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General Tips

1. It helps to read other people's prose. Reading back and forth between good and bad writing makes obvious the deficiencies in one's own prose.
2. Don't be skimpy on motivation. I've seen an argument that it's best to limit your motivation to the first paragraph and jump straight into what your paper does. Unless your contribution is obvious and your research question inherently fascinating, I personally think a lot of thought and multiple paragraphs should go into properly motivating the paper.

Examples in Empirical Economics

1. Amir Sufi, Chicago Booth
   • Sufi, Amir. "Bank lines of credit in corporate finance: An empirical analysis." The Review of Financial Studies 22, no. 3 (2009): 1057-1088.
   • Mian, Atif, and Amir Sufi. "House prices, home equity-based borrowing, and the US household leverage crisis." American Economic Review 101, no. 5 (2011): 2132-56.
2. Matthew Gentzkow, Stanford
   • Gentzkow, Matthew, and Jesse M. Shapiro. "Ideological segregation online and offline." The Quarterly Journal of Economics 126, no. 4 (2011): 1799-1839.
   • Gentzkow, Matthew, and Jesse M. Shapiro. "What drives media slant? Evidence from US daily newspapers." Econometrica 78, no. 1 (2010): 35-71.
3. Marcella Alsan, Harvard
   • Alsan, Marcella. "The effect of the tsetse fly on African development." American Economic Review 105, no. 1 (2015): 382-410.
   • Alsan, Marcella, and Marianne Wanamaker. "Tuskegee and the health of black men." The quarterly journal of economics 133, no. 1 (2018): 407-455.
4. Christian Leuz, Chicago Booth
   • Christensen, Hans B., Luzi Hail, and Christian Leuz. "Capital-market effects of securities regulation: Prior conditions, implementation, and enforcement." The Review of Financial Studies 29, no. 11 (2016): 2885-2924.
5. Jeremy Stein, Harvard
   • Hanson, Samuel G., and Jeremy C. Stein. "Monetary policy and long-term real rates." Journal of Financial Economics 115, no. 3 (2015): 429-448.
6. Owen Lamont, Industry
   • Lamont, Owen A, 2012, Go down fighting: Short sellers vs. firms, Review of Asset Pricing Studies 2, 1–30
7. John Campbell, Harvard
   • Campbell, John Y. "Restoring rational choice: The challenge of consumer financial regulation." American Economic Review 106, no. 5 (2016): 1-30.

Examples in Theoretical Economics

1. Jeremy Stein, Harvard
   • Stein, Jeremy C. "Efficient capital markets, inefficient firms: A model of myopic corporate behavior." The quarterly journal of economics 104, no. 4 (1989): 655-669.
   • Stein, Jeremy C. "Internal capital markets and the competition for corporate resources." The Journal of Finance 52, no. 1 (1997): 111-133.
   • Stein, Jeremy C. Rational capital budgeting in an irrational world. No. w5496. National bureau of economic research, 1996.
2. Steven T. Berry, Yale
   • Berry, Steven T. "Estimation of a Model of Entry in the Airline Industry." Econometrica: Journal of the Econometric Society (1992): 889-917.
3. Paul Krugman, retired
   • Krugman, Paul. "Scale economies, product differentiation, and the pattern of trade." The American Economic Review 70, no. 5 (1980): 950-959.
4. John Campbell, Harvard
   • Campbell, John Y., and Roman Sigalov. Portfolio choice with sustainable spending: A model of reaching for yield. No. w27025. National Bureau of Economic Research, 2020.