Wrrting a research paper which use Solow Model to talk how increased urbanization lead to economic growth.

World Bank Database (Plenty of indicators that are important to understand economic growth) OECD Stats (If your focus is on OECD countries) Doing business indicators (Very useful indicators to compare productivity across countries) Political stability indicators https://scholar.google.com/ (Best way to search for an academic article). requirements: 1) Use APA 2) Use Solow Model to analyze the problem. It means that you maybe use the Excel or Rstudio to draw plot of datasets and set the regression equation. 3) Must writing according to feedback and sample research paper. Department of Economics, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities – FALL 2015 Introduction to Economic Growth - ECON 4331W - WRITING ASSIGNMENT________________________________________ INSTRUCTOR: William Walsh ( [email protected]) , 3-129 Hanson Hall Writing Assistant: Filippo Rebessi ([email protected]), 3-151 Hanson Hall Please contact Filippo by e-mail for help with your questions. Filippo has office hours on Thursday from 8AM to 11AM in Hanson Hall 3-151 ________________________________________ ASSIGNMENT OBJECTIVE The objective of this assignment is to give you an opportunity to: 1. Apply analytical skills and economic concepts to examine an interesting topic in economic growth/development 2. Learn how to write a formal report underpinned by economic logic and evidence. EXPECTATIONS FOR THE ASSIGNMENT: Your report should include the economic analysis of an “economic growth/development issue”, and your own insight. Survey or descriptive papers (reporting other people’s work/ideas on issues, historical events) or hypothetical scenarios are not acceptable. Your final report must be typed, double spaced, and between 10 to 15 pages. The assignment is in four parts; each assignment must be turned in on the date indicated; and each will be graded separately. Your target audience for the report is educated college graduates. With each assignment you must include all previous graded assignments. Failure to do so will delay grading and lower your grade by 10 points. All assignments are to be turned in on the due dates at the beginning of class. Those turned in later by the end of the day will receive a penalty of 10 points; those turned in the following day will receive a penalty of 20 points. No assignments will be accepted after that. If you have any problem understanding what is expected from you or how to go about completing this assignment successfully, please contact the instructor or writing assistant. ________________________________________ ASSIGNMENT FORMAT The assignment is in four parts, each will build on the material in the previous assignment. 1. TOPIC of the report (due September 23, 2015, in class.) You must submit a one-page paper carefully explaining the chosen topic. Explain why you selected economic growth/development issue and the set of countries you intend to analyze. Please start by writing a thesis statement – (one sentence (bold type) describing clearly the question or topic you want to analyze). The thesis statement (to be given in the introduction) should convey your main idea to the reader. Some helpful suggestions on thesis statements can be found on the websites below: Definition and examples of thesis statements (St. Cloud State University): http://leo.stcloudstate.edu/acadwrite/thesistatement.html How to write a thesis statement (Indiana University): http://www.indiana.edu/~wts/pamphlets/thesis_statement.shtml Developing a thesis statement (University of Wisconsin) http://www.wisc.edu/writing/Handbook/thesis_complete.html In this assignment, you should try to answer the following questions: 1. What is the problem that I am trying to analyze? (analyze or examine or investigate or evaluate) 2. Why is the question interesting? Does the data give an interesting conclusion? 3. Is data available? Is it from a reliable source (Government Bureau of Statistics, United Nations, IMF, World Bank, etc. … not Wikipedia or Investopedia!) ? Be careful that your project is not too general/ambitious. Please narrow the topic to some specific aspect of a more general question. Remember that well-defined topics are easier to complete successfully. Make sure you can get data for at least 20 years and several countries. You MUST turn in this assignment on the due date – or your Outline (next assignment) will not be accepted. 2. OUTLINE of the report (due October 21, 2015, in class.) You must submit a 2-3 page paper giving a clear outline of your project. It should contain: * A title page that includes: title of the report, your name, I.D. number, and date. * A clear introduction describing the issue you chose and the way you have decided to analyze it. Remember that your thesis statement should be included in your introduction and it should answer the question: what am I trying to prove/show? * A summary of your essential ideas or arguments. Try to limit yourself to 3 main points. You could report the effects of the issue you are analyzing on different countries and agents. Feel free to make subsections where needed. * Make sure you include a theoretical analysis (testing a theory, effects of a policy etc…). The typical paper will use the Solow Model to make a “prediction” on the effect of a policy on economic growth. You need to explain how you can use the key equations of the Solow model (for example, the equation for capital per worker accumulation over time, the steady state level of capital, and so on) to formulate a prediction that you will be testing in the data. * A conclusion in which you restate the thesis, summarize the main points you developed and present the results you drew from your analysis. * A bibliography where you list the references and data used. You may add an appendix for graphs, data, or mathematical derivations. You MUST have access to your full dataset (20 years of data and possibly several countries) by this time. If you don’t have 20 years of data by this time for the variables that you will use for your empirical tests, you will get a 0! * Please include your previous assignment (the graded TOPIC). 