General Requirements:
1. Choose a Y (outcome measure) that someone cares about (at your firm using real data, preferably). It can be a good thing like profit, time spent on project (efficiency measure), or a worthwhile project. If you can find a Y of interest, your whole project will be of interest.
2. Once you choose a CONTINUOUS Y of interest, choose a policy oriented X. Your project's implications revolve around b, (the relationship between X and Y). So if Y=sales and X=advertising the beta gives interesting information (i.e. is advertising effective?). If X=months then that is not as interesting ... (i.e. each month sales increase by 10%...that's nice but does not tell the manager how to improve sales). So choose an X that implies ACTION. Not all of your Xs have to imply that ACTION should or shouldn't be taken, but at least one.
3. Don't use a Macroeconomic Y like Dow Jones or Unemployment in U.S. or Per Capita income. Someone else has already done studies much more in depth than you will here. Choose a Y that YOU know about... like something from your work, hobbies, or home.
4. The most common problem that students encounter designing their project is the Y variable they want to use is not continuous. You must have a continuous Y, not a series of 1 through 4, or yes/no in order to use OLS regression. Y must be able to take on a multitude of values.
5. The next most common problem is that students don't match the Y and X values. For example, Y is per store, or per day. YOUR X's MUST ALSO BE per store or per day.
6. You must include at least 4 separate X variables in the regression and more if you have them (note: this cannot be one categorical variable with 5 dummy variable categories).
7. You must have at least one categorical X variable. A variable such as marital status that has 2 categories still just counts as one X variable for the calculation of #6 above.
8. The number of observations must be greater than or equal to 50.
9. Working in groups is required: you may have at most 5 group members.
10. Use a significance level of 10%.
11. The paper should be written as ONE continuous paper with NO SECTIONS.
12. Appendix should be clearly labeled and begin on a new page.
