Solved by verified expert :Instructions
for the Research/Interview Paper
This document
provides instructions for the research/interview term paper. I am providing
this to provide more clarification than what is given in the syllabus so that
the expectations are clear. This is both expectations regarding the purpose of
the paper, content of the paper, and the format of the paper. Hopefully you
will see these are all interconnected. Also note that I have slightly altered
the grading rubric in the syllabus to reflect these changes.
Purpose of
the Paper
The purpose of
the paper can be very simply stated. It is to apply a concept from managerial
economics to address a real world problem in business by conducting necessary
research.
It is important
to realize that this paper is not a report on some business topic related to
managerial economics. It may be quite different from other papers you have
written, and this is likely to be reflected in what is meant by “research” and
the other contents of the paper. This is described more fully below.
Content of
the Paper
It was stated
that the purpose of the paper is to apply a concept from managerial economics
to address a real world problem in business by conducting necessary research. Let’s
break this into its parts.
1.
A real world business problem:
You must identify a real world business problem that you think would
be interesting to analyze. This could be a problem related to a particular
business, a particular industry, or an economy wide problem. I highly recommend
choosing a narrowly defined problem. Some examples could be
(i)
How did company X incorporate
business ethics into their human resource policies?
(ii)
Should firms in the X industry
increase their price?
(iii)
What is the response of company
X to an increase in minimum wages?
These are just a few examples. What is important is that your
problem be very clearly defined and that it be interesting to you.
2.
A concept from managerial
economics:
Throughout the term you will be exposed to many concepts, or
theories, from managerial economics. These include forecasting, risk analysis,
pricing strategies, optimal resources to hire, capital budgeting, game theory,
business ethics, etc. One of these concepts covered will be used in your paper
to address a problem, or issue, from a real world business situation.
3.
Application of the concept to
the problem:
A concept, or theory, is a logical framework that allows one to
highlight causal relationships between different variables. You then will use
that concept/theory to understand the business problem you are studying.
For example, suppose the business problem is the effect of minimum
wages. But notice this is not narrow enough. Does this mean the effect on
business profits, the effect on employment, the effect on teenage employment,
the effect on business investment, etc. As one can see there are many
dimensions to the problem. So you need to pick one very narrow dimension. Let
us say the business problem is the effect of a minimum wage increase on
teenage, part-time employment.
With that as the business problem the concept/theory from managerial
economics we need to apply is the concept of marginal resource cost and the
firm’s profit-maximizing decision to hire resources. And suppose the
application of this concept suggests that a firm will reduce its use of
unskilled labor and cause a shift to capital investment in the long-run,
causing a fall in teenage, part-time employment.
4.
By conducting necessary
research:
The application of the concept tells you how the variables relevant
to the problem are related to each other. That is, it provides the framework to
understand the problem. Your research will apply this conceptual framework to
the problem with real world data to fully analyze the problem. Depending on the
nature of the problem being studied, the research may be investigating the
extent to which the conceptual framework is correct, or it may be measuring the
impact of one variable on another that the conceptual framework has identified
as being important.
For example, in the case of the effect of minimum wages, the concept
tells one how minimum wages and employment may be connected, and why they are
connected. Your research may investigate the extent to which this is true.
Hence you could collect information that will help in determining the extent to
which minimum wages cause teenage unemployment. Alternatively you may decide to
investigate how one company has planned for increases in minimum wages,
including their plans to hire teenage workers.
There are undoubtedly many different types of data to be collected,
but for this paper we can say there are two options you have.
(i)
The first option is to collect
data on the variables of interest from publicly available sources (such as
government statistics, industry publications, company reports, journal
publications, etc.), and then use this information to apply the concept to
analyze the problem. So in our example, you may collect information on minimum
wages and teenage employment and use that data to determine the extent to which
increases in minimum wages decrease teenage employment. In this case that
probably means doing some simple statistical analysis, but it is not necessary
to use statistics. In general, you simply need to use this data to help apply
the concept to analyze the problem.
(ii)
The second option is to use the
interview option to ask company executives about the issue at hand. Continuing
with the above example, you may ask a series of questions about their strategy
for responding to increases in minimum wage, etc. Again, the emphasis is on
using these interview responses to apply the concept to analyze the problem.
As you can see, in either case the goal is to collect
data/information that will help apply the concept from managerial economics to
analyze the problem. Of course, the exact type of data needed, and the
techniques needed, will vary with the problems studied.
Format of the
Paper
The above makes
clear the main purpose and content of the paper. The format of the paper follows
this content, and is given below. Please note in addition to the format given
below a title page is required.
Format of the Paper
Section
Title of the Section
Content of the Section
1
Introduction
This section states the problem
to be analyzed, why it is an important problem to be studied, and the
contents of the rest fo the paper.
2
Conceptual Framework
This section will identify the
concept/theory from managerial economics you will use to study the problem.
It will then show how that concept/theory relates to the problem.
3
Research and Analysis
This section explains the data
you will be using, present the data, and use the data to analyze the problem
and discuss the results.
4
Conclusion
This section summarizes the main
findings and suggests areas of further study if appropriate.
5
References
You must use a minimum of three
resources beside the textbooks and use the appropriate format for the
references.
Grading
Rubric
I have amended
the grading rubric to reflect the more specific format and contents given
above. This is provided in a separate document.
Helpful Tips
I have a few
tips that I think will be helpful in completing this paper.
1.
Start soon: The paper is not meant to be
terribly time consuming, but even selecting the appropriate topic can take
time. So begin thinking about this now.
2.
Choose a narrow, well-defined
problem to analyze: The most common problem for students is choosing too large
a problem, or an ill-defined problem. That is, the problem may be well-defined,
but would require a major amount of research to adequately address. Or it can
be a problem that is not clearly defined. This will result in you not knowing
how to proceed. However if you choose a narrow and well-defined problem the
rest of the paper will be much easier.
3.
There are no limits on the
topics/problems you can choose, other than you must analyze them with concepts
from managerial economics. However, for your own benefit, I highly recommend
choosing problems that make use of company specific research. You can use the
interview for the research section, or rely on company reports, but in either
case I think you will learn more about applying managerial economics to real
world business problems when your focus is on a specific company.