3. FIRST DRAFT (due November 23, 2015, in class.) You should submit a 10 ¬- 15 page version of your paper containing all your main ideas/points. You MUST have all effects listed. If your first draft is good, you will only have to make minor revisions before turning it in as your final report and will not need to include new material. The first draft should contain the same elements as the outline, but each main idea/point or effect should be fully developed and explained. You should examine the impacts of a policy (or technical change, or whatever is the issue you are examining) on different groups within the relevant economies such as consumers, producers, workers, and others. You need to provide a complete list of references in your bibliography. Include only the sources you actually used in your paper and make sure your sources are credible. Please remember to include your two previous graded assignments (the TOPIC and OUTLINE). 4. FINAL REPORT (written, uploaded, & electronic copies) (due December 14, 2015, in class.) a) To William: Written copy plus electronic copy (via email):You should submit a final, written, polished version of your paper, taking into account the comments made on previous assignments. You will be asked to submit a few statements telling us the changes you made in the paper based on the TA’s (and instructor’s) comments and suggestions on your first draft. The written copy should definitely include the main body of the paper and bibliography; it need not include appendices, graphs, tables, or data. Acceptable formats include MS-Word and PDF. For the written submission, turn in all parts of the assignment - please staple everything (topic, outline, first draft, and final draft) together, with the final report on top. b) Moodle submission (Very Important): Your Final report has to be submitted on moodle, with the same deadline. You can find the link for the submission under “Topic 6 – Writing Assignment”. Please email Filippo at [email protected] if you have any questions on this. Your electronic work will be scanned for plagiarism using University software tools. Remember to save or keep one copy of the final paper for your records. 5. PRESENTATIONS (TBD) All students will present a five-minute summary of their paper in class, focusing on the main ideas. This will also count toward your grade on the report. Feel free to write up a one-page abstract and read it out. ________________________________________ CHOOSING A TOPIC (EXAMPLES OF POSSIBLE TOPICS): A. Analyze the impact of taxation/spending on economic growth: What is the impact of taxation on factor X (labor, capital, etc.) on long run growth? What is the impact of public spending in a certain sector on long run economic growth? How does the empirical evidence compare to the prediction of the Solow Growth Model (or an alternative model) for this policy? Select a group of at least 20 countries with homogeneous characteristics and test the impact of a certain policy in a cross country regression, after controlling for other observable factors (such as initial GDP per capita, differences in technology, etc) B. Trade reforms and their impact on growth: Is openness to trade causing faster economic growth? Pick two countries (A and B) with similar observable characteristics in a certain period of time (GDP per capita, technological advancement, institutions at time “t”), with just one difference: country A opened up to trade after time “t”, while country B didn’t. Test for different patterns in economic growth in the years following the episode of trade liberalization. Is there any significant short run impact? What about the long run effect? Explain - using a model - why you expect that after a trade liberalization economic growth should increase (or decrease). C. The impact of institutions on growth: Is political stability crucial for growth? How does political stability impact total factor productivity? Are government turnover and the average duration in office of the government important to determine long run economic growth? In this paper, you should first explain how to map political instability into the Solow Model: what variables are directly affected? What are the consequences for capital accumulation and steady state levels in the model? Select a group of at least 20 countries with homogeneous characteristics and collect data on measures of political stability; test after controlling for other observable factors (such as initial GDP per capita, differences in technology, etc.) what is the impact of institutions on growth. D. Is foreign direct investment a key factor to determine long run economic growth? This paper is similar to category B. Pick two countries (A and B) with similar observable characteristics in a certain period of time (GDP per capita, technological advancement, institutions at time “t”), with just one difference: country A opened up to foreign direct investment after time “t”, while country B didn’t. Test for different patterns in economic growth in the years following the episode. Is there any significant short run impact? What about the long run effect? Explain - using a model - why you expect that after an influx of FDI growth should increase (or decrease). E. Is financial development a key factor to determine long run economic growth? Collect indicators of financial development. Use the Solow model to explain how a higher degree of financial development maps into higher economic growth in theory. Test the prediction of the theory in a cross country analysis for at least 20 countries. Is the relationship you found stable over time? This list should be good to give you an idea of the type of topics that are acceptable for the assignment. There are many other possible interesting topics which are not directly mentioned in the previous list (just to mention some: the impact of higher and lower education on growth, the impact of technological clusters on growth, the impact of urban agglomerations on growth, etc.): feel free to pick a topic that is not in any of the categories