Part 1: a good summary of the paper
Write a summary of the paper using your own words.
What is the question asked by the author?
What is the modeling strategy?
What data is used?
How is the hypothesis formulated and tested?
What are the results?
Part 2: the development of 3 or 4 main points or major issues (positive or
negative)
check carefully the question, the theory/model, the link to the empirical
analysis, the presentation of the data, the econometric analysis, and the results.
For a positive point, explain why the question is particularly important, or the
approach particularly novel, or the techniques new, or the identification
strategy innovative, the data very unusual, etc.
For a negative point, look for lack of correspondence between the idea and the
model, the model and the empiricism, the empirical strategy and the
conclusion.
Below is a checklist of the kinds of questions you should ask yourself to help you
raise these points.
Is the topic clearly explained? Could the question be made more precise?
Does the author do a good job of motivating the question in the introduction?
Is the answer to the question obvious in advance?
What is the contribution of the paper?
Does the author pose a question of reasonable scope (i.e., can she reasonably
hope to answer the question in a short empirical paper)?
Does the model formalize the argument given by the author in the question?
Does the model incorporate those aspects of reality that the author seems to
think are important?
Is it possible to answer the question posed by the author within the context of
the model?
Is the model elegant? Is it simple? If it is not simple, is it unnecessarily
complex? Could the author attack the problem with a simpler model?
Does the author present a clear description of the data?
Does the author's choice of a dataset seem well suited to answering the
question he poses?
If you had to replicate the author's study five years from now, is there
sufficient information in the paper about the source of the data and sample
used in estimation that you could do it?
Does the author present summary statistics, and make good use of them to
motivate the question or some specific aspects of her analysis?
What test statistics does the author employ? Do they answer the question?
Are the results clearly stated and presented?
Are the results related back to the question?
Are appropriate caveat mentioned?
Do the conclusions concisely summarize the main points of the paper?
Are the conclusions reached by the author well supported by the evidence?
Are policy implications directly inferred from the results?
Part 3: What did you learn from this paper?