Guidelines for Assignments and Paper
The assignments are work toward a final, polished paper. The paper will summarize and analyze a body of literature on a particular topic of interest regarding public policy. It is not a position paper. You are to look at both sides of an issue with an eye toward finding the true answer, which may or may not align with your political views. Use positive, not normative, analysis. The paper will contain an introduction, review of the literature, analysis of the literature, conclusion, and bibliography.
Assignment 1 – W orking Introduction
You will want to write your final introduction after you have gathered and analyzed all of the
information for your paper. For now, a working introduction helps guide your work and can provide a draft of part of your final introduction. Assignment 1 will also contain cites for three sources.
R e q u irem e n ts for A ssign m e n t 1
1. Working Introduction, which is a narrative (not a list) addressing the following questions:
• What question are you trying to answer in your paper?
• Why is the question important?
• What results do you expect to find and why?
• How do you plan to find the answer to the question?
2. Cites for at least three economics journal articles or books related to your proposed topic. (You will need more sources for your final paper. This is just to get started.) List the full citation for the source, not just a web address, for example.
Read Part II of the BCW book before writing this assignment. The length should be 2-3 pages (typed double-spaced in 12-point font).
Choosing a Topic
Policy areas that would be suitable broad topics are:
• discrimination
• gambling
• drugs
• health insurance
• environment
• crime
• education
You will want to narrow the topic, e.g., within the crime area, you might want to analyze gun control laws. If you are interested in discrimination, you might choose a particular group and a particular type of discrimination, e.g., wage discrimination or housing discrimination. When you submit Assignment 1, put your topic in the form of a question. This will help you to narrow your topic and make it manageable. In the examples just given, you might say “how do gun control laws affect murder rates by state?” or “is there wage discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in the U.S.?” Avoid topics specific to particular localities, such as grapes in Marin County, and focus on contemporary (not historical) issues.
C h oosin g S ources
Our library offers access to ECONLIT (go to http://osulibrary.orst.edu/research.php/db.php and then go to E and choose EconLit), which you can use to find academic journal articles and books from the
economics literature on your topic. Examples of journals accessible to undergraduate students are
American Economic Review (AER), Journal of Economic Perspectives (JEP), Journal of Economic Literature (JEL), American Economic Journal (AEJ): Applied Economics, AEJ: Economic Policy, and Contemporary Economic
Policy. Regarding graduate level journals, undergraduates can still understand the introduction, literature review, and conclusion. To help you to assess the quality of journals, you can check potential sources against two sources of journal rankings: h ttp ://id e as.re p e c.o rg /to p /to p .jo u rn als.simple .h tml;
http://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/review/09/05/Engemann.pdf . Rankings of journals have many flaws but across rankings, the top journals tend to stay the same.
All information from sources must be cited (for examples of acceptable borrowing and plagiarism, see http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/cssa556/CIVHON 556.htm). In the bibliography, list all references by alphabetical order of the last name of the first author. If you are not familiar with a standard reference
style, use the style of the American Economic Review (see http://www.aeaweb.org/sample_references.pdf ) or the citations on the reading list. If you use internet sources, include the web address, name of the
author, title of the paper, date of the paper, and institutional association of the website, paper or author. If it is a government or university website, the information generally has more credibility than if it comes from an individual website.
For the first assignment, you will submit three or more references. For the final paper, the number of sources that you will need depends upon the substance of the information in your sources. You might need as few as 6-8 academic sources (journal articles, book chapters, books). The more advanced your sources, the higher your potential grade for the assignment.
A ssign m ent 2 : S u m m a ry o f the L iterature
In this assignment, you will summarize the information in books and articles from Assignment 1 and the additional references that you have collected. Be sure to integrate the information from your sources; do not summarize each source individually. For examples (albeit longer examples) of literature summaries, check The Journal of Economic Literature, which regularly publishes literature reviews. The Summary of the Literature should be 6 pages (typed double-spaced in 12-point font)
O ral Presentation
Each student will present an oral report in the tenth week of classes covering their final paper. PowerPoint slides are required. The material presented in the oral presentations is covered on the exam.
T he Final Paper and the Subm ission P acket
When you submit your final paper, include your earlier assignm ents (w ith m y com m ents) in a packet.
Also submit a 1 p age cover she e t explaining changes to the earlier drafts that have been incorporated into your final paper.
The final paper should consist of the following sections:
• Introduction
• Review of the literature
• Analysis of the literature
• Conclusion
• References
The Introduction should contain a statement of the central question to be addressed in the paper. In the Review of the Literature you revise the Summary of the Literature in light of feedback from Assignment 2. For the Analysis of the Literature section, you really need to think for yourself at a high level. You assess whether or not the evidence in the various articles is unbiased and valid. Which readings are more credible? What does the weight of the evidence say regarding an answer to the original question? In the
Conclusion, you briefly summarize the paper and state your major findings about the central question.
The length of the final paper is 10 double-spaced pages of text including references, with 12-point font size and 1″ margins.
Grading Criteria for Papers
Factors affecting the grade on your term papers include content, writing clarity and flow, use of academic sources versus the popular press, extent of learning demonstrated, objectivity, and analysis. These factors affect the three criteria used to assign a grade: content, difficulty, and writing.
Last Completed Projects
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