Syllabus
The course is dedicated to the students starting to work systematically on the diploma thesis. You are supposed to know already the topic of your thesis and be acquainted with basic references to books and journal papers which deal scientifically with your problem. The recommended enrolment to this course is in the second or the third semester of your studies at IEPS.
Writing of thesis should become a highlight of study - a mirror revealing your real capacities to work with scientific literature, to think logically and to invent new ideas about selected topic. A good thesis will open the doors to specialisation in the area of professional career. Following the motto "quality rather than quantity" the examiners should base the evaluation of Master’s Theses on their quality, i. e. on the specificity of the research question, on its successful transformation into testable hypotheses and on the independent contribution of authors in answering the research question. In addition, there is the stress on the overall consistency of the thesis and the links between the research question, hypotheses, methods used, interpretation of results and conclusions. Conversely, the students are encouraged to limit the extent of their work and to eliminate irrelevant parts, e.g. trivial repetitions from wikipedia or journalistic catchwords recycled already thousands of times. Master thesis should avoid becoming a patchwork of trivial statements which bring no new insights.
High quality work is typically characterized by:
* a clearly specified well-motivated research question,
* the existence of testable hypotheses derived from the research question,
* a rich survey of facts and processing of data,
* an independent contribution by the student, i. e. a fair endeavour to address the specified research question by pointing to new views, contradicting facts and your own ideas,
* an overall consistency and good interlink between the individual parts,
* no plagiarism.
Annotation
This seminar is a rather special course where you will have to perform as real researchers and work on your master thesis in a style of academic (i.e. scientific) writing. That requires a lot of creative thinking, extensive reading of literature and thus a lot of time. There are the following conditions of attendance and enrollment into this course: a) you already know your final and irrevocable topic of the master thesis; b) you are certain that you can deliver its draft of approximately 20 pages at the beginning of January (Fall Semester)/May (Spring Semester) at the latest.
- Please read the enclosures (e.g. the Master Thesis Primer) for more information.
- Our main communication platform will be Moodle - IEPS - "Master Thesis Seminar JEM166".
- At our first meeting you will be instructed about the next tasks and classes and you will be provided with password to Moodle.
- Please download the file "MT guidelines for economists at IES" with the description what is required from your colleagues studying economics and finance at IES. This reading is for your inspiration. IEPS has got a less stylish instructions but some 80% of that what they require at IES is useful for you, too. See you in the class.