It is important for you to identify your potential explanatory variables. This process need to be guided by economic theory or previous studies. In the model specification try running different model specifications and assess the performance of these models. Check if they have explanatory power. Also be careful and test for issues such as muli collinearity.

The selection of the variables studied is very important. Carefully draw up the specifications of the models, complying with the requirements of statistics theory and econometrics. Perform models adequacy checks for statistical significance. You need to check for autocorrelation, heteroskedasticity, and multicollinearity.

Success!

Hello Shayan,

First of all, I wish you good luck with your thesis. It is really challenging process, awards you with knowledge, experience and title. I understand your purpose to add econometric analysis to your research in order to make it stronger and reliable, but I want to warn you in few points. Mistakes in published papers are like criminal records for academics. Making an easy mistake on a very simple topic can negatively affect your career and overshadow your reliability. Therefore I highly advise you to write the paper in your proficiency borders.

Econometric knowledge is like recognizing part of the car. To know what is a wheel, gear, tires, break, etc. You should know that pressing brake stops the car or adjusting correct gear makes your car faster or slower.

Applied econometrics is like driving the car. You know all econometric knowledge but now you have to apply them. Experience all knowledge in practice.

The thing you want to do; an econometric analysis is like a road trip. You want to from A to B point but you have to consider many factors. First you should know where you are going to drive. Is it hot desert, rainy forest or frozen land. Then you have to prepare your car -econometric knowledge- for this trip. You have to know which tire is best for desert or which oil is best for freezing weather. Then you have to get lessons from your previous experiences which is applied econometrics. You should know how to drive on ice or change the flat tire. As you can see, econometric analysis is pretty complicated and demanding.

For being able to conduct this analysis, you need about a year. Another way is by asking someone else to do it for you. But since it is a master thesis, you can't have co-author, so ethically it won't be appropriate. My humble advice, write the things you know best, own your paper, stand straight in front of the jury and defend your paper.

Good luck!

This problem is likely to encounter issues with confounding. Two variables may appear to be correlated to each other when they both may be correlated to a third unknown variable. It will be very difficult to make comparisons with countries with very different cultures.

If you look at the USA and Canada, they are very similar counties in many respects but Canada effectively abandoned the death penalty over fifty years ago, Around half the US States plus the Federal authorities still use the death penalty. Canada has a murder rate of around one third of that in the US. Which way does the causality run? Or is something else causing the diaparity of the result.

It will be difficult to examine third world counties without dealing with political, cultural and religious issues. I suspect that in many cases the murder rate and the policy on executions may well reflect the former.

Best of luck.

Chapter Quick Planning Using “S” Curves and Cost Based Durations