Economics 3960 - 01
Research Paper Handout:

Step 1) Find a sport or topic that is of interest to you.

Step 2) Do a web search to find out what is out there on that topic

-www.google.com is a very good search engine. You can do an advanced search and get fairly specific and get some good hits.

Example: search ‘economics of golf'
Return: not much

Example: search ‘economics of tournaments - golf'
Return: a CBS Sports article on financial information of the US Open and the PGA tour itself

Step 3) Decide whether you would like to do an analytical or historical (or both)

If analytical: go to course website - other useful sites- and look for statistics for your sport. (Also do other web searches)

If historical: basic web search

Step 4) Time to do a more thorough search, not just basic web pages

Go to http://www.lib.utah.edu/ResGuides/economics.html
This is an excellent resource collection in the field of economics. This will give you electronic journals, newspapers, etc.

Example: Scrolling down to JSTOR - a full text economics articles search engine. Type in ‘golf tournaments' - scroll down and select economics (for journal selection). This search yields six results that discuss the economics of golf tournaments and the incentives they provide. If you are going to do a paper on the impact Tiger Woods has on golf, these are things you need to include.

Example: Select Econlit - a search engine for lots of economics journals. Select Econlit on next page and do a search for ‘golf tournaments'. This search yields six hits on tournament winnings, incentive effects, and the economics of golf in general. For a more broad search, type ‘golf' and you get 35 hits on such things as earnings gaps between men and women golfers, the economics of golf balls and so on.

Example: Select Academic Universe - a search engine for newspapers, magazines, government doc's etc. Search for ‘economics of golf' and search yields 554 articles, many discussing the impact golf courses have on local economies (hit number 13 looks interesting here)
Step 5) Go to library home page and do a basic keyword search

Example: Basic keyword search ‘golf tournaments' yields 12 hits mostly discussing random stuff, but hit number 2 is a historical description of the PGA tour, which could be extremely useful, if you are trying to do the impact Tiger Woods has on the tour, or on the economics of golf in general.

Step 6) Maybe I should have some numbers

Go to course web site - other useful sites - sports statistics on the web. Choose Golf. This gives three good sources of golf statistics on the web. Unsatisfied with those choices, doing a web search for ‘pga statistics' yields several good sources for golf stats, some historical, mostly current. These may be useful in my discussion.

Step 7) Choosing a Topic

Realizing that there is plenty of information on this topic, I am going to choose to write on the economics of golf tournaments and how tournament winnings are decided, and see if Tiger Woods has changed this at all. Write up a 1-2 paragraph discussion of this topic - propose topic basically, and hand in by Thursday the 12th of September. You may choose to submit the proposal electronically, which is fine.

Some Things to Remember:

35% of your grade comes from this paper. You will be graded on not only your final draft, but also your written submission and annotated bibliography. Your research must yield sources from magazines, newspapers, economics journals, web sources, statistical sources etc, for full credit. Be careful is what is posted on a website. Anyone can post information, and make it look academic and true. Much of what you will find on the web (on random sites) is opinion, do not state that as fact.

The Due dates are:

9/12: Written submission of topic is due (electronic is fine)
10/17: Literature review and bibliography is due
11/21: Final Draft is Due