TOPIC: Political Instability, Terrorism and FDI: A Panel Study of South Asia & South-East Asia
Comments on version submitted Feb 16th have been written on the document itself. It is attached below. There are two main comments. Lit Review is STILL just an annotated bibliography. I have explained how to convert it to a lit review. Please note that lit review for proposal is NOT the same as lit review for final theses. BOTH are discussed on the IIIE Student Guide Website. SECOND comment is that the encompassing approach still needs to be described more clearly. Please look at the thesis of my student Rehman to see how it is done and what it is.
New Revised Version submitted Feb 1st. Comments are given on the document itself, attached below. Briefly, the encompassing approach should be used in this context. Also the proposal is too long and not prepared in correct format.
History
revisions suggested -- Oct 25th; revision submitted 14/11 - rejected 30/11
Original Proposal was submitted to study the same topic in Pakistan.
It was advised that this was not possible. Over the short period of time for which the data is available, there have been many many important events, like the Afghan Wars, the Nuclear Bomb, and others as well. FDI has varied over this time period, and it would be extremely difficult to sort out the different variables to see which variable has which effect. This is an OBSERVATIONAL STUDY with a VERY LARGE NUMBER of confounding factors, and VERY SMALL NUMBER of observations.
In a PANEL DATA set, which has many different countries, it MIGHT be possible to figure out the effect. If the countries are similar in other ways, but DIFFER with respect to the key variables of Political Stability and Terrrorism, then a regression might reveal the effects of these variables.
REVISED PROPOSAL was submitted on 2st October -
Returned with following comments:
zohaib akhtar <akhtarzohaib@yahoo.com>
Tue, Oct 25, 2011 at 8:42 PM
overall this revision seems ok.
However, you have committed mistake number 2 in the common mistakes. See file COMMON MISTAKES in student guide. You have substituted an annotated bibliography for a lit review. A lit review is important in establishing exactly what you are contribution is to the literature. An annotated bibliography does not have that effect. Please revise and resend.
REVISION continues to have same mistake -- A LONG LIST OF IRRELEVANT ARTICLES.
The main idea of thesis is follows: Gather data on FDI and related variable. Run a regression of FDI on X,Y,Z, including a proxy for Terrorism. Find out the sign of the Terrorism variable. This seems too minor a contribution. Basically just running one regression on readily available data. The result is already known -- we know that terrorism will have negative impact on FDI. So what will we learn from this research? What will the student learn from carrying out this research? Some more substantial questions need to be addressed.