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ECON 305 – FALL 2023

PAPER GUIDELINES

As specified in the Course Syllabus, 15% of your grade is based on a country-report paper. The main guideline is to apply any topic learned in class to a real macroeconomic situation in a country of your choosing. Usually, most students find it easy to discuss a macroeconomic stabilization policy (based on the IS-LM and AD-AS models). However, if you decide to focus on growth (Solow growth model) that works out as well. The example below will be based on stabilization policies. This is an outline for your paper:

1. Introduction: This is an executive summary for your paper. Explain which country you picked, what macroeconomic crisis (shock to AD, shock to AS…) and what stabilization policy was adopted (expansionary/contractionary Fiscal/Monetary…). Briefly anticipate your conclusions as well. (1 pages)

2. Body: Organize the details of your research and analysis as follows:

a. Background: Any descriptive statistics about your country that are relevant to your paper. Do not go into irrelevant data, just because you found it available online. (1pages)

b. Macroeconomic Shock: Describe what happened (Financial Crisis, 2008 recession, Contagion from another country…) and how your country was affected (recession drop of x% for y quarters, inflation problems, depreciation of the currency, unemployment went up by z points…). (1pages)

c. Stabilization Policy: Explain what macroeconomic policies, if any, were put in place in response to the shock you just described (Monetary expansionary/contractionary, Fiscal expansionary/contractionary, Exchange rate devaluation…). (1pages)

d. Macroeconomic Assessment: give your judgement based on what you have learned in class. This is where you can show me that you are able to apply the theoretical lessons to something you have seen in current events. You might agree with the policies adopted or not. (1pages)

3. Conclusion: Summarize your paper thesis, your findings and your results. Here you can expand on what your assessment is. (1 page)

4. References: Cite any relevant source you used to prepare your paper. (1 page)

As you can tell by the approximate page numbers for each section, I expect about 5-6 pages of work. It might be more, especially if you use several graphs, but remember that I don’t grade on length or weight, but on content. This is what I look for:

· Be concise and make your points in a direct manner.

· Use graphs to tell your story, but do not cut and paste graphs from other sources. Collect raw data and prepare your own graphs.

· I will grade down sloppy presentations. This should be like a presentation you do for work. Graphs need to be neat, citing data sources.

· Keep it simple. You do not need to talk about everything that happened to your country. Stick to one story to get an A. You can compare two different episodes for the same country, or the experience of two different countries, as long as it is relevant to your story.

DUE DATE: Papers will be due the day of the final and must be submitted electronically on Blackboard (the TA will prepare a link for submission). Make sure to name your paper as follows: ECON305_YourLastName_YourFirstName. Do not send a paper called “final paper” or any other generic names, because I will end up losing it in my files and if I don’t read it you won’t receive a grade.

CLASS PRESENTATIONS: The best time for me to give you useful feedbacks before you turn in your final work is during class presentations. Everyone will need to give a brief 5 minutes presentation on the last week of classes. All you need to do is prepare a couple of slides (or as many as graphs that you have) in PowerPoint and show your progress so far. I will not grade the presentation on content, but on effort. This is a chance for me to give you an early assessment.