Discuss the origins and policy responses to Canada’s current inflationary episode. What consequences of inflation itself and the policies responding to it do you expect during the next year as well as in five years from now?
To help you organize your thoughts, here is a list of relevant questions. You may choose to discuss one or more of the following issues, or any pertinent issues of your choice:
- What internal and external factors did play roles in originating this inflationary episode?
- Was there a supply shock, a demand shock, a policy shock, or a combination of all?
- How would monetary and fiscal policies react to the future observations of data?
- What is the role of expectations?
- How would future US (or the world) policies affect Canada’s evolution of inflation and policies?
- What might happen to CAD/USD exchange rate?
- How would labor market react to these changes? What about immigration to and from Canada?
You will not have space to properly address all of these. You are not required to address any of them. Make your own choice.
You should present well reasoned arguments backed up by facts, as well as economic theory. You will need to do some research and consult reputable sources. Use what you have learned about in your economics courses, in readings, and in your own research. Here are the technical details. Please follow them precisely.
You must cite every source you use for your essay, including assigned readings. You can pick your preferred citation style (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citation_styles#Systems) but be consistent.
The essay must be typed, in font size 11, with line spacing factor 1.5, and page margins of 2.5 cm.
The maximum length is four pages (including citations). There is no minimum. Papers exceeding these limits will lose points!
Feel free to include graphs. You can make them with a software, or hand-drawn and scanned.
Grading will be based on two criteria: quality of the argument (80%) and quality of the writing (20%).
Additional notes:
Before you start writing your essay, I would recommend you to go through this website developed by the Writing Center at Harvard University: https://writingcenter.fas.harvard.edu/pages/essay-structure. (Links to an external site.) Here, you can find resource on i) how to explore a certain topic in the seas of literature; ii) how to structure your essay in a clear and logical manner; iii) how to write an introduction, develop your arguments, and conclude the essay, etc.
Here is some free software that you can use to help with your writing: https://www.grammarly.com/ (Links to an external site.). It could check if your draft has any grammar, spelling, or punctuation errors. It could also check if your essay needs more work on paraphrasing or proper citations, to make sure you are not accidentally plagiarizing. I strongly recommend you use this function because we will be checking for plagiarism, too. We will also randomly draw a sample to test the consistency in your writing style (compared to that in your past assignments and midterm long questions) to prevent potential shadow-writer.
You may use AI in editing your writing but you should not have the AI write your assignment for you.
More on plagiarism: It’s totally fine to quote from other people’s arguments. The key thing is to:
(a) properly attribute all your sources;
(b) paraphrase and add your own contribution.
For example, your arguments can be constructed like this: “Economist [A] thinks the effects will be [this], for [that] reason, and therefore recommends to adopt [some policy] ([citation]). But I think that in Canada [the policy] will not work. The reason might be [some arguments] proposed by [B], who point out [an important detail]. Since Canada also has a lot of [specific details], the effect of [the policy] might be similar.” And so on.
Some of you might want a second opinion when you finish your draft. If that’s the case (and if you have enough time of course), I recommend booking an online writing consultation session at Student Learning Commons at SFU Library: https://www.lib.sfu.ca/about/branches-depts/slc/offer/consultation-info
I encourage you to be in touch with your TA or myself to get help with the writing: bring a draft to the office hours, and we will work with you to improve it.
