In an ideal world, an undergraduate economics major sitting down to write a thesis or participate in a capstone course would have already developed most of the statistical, academic writing, and critical reading skills taught in this book. But we don't live in an ideal world. So, I disagree with the reviewer who said this book is of use only to freshmen: I would also recommend it advanced undergrads and even beginning graduate students who need help learning to produce, and to present, scholarly work.

Unfortunately, the current edition is now five years old. So, while Greenlaw's discussion of online resources is good as far as it goes, it's probably time for a new edition. For example, while it's surprising that even the 2006 edition doesn't mention RePEc, the omission of RePEc and IDEAS is now a glaring hole in its coverage. Likewise, while Greenlaw properly refers the reader to other sources for detailed guidelines on citation styles, it's surprising that the word "blog" doesn't appear at all in the index, and this is a shortcoming that is even more significant today. Finally, a new edition of the book should address the use of personal bibliographic management software such as Zotero, BibTeX, RefWorks, and Endnote.

[2011-04-29] ( )

Recommended reading for any undergraduate Economics major. Discusses what it means to write like an Economist, demystifies the literature review, and gives sound advice on creating a research design, assembling and organizing a dataset, and the essential elements of a research report. ( )