Economics

Term Paper-Part 2 Fall 2014

Readings

2. The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis. .

3. The Party: The Secret World of China's Communist Rulers by Richard MacGregor.

Paper Assignment

Listen to the Recorded PowerPoint Presentation entitled Paper Instructions or watch the lecture video from 11/20/2014 available on Moodle.

The lecture discusses different situations and ways individuals can become rich in a free market economy.

Your paper should have four parts.

Download the Word Template for the term paper using the link on Moodle.

Section 1. What are 3 ways of getting rich in a free market economy described in the lecture?

Section 2. Read The Frackers and The Big Short. Both books tell the story of people getting rich in the United States within the past 10 years. Which way did the individuals in The Frackers and The Big Short exploit to get rich? Explain and use the supplied diagrams to show graphically what happened to these individuals.

Section 3.  Think about the world in which you live right now. If you were a 20 year old with your life in front of you, footloose and carefree, without responsibilities and free to pursue whatever course to personal happiness and fulfillment your heart desires, i.e. you were left free to pursue your own self-interest as you define it and you decided that your self-interest was to amass a large personal fortune, how would you do it?

            Identify a specific situation and course of action which exists today that you could exploit to get rich. Under which of the categories mentioned in Section  1 does your situation fit?

 Section 4. If you lived in Communist China instead of the U.S. would the plan you enumerated in Part 3 have a better or worse chance of success. Explain.

Notes and Guidance

The paper assignment asks you to answer very specific questions. It is not a book report or an opportunity to wax eloquent on a subject of your choosing. The assignment is to produce answers to specific questions. Your score will be determined by your answer to these questions and the integration of the examples into your argument.

The paper should be no less than 1250 words (~5pages). There is no maximum length.

The paper should be saved as a Microsoft Word document (.doc or .docx filetype) and uploaded to Moodle using the link on the assignment page.

The filename of the paper should follow the following format:

Last Name, First Name-Econ 160 Term Paper Part X, Fall 2014.docx

Example: Ng, Kenneth-Econ 160 Term Paper Part 2, Fall 2014.docx

Students are responsible for reading and conforming to the CSUN Policy on Plagiarism. This policy can be accessed using the link on Moodle Course Outline.