Economic Analysis for Business

 

 

Your assignment is in two parts

The First Part of Your Assignment

You must summarise in no more than 250 words the major economic points in each of

the following sections of the course text. There are theories set out discussing each of

the following. What you must do is briefly present what aspects of the real world

these theories were designed to explain. Why do economists believe these are

important?

1) factors of production (Chapter 5)

2) marginal analysis (Chapter 8)

3) measuring economic growth (Chapter 9)

4) Say’s Law and the classical theory of the cycle (Chapter 14)

5) the relationship between saving and economic growth (Chapters 5 and 16)

For each of the five areas listed above, you must

(i) explain what specific features of the world the economic theory is trying to

answer

(ii) briefly outline how the economic theory, as found in the course text, explains

the occurrence of these features of the real world.

Example

Suppose you were asked about supply and demand. For (i) you would have to say

something like this.

“Supply and demand analysis is used to explain:

• how prices are determined in the market
• what happens when prices are too high or two low
• what causes prices to change.”

Then for (ii) you would have to outline how the theory in the book answers these

questions. Here we again use the example of supply and demand.

“Prices are determined where the supply curve meets the demand curve.

“If prices are above the equilibrium price, there will be more produced than

buyers will buy. Prices will therefore come down. If prices are lower than the -2-

equilibrium rate, there are more buyers at that price than there are sellers, and the

price will rise.

“Prices change if there is a change in ceteris paribus conditions. For demand,

changes in incomes, tastes, or in the prices of substitutes or complementary goods

will lead to a change in the position of the demand curve.”

“For supply, changes in technology or in production costs will cause the position

of the supply curve to change. If the supply curve or the demand curve move, the

equilibrium position will move, so that where the two curves cross, prices and

quantities may either rise or fall.”

The Second Part of Your Assignment

Find five recent news items that deal with each of the five topics, one story for each

topic. You must choose something that has occurred since the beginning of the

semester, that is, each of the news stories must have occurred since July 1, 2015.

Explain in approximately 150 words for each story how the economic theory found in

this course helps you make sense of each of the stories you have selected.

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Instructions

The maximum length of the assignment is 2500 words.

There are five sections so don’t write more than around 500 words in each. The total

number of words written by you should be no more than 2500 words.

You must use the second edition of Free Market Economics by Steven Kates to do

this assignment.

This is an assignment focused on this course, and therefore is based on your

understanding the contents of your text. By all means read other texts and deepen

your own ideas. But what is required is that you demonstrate that you have

understood the course material which is presented in the course text. Other than the

articles, the course text is the only required reference.

Everything must be in your own words. Do not copy from any source.

The aim is to get you to explain these ideas in your own words. That is what I am

looking for. I would like to see you able to explain economic theory in your own

words which will give you an ability to do the same later in life.

Please do not quote from the book even if you use quotation marks. I want to see what

you understand yourself.

You must highlight where each concept you use has originated in your text.

Everything discussed must original in the textbook. You must indicate which passages

you are discussing by citing the page numbers in the text to show that what you

have been discussing is directly taken from the book. You must thus use your own

words to explain the concepts found in the text.

You must provide the source for each news story and its date of publication.

The news item can be from any source, whether online or in the print media. But

irrespective of the source, you must provide a hard copy with the assignment.

Please, however, do not put the news stories into your online copies that you are

putting through Turnitin. The stories should only be attached to the hard copy that is

handed into class.

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Just remember that this is an economics course and your assignment will be

marked on its economic content.

I am looking for how well you have understood the economic content. If we were

dealing with supply and demand, I would expect you to discuss price determination,

and then provide a news item about how the price of some product changed because

of changes in ceteris paribus conditions.

You should also be aware that not all of the material you will be required to

explain will already have been covered in class by the time the assignment is due.

You will therefore have to do this research on your own by reading the text, watching

the videos, going through the overheads and studying the additional course material.

This is more than enough background material for you to complete this assignment.

But if there are any problems or questions you have, please ask your lecturer.

 

Tunitin:

You must submit your assignment on Turnitin. Do not include in your uploading onto

Turitin the news items you are discussing. They must be handed in separately with

your assignment in-class.

Proportion of your final mark:

15% of the final course mark.

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How Your Assignment Should Look

These are the elements that should make up your assignment:

1) A cover sheet with the title of the assignment and your name and student number.

2) There should be five separate sections, one section for each of the five areas

specified. Each section should start on a fresh page.

3) In each section, the first thing you discuss is the nature of the questions being

answered. What part of the real world was a puzzle that needed explaining? This

is what you must be very clear about. This is a very important part of the

assignment where a lot of marks are to be earned.

4) Then you must briefly explain how the theory you find in your textbook is used to

answer the question.

5) Then you provide a brief discussion of the news item to explain how it illustrates

the theory you have discussed.

6) There is then a copy of the article you have been discussing.

Remember: Everything must be in your own words. Do not quote from the book

even if you use quotation marks. I want to see what you understand yourself.