Economics Project- Help needed

Poor_old_gill

I have to do a research project on an economic topic of my choice.
However I cant really think of something to do.
I have an interest in Development economics and the history of economic thought but development economics seems the most likely option as history of economics is so well covered.
I have a big interest in the GAA- would anyone have any serious ideas of an economics project that I could do with regard to the GAA

Poor_old_gill

Or if someone could make any suggestions of a project to undertake

Joe1919

Poor_old_gill wrote: »

I have a big interest in the GAA- would anyone have any serious ideas of an economics project that I could do with regard to the GAA

The ESRI has a paper on sports that might stimulate you into some ideas in the direction of sports economics and there are books on the subject. I suppose the GAA being an ametuer sport would probably not be as economically interesting as soccer but on the other hand it may have potential. http://www.esri.ie/publications/search_for_a_publication/search_results/view/index.xml?id=1969

Poor_old_gill

Joe1919 wrote: »

The ESRI has a paper on sports that might stimulate you into some ideas in that direction. www.esri.ie/.../BKMNINT180_Main%20Text_Social%20and%20Economic%20Value%20of%20Sport.pdf

the link doesnt work man

Joe1919

Poor_old_gill wrote: »

the link doesnt work man

I have changed the link and commentary slightly (refresh the page).

Poor_old_gill

Joe1919 wrote: »

I have changed the link and commentary slightly (refresh the page).

Thanks very much for this- I'll have a read of it now

Flamed Diving

Just engage with the academic literature. You won't get anything out of staring at textbooks and slides.

Get one paper that interests you and follow the citations. Use ideas.repec.org to find what newer papers have cited the ones you began with. Often, the best ideas are ones where existing ideas are replicated, but extended or used on a different group of countries, population, etc.

gerry87

You can do projects on literally anything you want, don't try and make it look too economicy, stick with your GAA idea if it interests you.

You could do some sort of an econometric model to predict a teams performance. Run some logit/probit models, dependent variable (1=win, 0=lose) or normal regression based on number of points. Variables of whatever you want, average age of the team, number of successes in last 5 matches, successes in last 5 matches against this team, binary variables for whether a specific player was playing to see who the best player is, whether they're home or away, sure you could even use the weather!

You could stretch that to a theoretical thing on whether it's possible to predict results, what factors you think are most important, you could bring in bookies odds on matches whether they're consistent withe your findings, if not - could you profit from your model, can you use your model to pick best teams depending on the team your opponent picks (game theory).

I'm sure you could find papers related to it, there have been papers on things like whether refs favor home teams (Lucey, B. and D. Power (2004), Do soccer referees display home team favouritism?, mimeo, Trinity College, Dublin.) so i'm sure there would be more.

Also its a little original and will be different than the rest of the papers that will be handed up (housing prices, interest rates yada yada), so bonus points there. Just be careful to make it interesting for someone who has no interest in gaa.

Best of luck with whatever you pick.