The purpose of the paper can be very simply stated. It is to apply a concept (Topic is Pricing and Profit) from managerial economics to address a real-world problem in business by conducting necessary research.

This section states the problem to be analyzed, why it is an important problem to be studied, and the contents of the rest of the paper.

Problem Statement

Importantly, you need a specific problem statement. This is one sentence that states clearly what the paper is studying.

Here are some examples of problem statements.

· This paper studies the impact of an increase in minimum wage on teenage unemployment.

· This paper studies how e-commerce has made pricing more competitive in X industry.

· This paper studies how the adoption of a new human resource ethics policy affects labor turnover in company Y.

Background

In this sub-section provide the necessary background information to motivate why this is an important problem to study.

A separate sub-heading is not needed, but the last paragraph of the introduction needs to summarize the contents of the remainder of the paper. For example, “Section 2 will present the conceptual framework, section 3 will…”

This section will identify the concept/theory from managerial economics you will use to study the problem. It will then show how that concept/theory relates to the problem. For example,

· If studying minimum wages, the theory that relates to that is the labor market model

· If studying the impact of e-commerce on pricing, then you need a market model of pricing

· If studying human resource ethics policy, provide a theoretical justification for how that would impact labor turnover.

This section explains the method you will use to study the problem, data you will be using, presents the data, analyzes the data and discuss the results.

Methods

In this sub-section you explain how you will go about the process of addressing the problem you are studying. For example

· This paper will find the correlation between minimum wages and teenage unemployment.

· This paper will correlate price competitiveness in various industries to the degree of e-commerce in those industries

· This paper will consider labor turnover before and after the new HR policy is implemented.

Data

This sub-section describes your data and where it comes from. The data can come from government statistics, industry reports, company reports, published research, interviews, etc. For example

· The paper uses data from the bureau of labor statistics on teenage unemployment and minimum wages.

· The paper uses industry reports on e-commerce and pricing

· The paper uses an interview with the HR manager of a company and secures data on labor turnover from the company.

Present the data: In this sub-section clearly present the data you have collected, including the interview questions and answers if you have done an interview.

Analysis and Discussion of Results

In this sub-section you will conduct the methods described earlier to address the problem statement. You then discuss your findings and what you have learned. For example,

· You do a regression of teenage unemployment on minimum wages to find if there is a relationship, or you could use the results of published research.

· You regress price competitiveness (e.g. price dispersion in an industry) on the fraction of sales done by e-commerce. Or you could use published research.

· You compare turnover before and after the implementation of the new HR policy.

In all cases, after your analysis, you need to discuss your findings, how they answer the problem being addressed, etc.

This section summarizes the main findings and suggests areas of further study.

You must use a minimum of three resources beside the textbooks and use the appropriate format for the references.