above, but you make sure to follow the general setup of the topics that are described above. Make sure your topic is related to a focused question on economic growth/development. Please make sure you can obtain at least 20 years of data for the countries and issues involved. You MUST undertake some statistical work (regressions) to show the cause and effects of certain events on the. Most papers with good statistical work get better grades. Students are not allowed to choose the same topic. Below are examples of “UNACCEPTABLE” topics because they are either vague, not related to economic growth, or too broad : 1. China/Russia and growth 2. The global financial crisis and growth 3. A history of Japanese economic growth 4. Role of IMF in the world economic growth 5. Multinational corporations and FDI ________________________________________ BIBLIOGRAPHY: You should use various resources and cite them properly. You can use academic journals, popular newspapers (Wall Street Journal), magazines (Economist, etc.), and/or reports from various institutions. You can use tables, graphs, or maps to present information. Please make sure you have a mix of internet and other sources; make sure the sources are well-reputed and credible; that is, do not chose all references from news magazines or obscure internet sources. Wikipedia is NOT an acceptable source. Do NOT cite it. If unsure about the credibility of your references, please contact one of us. Please provide appropriate references where needed in the paper. You can check here for tips on citing: https://www.lib.umn.edu/instruction/tutorials#citing and at http://www.easybib.com/ ________________________________________ GRADING CRITERIA Each part of the assignment (Outline, First Draft, and Final Report) will receive an individual grade (Denoted by G1, G2, G3 respectively). Your grade for the written part of the assignment is given by the formula: G = (1/10) * [G1*2 + G2*3 + G3*5] In other words, the Final Report counts for 50 %, the First draft for 30 % and the Outline for 20%. This G grade is 95 % of the grade of the assignment, with 5 % being for the oral presentation. Grading of all parts of the assignment - the Outline, First Draft, and Final Report - will be based on: 1. The level of analytical skill and intuition demonstrated in the report (e.g. whether you can analyze the issue critically, whether you can argue logically, originality of your ideas, etc.); - (75% of the grade) AND 2. The presentation of the report (e.g. how well you explain difficult concepts and arguments, the coherence and clarity of the presentation, the amount of spelling and grammatical errors, etc.) - (20% of the grade) AND 3. Oral Presentation of the report - (5% of the grade) Note that this Writing Assignment (including the Oral Presentation) counts for 25% of your grade in the Econ 4331W course. Only reports that demonstrate outstanding qualities in all criteria will be awarded the highest grade. Reports that are unsatisfactory in any of the criteria will result in a grade of "F". ________________________________________ SCHOLASTIC DISHONESTY In this course, students are to write a paper themselves with help from the instructor and TA. They are not to use a paper submitted earlier for any other university course, or turn in a paper written by somebody else. All writing must be the work of the student. Students must work on their reports individually. The College of Liberal Arts defines scholastic dishonesty as "any act that violates the right of another student with respect to academic work or that involves misrepresentation of a student's own academic work. Scholastic dishonesty includes (but is not limited to) cheating on assignments or exams; plagiarizing (misrepresenting as one's own anything done by another); submitting the same or substantially similar papers for more than one course without the consent of all instructors concerned; depriving another of necessary course materials; or sabotaging another's work." Students who commit any form of the scholastic dishonesty described above will receive a grade "F" for their Writing Assignment. PLAGIARISM: This involves passing off anyone else's work as your own, and includes copying a whole paper or parts of it and claiming it as your own work. It also includes turning in your own same or essentially similar paper for two or more courses. The University has very strict rules concerning plagiarism. If you use any other person's work, words, or ideas, please cite and acknowledge the sources. Note that the University has purchased a program that allows professors to check if any student paper, essay, or research paper has been copied or paraphrased from the Internet. I will use this program (Safeassign) to check for plagiarism. Please check the following website for more details on plagiarism. Definition of Plagiarism from University of Minnesota: http://tutorial.lib.umn.edu/infomachine2367.html________________________________________ REFERENCES 1. "So You Have To Write an Economics Term Paper..." by L. Officer, D. Saks, and J. Saks. 2. "The Elements of Style" by W. Strunk Jr. and E. B. White 3. "The Writer's Guide to College Economics" by T. L. Wyrich. 4. "Economical Writing" by Deirdre McCloskey Some sample A papers written by previous students of the class are also on reserve. Sources for economics journals: - Wilson library/JSTOR Sources are listed on the Resources/Links page on the class homepage. ________________________________________ USING ONLINE SOURCES (Courtesy of Professor Roger McCain, Drexel University) The Web offers a very large range of sources for presentations and papers, but it is a mishmash of sources that range from excellent to appallingly bad to deliberately misleading. You should not use an online source for any purpose in this course without first verifying that it is: 1. Substantive for the purpose intended. For most purposes a document that is only a few lines long will not be useful. This does depend on the purpose. To be used as a basis for the presentation, for example, the source should provide at least a few pages of information on the topic. By