Econ231 Economic Inequality Lent term 2023*
Guidance for writing 1800 word essays
Please note that 1800 words is a strict maximum. This does not include any maths, diagrams, the title or the reference list. It does include any appendices (appendices are not recommended). State the number of words at the end of the essay.
Topics : Please indicate the number of the question you choose in the file name of your submitted essay: e.g. if you choose topic 1: 1_xxx..
1. Decomposition of income inequality over time in the US. (use the hh_cross_section.dta).
2. Gender Premia over time and the magnitude of discrimination in the US. (use the indiv_cross_section.dta)
Content
Apply the relevant Stat codes to evaluate the above and use the relevant theories / models covered in this course to analyse / explain / investigate the question / an event. You may take either side, there is no single ‘right’ answer to the essay questions. Although there are some key points which should be included, there are many ways in which a good answer can be constructed. It is imperative to present relevant data in the form of charts, tables or diagrams but these are of no value unless you explicitly refer to them in your text and provide your intuition about them. All in all, you are expected to use the data, plot the results and try to provide your explanation of why you see what you see of course using the theories we learnt in the first five weeks. Moreover, you need to add the codes you have used at the end of the file (this part does not count for your word count).
When marking your essays, rather than looking for specific content, we shall try to give credit for careful analysis, clear and correct explanation, coherence and concise argument. In 1800 words, you have no room for waffle or repetition. Stay relevant to the question. Try to tell a convincing story and hold the reader’s attention.
Structure and presentation
Your essay may contain a short introduction and conclusion but it should avoid text that adds nothing to the argument.
It is important to separate your text into paragraphs, each containing up to, say, 4 logically connected sentences. And it helps to achieve coherence if the ideas that the paragraph
expresses are connected with those in the previous and following paragraphs. You may also choose to break up the text with one or two headings.
Please use a font size between 11 point and 13 point, line spacing 1.2x to 1.5x.
VERY IMPORTANT Content wise I expect to see the following structure:
1. Introduction-Motivation: what is the topic and why it is important
2. Techniques: explain in words what you have done with the data in order to get the results. Mention if you know other papers using similar techniques.
3. Plot the results or show them in a Table(s).
4. Describe and interpret the results. Why you see what you see in the figures e.g. trends, fluctuations etc. Try to use the theories from the first five weeks to interpret the results. If you need to plot something else to justify your arguments please add.
5. Try to find if there is literature on this topic in the literature and compare your results with (no need for many papers, one or two academic articles).
6. Conclusion
7. Appendix with the codes (they will not count in the word counting)
Decomposition of income inequality over time in the US. Tip: Read carefully the paper by Brewer and Wren Lewis (2015) and the Heathcote et al. (2010).
Gender Premia over time and the magnitude of discrimination in the US. Tip: Read carefully the paper by Jann (it is about the stata function oaxaca)
Language
Please avoid the use of meaningless words or phrases. Avoid emotive language such as ‘greedy bankers’, and vacuous statements such as ‘higher interest rates caused turmoil and chaos’.
Sources
You may have looked at a dozen or more articles or books but a 1800 word essay should probably not contain more than about 15 references. If you cite many sources, you run the risk of turning your essay into a disconnected series of quotations. What is needed is your analysis. Use ideas or quotations from sources sparingly when they form an important part of your argument and, obviously, to avoid plagiarism, you must name the source if you reproduce sections of text from elsewhere.
Referencing
It is essential that you use references properly, using a standard style. As an example, suppose your essay contains the text:
The trilemma of international economics says that “when capital is freely mobile, a country cannot simultaneously have (i) a fixed or managed exchange rate, and (ii) an independent domestic monetary policy” (Glick and Hutchinson 2011, p.4). However, as argued by Magnus (2016), the Chinese have been trying to bypass this constraint. They have a fixed but adjustable exchange rate; at the same time they have been trying to liberalise capital flows and want monetary autonomy.
This text should give rise to the following entries in your reference list:
Glick, R. and M. Hutchinson (2011) 'Currency Crises', Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, Working paper 2011-22.
Magnus, G. (2016) ‘China’s ‘trilemma’ makes it vulnerable to more shocks’, Financial Times, 22 February.
Web addresses may also be given. But a web address alone is not enough; it remains necessary that you state the date, author, title of the article and the journal or organisation, so far as these details are available. If you cite a newspaper article you must state the date of the article (as example above). If you cite a book or a long article, you must state the relevant chapter or page number. The idea is that the reader could easily identify and find the source without the use of the web address.
Finally, the unbreakable rule: one-to-one correspondence. If a source is cited in your text, there is a corresponding entry in your reference list. Conversely, for every source in your reference list, there is a corresponding citation in your text. Do NOT give a bibliography of uncited sources, however interesting they may be.
(In case you need it, a more comprehensive Harvard referencing guide is published by our library: https://lancaster.libguides.com/c.php?g=673043 )
Proof reading
It is important that you check your work carefully before submission and, although the essay must be your own work, it is always a good idea to have it proof-read by someone else. A good essay will have gone through several drafts before the final version is produced
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