IPE Quantitative Research Lab (Course number IPEC 250)

Classroom location: Reynolds Family Hall (REYN) 131Class day & time: Tuesday, 3:30pm-6pm

Instructor: James Raymond Vreeland, Professor 2.0

WE ARE GLOBAL GEORGETOWN!

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What are your expectations?

1. …

2. …

3. …

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My expectations

• Standards of Excellence

• Attendance, punctuality, preparation, participation, thoughtfulness, intellectual curiosity, …

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Goals: Skills

• Learn the pain of writing

• Presentation skills – with time constraints

• Quantitative analysis– Datasets– Descriptive data– Stata

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• Syllabus– Use it throughout the semester (every week)– http://faculty.georgetown.edu/jrv24/IPEC250.html

• Why are we looking at projects that I have been involved with?– Intimate understanding of a research project

– A “tell all” class

– How an idea becomes a paper, becomes an article, becomes a book…

• Note that everything in your textbooks starts out as just an idea, then a paper…

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Activity

• Create a structure that will support the ball

• Materials: – Straws– Pins

• 20 minutes

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Activity lessons

• Start with a theory

– Collaboration!

– We must be comfortable sharing our ideas with each other – healthy debate & critiques are encouraged

– Question EVERYTHING…

• Test the theory

– There is no proof (or disproof) – only corroborating & refuting evidence

• Compete with other theories… & repeat

• The ongoing global conversation continues…7

For next week:

• Read:

– Vreeland, James Raymond. 2011. Foreign Aid and Global Governance: Buying Bretton Woods - The Swiss-bloc case. Review of International Organizations 6 (3-4):369-391.

• Replication materials

– The First Walsh School of Foreign Service Undergraduate Working Paper Series in International Political Economy: Foreign Policy Goals and Preferences in International Political Economy. Ms.

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All research begins with a question• Curiosity about the political & economic world around

you is the main prerequisite for this class

• Think critically & ask questions

• And during class, always remember:

– Those who ask questions are fools for five minutes; those who do not ask questions remain fools forever.

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Thank youWE ARE GLOBAL GEORGETOWN!

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