contrast, if the purpose is to define a term, then a line or two may be sufficient. Message boards and blogs should not be used. 2. Reliable. Much of the content on the web is no more reliable than the opinions you may hear in barroom conversation. Among the things that make information reliable are a. Institutional Authority. Is the site sponsored by an institution that is recognized as an authority and that would exercise oversight, such as the United Nations or the National Bureau of Economic Research? Personal websites (including mine) are less reliable. Anything WIKI is questionable. b. Personal Authority. Is the author identified? If so, is the author recognized as an expert in a field relevant to the topic? What evidence is there of this recognition? Does the author have graduate degrees in the field? Has she or he published articles in recognized scholarly organs relevant to the field? Books? c. Internal evidence. Are there misspellings, grammatical errors, and other evidence of unscholarly writing? Are there logical errors and inconsistencies? Are there representations of fact you know to be false? If you find any evidence of these failings, DO NOT USE THE SOURCE. 3. Unbiased or biased in known ways. a. If there is an institutional authority, it may be biased, and may make the bias known. If there is an “About Us” page or equivalent, check it. Examples would be the Ludwig von Mises Institute, which supports free market economics, and Marxists.org, which doesn’t. These are both excellent sources for some purposes but should be used with caution. b. If the author is known, and has or announces a known slant, that may be useful. c. Internal evidence may be found. For example, The Center for Economic and Policy Research “about us” page lists an advisory board including two economists who were high-profile supporters of Kerry in ’04. ________________________________________ WRITING TECHNIQUES. The following are some common problems of students' reports: 1. The paper lacks focus and is not well organized. A major reason why this happens is that students cannot decide on THE most important message that they want the readers to get from the report. This leads to the importance of a thesis statement – make sure it is included in the introduction. These are 2 examples of a good thesis statement: “In this paper I intend to demonstrate whether the degree of openness to trade can cause the long run rate of economic growth to increase. The main channel that I will investigate is the increase in local producers’ efficiency caused by import competition, which is formally described in paper X by author Z. I will compare the experience of country A and country B before and after the introduction of MERCOSUR, an important free trade agreement to which only country A is currently participating.” “In this paper I will investigate whether the level of taxation on labor income can explain differences in economic growth across countries. According to paper X by author Z, an important component of human capital accumulation happens while on the job. Countries that discourage labor force participation with high levels of taxation will also discourage human capital accumulation and economic growth. I will use data from a cross section of roughly 20 countries in region X, which are relatively homogeneous in terms of institutions and socio-economic characteristics.” 2. There are not enough analyses and explanations in the report. Many times students state some ideas or conjectures without explaining step by step the logic behind these. Please guide the readers through your arguments carefully to make sure that they understand the arguments. 3. The use of quotations to substitute for the explanations. A common mistake students make in their reports is that they use quotations from textbooks or articles AS the arguments. It is acceptable for students to use some ideas suggested by others, yet students should try to explain the ideas in their own words and should not simply copy the quotations without their own explanations. The total number of quotations in a paper should be limited; they should be used to highlight a particular idea or show its importance. Make sure your entire written script is not just quotes. Generally, quotes should not be more than 10% of the entire script. 4. A lot of grammatical and spelling errors in the report. To avoid these errors, students should ask someone who is good in composition to proofread their reports. Students should also use the many writing services available on campus to get advice on correct grammar usage. 5. Confusing cause with effect. Another common mistake is not recognizing that an apparent cause of something might instead be an effect of that something. You should give evidence of the cause or effect or acknowledge that the evidence of causality here is not clear. We suggest you use these techniques: 1. The use of graphs, tables and charts. Whenever possible, try to use these to summarize the statistics used in the report, and try to use graphs to summarize some of the economic arguments used (e.g. shift in supply and demand, effect of government policies on trade, etc.). 2. The use of footnotes. There may be some arguments that are interesting and yet do not fit into the report very well; a possible strategy is to present these arguments in a footnote. 3. A good "Introduction" and a good "Conclusion". A good "Introduction" can compel the readers to continue reading the report with enthusiasm. Students should try to state clearly and precisely the issue that is addressed in the report, explain why the issue is interesting and/or important to the readers, and give the readers some hints about the major conclusion that is obtained in the report. A good "Conclusion" should remind the readers of THE most important message of the report and why it is interesting and/or important to the readers. HOW TO CITE DATA AND OTHER SOURCES: Please consult the Student Writing Center at: http://writing.umn.edu/sws/quickhelp/sources.html https://www.lib.umn.edu/research/instruction/modules/lsamp-citations2/ You can use APA or MLA citation styles.