Economic Rise of China and India

Dalhousie University Fall 2013

Economics 2213 Professor T. Cyrus

Emerging Giants: The Economic Rise of China and India

PAPER PROJECT

The paper project will examine an issue important to the development of China and/or India. The project will be done in groups of four or five, and will be submitted in stages throughout the term. The stages are due at the beginning of class on the following dates:

Stage 1 : Initial Data Tuesday, October 1

Stage 2 : Hypothesis Tuesday, October 15

Stage 3: Literature Tuesday, November 5

Stage 4 : Analysis Tuesday, November 19

Stage 5: Conclusion Tuesday, December 3

Each stage must be both (1) submitted in paper at the beginning of class, and (2) submitted electronically to BbLearn. Excel spreadsheets should be submitted only to BbLearn.

Each stage will be assessed and returned to you with comments; you should use these comments as a guide for revising the stage, as well as for writing future stages. If you fail to hand in any stage on time, your project mark will be reduced by 5% out of your final grade. For Stage 5, write a conclusion, integrate all the revised stages into one cohesive document, and hand in the entire project. The written paper is worth 30% of your final grade; in addition, your participation in the project will be graded by your group-mates and will be worth 10% of your final grade.

Your inline citations and bibliographical references can be in any format, as long as you are consistent.

Potential Data Sources: - World Bank World Development Indicators:

http://databank.worldbank.org/ddp/home.do

- Economic Freedom Network: http://www.freetheworld.com/datasets_efw.html

- Polity IV: http://www.systemicpeace.org/inscr/inscr.htm

- CIRI Human Rights Data: http://ciri.binghamton.edu/index.asp

- Heritage Foundation Index of Economic Freedom: http://www.heritage.org/Index/

- World Bank Governance Indicators: http://info.worldbank.org/governance/wgi/index.asp

Other data sources are possible. If you are in doubt as to whether a data source or variable is an acceptable choice, ask.

Stage 1

This stage should be 500-750 words long. Choose one variable that you find interesting and that is available either for a wide variety of countries or over a period of time in a widely-used dataset, such as the World Bank’s World Development Indicators. Submit an Excel spreadsheet listing your data on the variable. You must either examine a wide range of countries (at least 75) at a point in time, or a single country (China or India) over a long period of time (at least 40 years). Define your variable of interest, explain why you find it interesting, and describe why it is important for China’s or India’s development.

For example:

- the poverty rate

- the ratio of men to women

- the saving rate

- the working-age population growth rate

- the growth rate of GDP per capita

- the World Bank governance index

- the CIRI human rights index

- the Polity democracy index

- CO2 emissions

Stage 2

This stage should be 500-750 words long. Find at least two other variables that you believe to affect your variable of interest, and describe why you think these variables are related. Collect data on these other variables and submit an Excel spreadsheet with your data. Present a hypothesis as to how your variables are related. Include a list of at least four economics articles that you will use in the following stage to support your hypothesis. All articles must be published in economics journals or appear in a reputable working paper series (such as the NBER or the World Bank). If you are unsure as to whether an article is acceptable, ask.

For example:

- My hypothesis is that the CIRI human rights index is positively related to GDP per capita (that is, a rise in GDP per capita leads to a rise in human rights) and is negatively related to whether a country was ever colonized.

Stage 3

This stage should be 1250-1750 words long. Prepare a literature review that is relevant to your hypothesis. Find at least four published economics journal articles that relate to your hypothesis. For each paper that you review, be sure to clearly present the author’s hypothesis and evidence to support that hypothesis, along with your evaluation of the author’s evidence and conclusions. Include a bibliography at the end of the stage.

Stage 4

This stage should be 750-1000 words long. Use Excel to find the correlation between each pair of your variables. Then use Excel to run a linear regression of your variable of interest (your dependent variable) on your independent variables, and write up your results. Your spreadsheet must be submitted via BbLearn. Instructions for the statistical work will be given in class.

Stage 5

This new work for this stage should be 500-750 words long, in addition to the previous work included. In this stage, write a conclusion to your paper and put all the stages together into one cohesive document. An effective conclusion describes the hypothesis and why it is interesting; it briefly reviews the data; it summarizes the empirical results; and it explains how the results relate to the existing literature. Your last paragraph should describe the economic policy implications of your results. Make sure to include a title page and a bibliography.