Assignment:
Econ Paper requirement
The paper should be about 8 double-spaced pages and must be no longer than 15 pages. The paper should contain a list of sources at the end. The body of the paper should contain specific references to these sources.
The paper should address a well-defined question, bringing logical arguments and factual evidence to bear in answering that question. You should assume that the reader is not very familiar with your topic area, and therefore you need to describe some background material to put your question in context. It may take a few paragraphs to define the question precisely. The body of the paper presents the logical arguments (and perhaps some definitions of terms) and the evidence supporting or casting doubt on the statements you make. The final paragraph should review the arguments that you have made and should restate your main conclusions (with appropriate qualifications).
The last page of your paper should be a list of references. You should refer to these references in the body of your paper, sometimes giving the page number when you are citing a particular fact or idea. Feel free to list the Weil textbook, the Mishkin book. I have to give professor a description of the essay, so can you write an easy description in the reference page please?
Grammar and style. Please run spell-check on your paper. The following common grammatical mistakes should be avoided. (a) Run-on sentence. Example: Economists had a naïve view of government, they thought government officials were honest and competent. Here two sentences have been separated by a comma, rather than a period (a semi-colon would also be correct here). (b) Sentence fragment. Every sentence has to have both a subject and a verb. (c) The contraction of "it is" is it's; the possessive form is "its." (d) The verb affect is spelled with an "a." The consequences of an action are its effects, spelled with an "e." Example: The break-up with his girl friend affected his emotional health, but its effects on his diet were minimal.
Examples of paper topics and possible ways to approach them:
a. Is education one of the keys to economic development? You might start out by explaining that education is one form of human capital, which enters directly into the production function. You could also point out that the level of education might affect political institutions, community organizations, and the quality of government bureaucracy; thus its effects are not limited to the direct contribution of human capital in production. Education might also affect crime rates and the level of fertility. Having explained the various ways in which education might affect development, you would turn to the evidence that education makes a positive contribution to development. There is evidence on the productive effects of human capital at the level of individuals-more educated individuals earn more-and evidence at the level of countries-more educated countries have higher per capita incomes. In both of these correlations questions of causation have to be addressed, because the correlations might be explained by higher incomes causing education or some other variable causing both income and education.
b. Is governmental corruption the most serious obstacle to development in poor countries? You might start out by describing the various ways in which corruption in government can hinder development. One way to think about this question is to describe the various ways in which government policies can promote or hinder development, and then think about how corruption would influence government performance in each of these areas. You could also look at correlations between governance measures and income or growth rates for some evidence on the effect of corruption on development. You would have to explain the two-way causation between per capita income and corruption.
c. Are differences in development mainly explained by culture? You might describe the various ways in which a progress-resistant culture might inhibit development. (You should probably devote some space to defining your terms.) I think the distinction between personal culture and civic culture is important. Then you could discuss the evidence that various aspects of culture are obstacles to development. As always in discussing evidence, you should be sensitive to the possibility of causation running from development success to a progress-prone culture as well as causation running from a progress-prone culture to development success.
d. What are the development priorities in country X? Your country of interest might be a development success or a development failure, or somewhere in between. To the extent that your country has been successful, you should explain what the country has done right, and if possible why the country has done those things. Was it good government performance or good business performance despite an inept government? To the extent that your country has failed in some ways to develop, you should explain what the obstacles have been and what has prevented the government from dealing with those obstacles. In many countries it should be easy to describe what steps by the government would promote development (e.g., better education policies, more of certain types of infrastructure, better legal system) and you should spell this out. But it is more challenging and more interesting to explain the political or other obstacles to implementing these desirable government policies.