C29AG Advanced Economics 2
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Advanced Economics 2Preparatory notes for the final course assessment
As agreed earlier in the semester, I have changed the assessment for this course to coursework only, so that there is no final exam.
In 2020, the final assessment was a set of three questions, where students had to answer two – with problems rather like those in the weekly workshops.
In 2021, we had a 24 hour online exam, but while students still had to answer two questions from three, the format was somewhat different, with students expected to write essays, supported by technical appendices.
For the assessment this year, I have decided to follow the format of the 2021 examination, but to ask you to complete two questions from four, on topics drawn from game theory, general equilibrium, inter-temporal choice, and choice under risk. In addition, to enable students completing the Advanced Macroeconomics course enough time to complete their assessment, you will see that I am planning to open this assessment on Canvas at 12.00 on 20th April, giving you 48 hours.
Here are the instructions which will precede the assessed questions.
There are four questions in this assessment. You should answer any two of them. For each question, I expect to see your answer in two parts.
• The first part will be a narrative report, no more than 1,000 words long, but ideally about 800 words. This should set out your answer to the question. You must use a word processor for this part, and save the document in a form which can be uploaded to Turnitin (preferably in .pdf format). Please note that with changes to exam regulations, we will not mark hand-written scripts.
• The second part will be a mathematical appendix. This should set out calculations, and diagrams, which support the conclusions which you have reached in your reports. This part may be entirely hand-written, with images embedded within your submission.
• You should only submit one file, containing two reports with their accompanying mathematical appendices.
In setting the assignment, I expect you to demonstrate an understanding both of theoretical economic concepts, and of mathematical tools which we use to develop those concepts. Credit will be given for coherent arguments, which address the set questions directly.
You have 48 hours to complete this assessed work, beginning at 12.00 on 20th April. I have tried to design it, so that it is feasible for you to spend about one hour completing the background calculations, and one hour in writing reports.
Much as I think that these instructions are comprehensive, students always seem to want further reassurance. I have set two additional sessions for revision for this course: 13.00 – 15.00, on Thursdays 7th and 14th April. I will be in MBG13, but you will see that I have set up Collaborate sessions – the aim is that you can either be present at these meetings in person, or else you can participate remotely; or finally, you can listen to a recording. Revision sessions work best if you feed me questions to which you want answers – but I am sure that I can put together plenty of material even without any questions.
Academic integrity
I do not think that it is necessary to say much about this.
The essential idea is straightforward: all work which you submit to Heriot-Watt must be original. Let me add in one small point. Most students understand that, and in produce original work, also generate interesting material.
In asking you to write a report, we expect you to submit it in a form which will allow us to compare your text with online sources, identifying similarities. We use Turnitin similarity services to review your work comparing it with: your previous work, (for this course and others); work submitted by other students, both at Heriot-Watt and other institutions; published, and unpublished, academic research; and other web-based text resources. You will probably realise that there are many ways in which a student might (accidentally, or intentionally) rely on sources which affect the integrity of submitted work. The easiest way to avoid all of them is to make sure that when you are writing, you do not have any source open in front of you, except when you decide that you are going to quote it directly, making sure that the source material is then fenced off by quotation marks, along with a clear mention of the source. (For this assignment, I expect to see inline references, and a reference list at the end, in Harvard format.)
Given the nature of the reports which I asked you submit for the mid-semester assignments, it was probably quite easy for you to follow these rules.
In the final assessment, it may be a little more difficult to avoid a degree of similarity. That is why I am asking you to write a report and a technical appendix for each question which you answer. In writing your answers, you will need to give some explanation of the process which you have used in completing calculations, and that may use standard language and brief comments. In requiring you to write a narrative report, you will need to explore the intuition underlying the solution, as well as explaining the technical solution. This should make it straightforward for you to put together your own, distinct explanation and to avoid excessive similarity.
In asking you to upload images, while I do not have access to an extensive image bank, if you upload work prepared by another student, even if it is just a diagram, then it may well
be that I notice the similarities – not least if there is an unusual, and therefore memorable, mistake in the work.
In finishing, I make one further observation: there are ways of generating text, which is not original, but which will still not have a high similarity score. I sometimes tell students that an ideal similarity score is around 15 – 20%. A zero similarity is disappointing, either because there is almost no engagement with reliable sources, or, more worryingly, because it may have been produced by a third party in such a way as to disguise the sources.
2022-04-16