– Due 11 am Thursday 28 February 2013 at my office (HU 125B) –
The purpose of this assignment is to get you to read carefully two standard economics papers, at least one of which must include formal statistical analysis.
Towards that end I have compiled (i) an extensive bibliography, albeit without annotations which is (ii) linked to resources on Sakai. I also included background materials from reference books to supplement what we covered some in class. You should not use any of these as one of your papers. Some papers could be put under more than one heading, so you may find yourself using two papers from different topics. But that’s not necessary.
The paper body may be a maximum of 1,000 words (not including name, date, pledge, acknowledgments, title, headings and bibliography).
Brevity mandates a clear theme. You must be concise. Don’t amplify ideas unless crucial to your paper, watch for using words that are redundant (for example, you only need to use “China” or “Chinese” once, and perhaps not even that if your title makes the focus obvious). Passive voice uses lots of words…avoid! And so on.
Your paper will be better if you organize it thematically: “paper X claims A, while paper Y claims the opposite.”
If you employ a sequential format the paper will be like this. “Theme – Paper A – Paper B – Contrasts.”
Note that with only 1,000 words, you do not have space to reiterate anything at the end; my 4-paragraph outline does not include a “conclusion.”
The paper should be in standard format – double-spaced in 11 pt or 12 pt Times New Roman, with at least 1″ margins, a bibliography, and inline citations (author, page). [If you use the author’s name as the subject of a sentence, then you follow the name with (page) or (year, page).] Do not use footnotes or endnotes. Hint: to save yourself time on your bibliography, cut and paste from the one I distributed.
Finally, I urge you to have a friend, sibling, or parent proofread it. Please feel free to use the Williams School Communication Center! – they however want you to come with two copies of a draft in hand.
Except to allow you to schedule a visit to the Communication Center, I will NOT grant any extensions. (Of course that does not apply if you are bed-ridden with the flu or other non-self-induced illness, but I expect you to email me except in extremis.)