Consejos De Redaccion

Writing Tips for Ph. D. Students
John H. Cochrane1 , 2
Graduate School of Business
University of Chicago
5807 S. Woodlawn
Chicago IL 60637.
773 702 3059.
john.cochrane@gsb.uchicago.edu
http://gsbwww.uchicago.edu/fac/john.cochrane/research/Papers/
June 8, 2005

1 Always

put your contact info on the front page so that people can find your paper and send
you comments! It’s the 21stcentury — get a web page. If your paper is ready for a faculty member
to read it, it should be on your webpage. Put the date on the paper so people know if they are
reading a new version.
2 I thank Toby Moskowitz for helpful comments.

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Organization

Figure out the one central and novel contribution of your paper. Write this down in one
paragraph. As with all your writing, this must beconcrete. Don’t write “I analyzed data
on executive compensation and found many interesting results.” Explain what the central
results are. For example, Fama and French 1992 start their abstract with: “Two easily
measured variables, size and book-to-market equity, combine to capture the cross-sectional
variation in average stock returns associated with market β , size, leverage, book-to-marketequity, and earnings-price ratios.”
Distilling your one central contribution will take some thought. It will cause some pain,
because you will start to realize how much you’re going to have to throw out. Once you do
it, though, you’re in a much better position to focus the paper on that one contribution, and
help readers to get it quickly.
Your readers are busy and impatient. No reader willever read the whole thing from start
to finish. Readers skim. You have to make it easy for them to skim. Most readers want to
know your basic result. Only a few care how it is different from others. Only a few care if
it holds up with different variable definitions, different instrument sets, etc.
Organize the paper in “triangular” or “newspaper” style, not in “joke” or “novel” style.
Notice hownewspapers start with the most important part, then fill in background later for
the readers who kept going and want more details. A good joke or a mystery novel has a
long windup to the final punchline. Don’t write papers like that — put the punchline right
up front and then slowly explain the joke. Readers don’t stick around to find the punchline
in Table 12.
The vast majority of Ph.D. studentpapers and workshop presentations (not all by students!) get this exactly wrong, and we never really find out what the contribution of the
paper is until the last page, the last table, and the last 5 minutes of the seminar.
A good paper is not a travelogue of your search process. We don’t care how you came to
figure out the right answer. We don’t care about the hundreds of things you tried thatdid
not work. Save it for your memoirs.
Abstract
Most journals allow 100-150 words. Obey this limit now. The main function of the
abstract is to communicate the one central and novel contribution, which you just figured
out. You should not mention other literature in the abstract. Like everything else, the
abstract must be concrete. Say what you find, not what you look for. Here too, don’twrite
“data are analyzed, theorems are proved, discussion is made..”

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Introduction
The introduction should start with what you do in this paper, the major contribution.
You must explain that contribution so that people can understand it. Don’t just state your
conclusion: “My results show that the pecking-order theory is rejected.” Give the fact behind
that result. “In a regression of x ony, controlling for z, the coefficient is q.”
The first sentence is the hardest. Do not start with philosophy, “Financial economists
have long wondered if markets are efficient.” Do not start with “The finance literature has
long been interested in x.” Your paper must be interesting on its own, and not just because
lots of other people wasted space on the subject. Do not start with a long...