Write a brief description of research question. You need tell me why it is important to study this research question. For example, growth rate of GDP is your forecasting object, then talk about why govt want to forecast it. Locate the data set and give me a summary stat of all dependent and independent variables. Graph your dependent data in both stationary and non-stationary form (if time series). I need to make sure that you have at least the data set for your project. Find out the significant events or outliers and talk about that in the proposal. For example, for GDP, you might also want to collect inflation rate, interest rate, oil price(At least 5 variables and 80 timepoints) You can pick anything you like as long as its about economics or finance. No need to run any regression at this point and you can use any software you like. In summary, I want the following:
1) Research question and motivation 2) Data description: Source, Range Frequency, Transformation 3) Summary Statistics, Correlation Matrix, Graph of your dependent variable. 4) Significant events and outliers