very concise descriptive summary of the research stream to which the manuscript contributes, the specific research topic it addresses, the research strategy employed for the analysis, the results obtained from the analysis, and the implications of the findings.

• Concrete Advice for Writing Informative Abstracts and How to Carefully Choose Useless Titles for Academic Writing

15.2 Finding Research Ideas

• Paul Krugman How I Work
• Hal Varian. How to build an Economic Model in your spare time
• Greg Mankiw, My Rules of Thumb:
• The links in Advice for Grad Students

15.3 Replications

Gary King has advice on how to turn a replication into a publishable paper:

• Gary King How to Write a Publishable Paper as a Class Project

• Gary King. 2006. “Publication, Publication.” PS: Political Science and Politics.

• Political Science Should Not Stop Young Researchers from Replicating from the Political Science Replication blog.

And see the examples of students replications from his Harvard course at https://politicalsciencereplication.wordpress.com/.

Famous replications.

• "Irregularities in LaCour (2014) (Broockman, Kalla, and Aronow 2015)
• “Does High Public Debt Consistently Stifle Economic Growth? A Critique of Reinhart and Rogoff.” (Herndon, Ash, and Pollin 2013)

However, although those replications are famous for finding fraud or obvious errors in the analysis, replications can lead to extensions and generate new ideas. This was the intent of Broockman, Kalla, and Aronow (2015) when starting the replication.