10 pages Country report for Romania,diffcult work

Econ 114B Country Report Guidelines Marshall

Writing Assignment: Your perspective is that of a policy analyst with an international

organization such as the World Bank who is preparing a brief study of a country with one key

recommendation to increase growth. You may also take the perspective of a critic of government

policy but the framework of your essay will be essentially the same. Your analysis should be

fact-based and you should substantiate your arguments with concepts learned during our class

throughout your report.

While this two-page description of the assignment is a good summary, I will provide a more in-

depth discussion of the expectations for this report during class. To do well on this assignment,

you must also pay attention to that in-class discussion.

Outline:

Part I. (1-2 pages) Introduction and Overview

Table 1 or Figure 1 Growth of output per worker y since earliest year, current y, and three other

indicators of your choice compared to least one other country.

Other indicators should reflect the general theme of your analysis. We will discuss many

possible indicators, such as share of labor in agriculture, child mortality, average years of

schooling, and many others.

Part II. (3-4 pages) Steady-state and growth analysis

Table 2 Steady-state analysis and policy intervention (change in h, s, or A) based on template

The change in parameter must increase y* by at least 20%.

Table 3 Five-year growth projection from policy intervention based on template

This section should discuss the steady-state situation for your country and introduce your policy

intervention.

Part III. (3-4 pages) Policy Intervention

Depending on your policy intervention you should focus on one of following:

Macroeconomic policy (s)

Human capital and/or equity (h)

Openness to global economy (A or s)

Political and institutional quality (A or I)

Your analysis should be backed up by at least one additional data source to substantiate your

analysis, preferably presented in a graph. Graphs should be numbered and referred to in the text.

(See example below.) You must present graphs you construct from data obtained from many

resources we will discuss in class, including the PWT data provided for this report.

Part IV. (1 page) Brief summary

Econ 114B Country Report Guidelines Marshall

General Guidelines:

The page guidelines are approximate and include tables and graphs and text in 12-point font and

double-spaced lines. This assignment will be posted in electronic format to GauchoSpace.

Specific details will be provided in class.

You should include at least 4 citations to The Growth Report and Introduction to Economic

Growth (IEG) as you explain features of your economy and justify your policy intervention. If

your perspective is as a critic, you may include in your four citations the works we discussed in

class by Acemoglu and Easterly. You should number these citations and you may use short-hand

abbreviation as follows:

“Country X experienced high inflation on the order of 10 percent per year in the last decade, as

shown in Figure 1. This macroeconomic instability is detrimental growth and countries perform

best with inflation in the single digits (3. The Growth Report, page 53)…”

You should refer to all figures and graphs in the text at least once, as in the example above. You

may abbreviate the textbook by IEG. You do not need a bibliography unless you are citing

sources other than the two course reference. In this case just include a list of sources at the end,

and reference these sources by title and page within the text as in the example above.

Grading Rubric: Students whose total points for the country report is equal to 35 will receive 35

points based on the rubric below adjusted by percent. For example, if you score 28/30 and the

report has a 35 point weight, your score will be (28/30)*35.

Item Assessment Points

Table 1 Formatting 2

Quality of indicators and comparison countries 2

Table 2 & 3 Formatting and accuracy 4

Part I / IV Clarity and focus 2

Part II Clarity and focus 3

Part III Quality of choice and presentation of indicators to

substantiate policy intervention

4

References Clarity and relevance of 4 citations 8

Overall Overall depth and quality of analysis, including

additional citations.

5

Total 30