International Economics

Late submission will not be accepted. Failure to submit the major report by due date will attract 2% of total mark per day.
Place of Submission: You have to hand in person during the tutorial or hand over personally into the assignment box, Building H, Level 4, Economics Section.
Worth: 30 percent of total assessment
Length: 2500 words (excludes Tables, Graphs and References)
Topic: You are employed by the Department of Industry, Commerce and Trade as a Research Staff Member in Australia (or in any other country with your choice). Minister David Ray has been asked several questions lately in identifying major drivers of growth, employment and trade of your economy. The Minister is new to the portfolio and has very limited knowledge in Economics. He has requested to his Department to prepare a brief report on this topic. The Minister’s memorandum of request has been assigned to you. As a research staff you are free to select any country. Please make sure the report should be based on your individual effort. This is your first briefing official report, and your Divisional Director instructs you to make sure that you cover all points made by the Minister in his memo of request. After receiving report from each member from his department, your Divisional Director will summarise the findings in implementing future policies which will boost both trade and growth.
Your report should include the following issues:
1. Measuring growth of a particular economy, trends over the years, major trading partners, major trading items.
2. Identify trade oriented sectors of the economy and relate these with overall growth and employment.
3. Identify major policy changes in recent years which may influence trade and growth
4. Provide Tables/Graphs to support your argument.
5. Summarise major findings with some indications for implementing future policies.
Please remember:
i)    The minister is in dark in this area! He needs to know all basic concepts. You need to be very clear in explaining all related concepts. However, this is a report not an essay. Therefore, do not explain any Economics jargons in detail.
ii)    ii) The Minister is fanatical about two things: Clear presentation and maintaining Deadlines. Be sure to follow the advice given below for the presentation of your written work.

Presentation of Written Work:
a) Make sure you have name, degree code and student ID number in the front cover sheet. The report should be stapled in one corner. Please do not use any folder.
b) The report must be typed. Pages should be properly formatted
c) Any graphs or diagrams must be adequately labelled, and accompanied by a sufficient commentary to indicate their meaning and purpose.
d) Publication details of all works cited should appear at the end of the report, under the heading ‘References’. An acceptable format such as,
Baumol, William (1986), ‘Productivity Growth, Convergence and Welfare’, American Economic Review, 76, pp 1072-85.
e) Be sure to keep a hard copy (and a backup disk).
f) Co-operation in identifying key concepts to prepare any report is a useful learning practice and is encouraged in this unit. However, students must prepare their written work individually. You should quote all references and any kind of plagiarism will be severely penalized. Include the faculty assignment cover sheet. If a student is found to have committed plagiarism or another form of cheating the penalty may include disallowance of the work (zero marks).
Useful sites (information) as your
starting point if you choose Australia as your country: http://www.rba.gov.au/speeches/2013/sp-dg-261113.html http://www.dfat.gov.au/publications/trade/trade-at-a-glance-2012.html http://archive.treasury.gov.au/igr/igr2010/report/pdf/IGR_2010.pdf http://grattan.edu.au/home/productivity-growth/australian-productivity-performance. http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/[email protected]/lookup/1301.0main+features12005 –also look at the latest edition of Yearbook Australia.
You are encouraged to go through other materials as well.