ECON 625 Assignment: Applying economic concepts to situations at work or in the world is essential for fully understanding and using economic concepts. This writing assignment is intended to give you a chance to apply classroom concepts to real economic situations.
Think of the concepts that we have covered (markets, elasticity, production, costs, market structures, etc.). Take several of these concepts and use them to describe, analyze, and better understand economic situations or decisions that are faced in your current or former workplace. If you can’t apply these concepts to your workplace, you may use recent news o current events, but these should be managerially oriented. I would like you to:
Show how the economic concepts covered in this class provide a framework for understanding the situations or decisions from your workplace or another real world situation. .
Use economic concepts (goals, constraints, decision variables) to frame decision making. For example, market structure will determine what decisions are available to a firm, such as ability to influence price. This will include not only understanding what decisions are available and describing the tradeoffs involved, but also how to use economic concepts to choose among available alternatives to make the most informed decision.
I would like to see that you are able to appropriately apply the concepts we are covering in class and that you are able to use those concepts to further your understanding of “real world” situations in order to make better, more informed decisions.
You should provide needed background about the situation or decision so I can see how you are using the economic concepts. You do not need to define the economic concepts, only use them appropriately.
To get an A on these papers (90% or above) you must demonstrate that you can choose and apply the appropriate concepts. Better integration of the concepts and/or deeper thought about how the concepts apply and aid in understanding and decision making will move the grade higher into the 90s. To get a B on these papers (80-89) you must demonstrate that you have found a situation or decision for which economic concepts apply, but your paper didn’t fully demonstrate appropriate comprehension of what economic principles apply and/or how they apply.
One thing to keep in mind as you write; I am trying to give you an opportunity to use what you are learning in class in a real world situation. If what you turn in could largely have been written without having taken this class it will likely not earn a very good grade. The more you show that you are seeking ways to apply class material, the higher your grade will be. I am not looking for perfection; I recognize that you are just now learning this material. Mostly I want to see that you are thinking carefully about how to use concepts from class to describe and analyze a real world situation.
These papers should be roughly 4-6 pages double spaced using standard font size. I do not count words or pages for the grade, but 4-6 pages should be about average in terms of what is needed to cover most situations you may choose to discuss. If you wish, you may give me a brief (a few sentences at most) description of your topic before you get too heavily invested in it – an email or brief conversation with me is fine to accomplish this.
