Reed, W. Robert. “The Determinants of U.S. State Economic Growth: A Less Extreme Bounds Analysis.” Economic Inquiry47, no. 4 (October 2009): 685-700.

Since there are not many academic journals in the periodical section of the library that fit my topic about consumption and socioeconomic status,  I chose an article from an economic journal. This article covers U.S. state economic growth from 1970 to 1999. It investigates the robust determinates to figure out what exactly contributed to the economic growth between that time period. The author pulls from other research and also introduces his own new method for addressing “model uncertainty” issues associated with the growth equations that he’s using. Some of the potential explanatory variables include population/labor force characteristics, economic characteristics, public sector variables, etc. The article’s research topic is U.S. economic growth factors, and the research question is “what factors caused U.S. state economic growth during 1970 to 1999?”  The type of data the author needed to collect to answer his questions is economic data. The author utilized public and private records for his data collection, including the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. The data collected is quantitative, and it is interval/ratio data. The author uses it to compare different factors of economic growth between the set years. In my opinion, I think this research is valid and trustworthy, because the article appears in a peer-reviewed academic journal. The author pulls certain aspects of research from other related projects to help his own research, and also implements new strategies and methods for determining the characteristics of economic growth.