Instructions for team-based final reports:
Each team should work together to produce two documents: a comprehensive written report and a set of visual aids to be used with an oral presentation. The two documents will overlap to some extent, but they serve different purposes. Details on each follow. Due dates vary by team – see ELMS for more detail.
The comprehensive report will include a full set of specific recommendations for government intervention in the sector you researched and a logical and thorough analysis that explains the rationale for the recommendations. Specific characteristics of your sectors that justify your recommendations should be clearly described, and the economic and political reasons should be coherently articulated.
The perspective your team should apply in choosing your recommendations is that of society overall; you should consider the interests of businesses, workers, consumers, and everyone else who might be impacted by economic activity and government intervention in this sector, but the basis for your team’s recommendations should be the aggregate impact on society rather than one particular interest group The audience for your team’s recommendations should be government decision-makers, who need advice on the economic impact of government intervention but who also have to take into account political considerations as well as the administrative laws and procedures that shape the ways government intervention occurs.
To qualify as “full”, the set of recommendations should specifically address three possible types of government intervention:
- those that aim to reduce risks to health and safety;
- those that aim to prevent abuse of market power, and
- those that aim to ensure efficient access to critical infrastructure supporting the whole economy.
Your team’s recommendations should reflect a realistic (not idealistic) understanding of the regulatory context; hence, the institutional specialist will at least inform and perhaps could suggest a specific reform that impacts one or more of the types listed above. To avoid an idealistic or ideologistic recommendation, you should neither assume that government can control all behavior nor that all market behavior is socially acceptable.
Not every sector will necessarily involve all three types of regulation, so your report does not need to devote equal effort to describing and analyzing each type. Thus, if your team concludes that any of the three types is not useful or irrelevant to your sector, then the recommendation will be that government intervention is not socially appropriate and/or not economically justified. You will still have to explain why, but that explanation will be likely be shorter than for situations where government intervention can improve social outcomes or is likely to be politically popular.
Recommendations can be as broad or as narrow as your team thinks is appropriate. Recommendations can include eliminating existing regulations, reversing existing laws, spending less tax revenue on enforcing existing regulation; all of these actions would fit the description of reducing government intervention, what is sometimes called “deregulation”. Recommendations could include introducing new laws and/or regulations, spending more tax revenue on enforcement, and creating new enforcement agencies. All of these would expand the role of government in the economy. Still another possibly category of recommendations would be to change existing laws and regulations and/or re-allocate resources for enforcement between various policy goals without changing the dollar amount expended on enforcement; this category would be called “regulatory reform”. Recommendations could be to hold off on change until further research is completed. OR your team could come up with a set of recommendations that includes some mixture of deregulation, expansion of government’s role, regulatory reform, and/or additional research.
Explanations of the analysis underlying recommendations should appropriately use economic concepts (such as the logic of cost-benefit analysis, the various types of market failure, and insights gleaned from behavioral economics – this is an illustrative rather than exhaustive list of concepts) and relevant findings from expert analysis (experts can include economists, scientists, lawyers, and any experienced individuals or organizations in other discipline relevant to your sector). If any of your recommendations are closely linked to any particular expert’s analysis, be sure not only to give credit to that expert but also describe the reasons you find that expert to be credible and evaluate any bias that might influence their judgment.
Your team’s explanation of each recommendation should also explicitly acknowledge political feasibility and administrative requirements. Additionally, the analysis should acknowledge any gaps in information or other issues which limit your team’s confidence in the recommendations.
Format:. I envision that a well-written, comprehensive report might be as short as 12 pages, singled spaced, not including bibliography. BUT length is NOT the primary determinant of grades; quality of analysis, thoroughness of scope, and clarity of exposition are much more important. A good paper might be longer than 12 pages in order to be thorough, whereas a bad paper might be longer than 20 pages because it includes irrelevant information and/or redundancies in explaining the rationale for recommendations.
Each report should have:
- a meaningful title,
- an executive summary or abstract, a list of the recommendations,
- a section that gives relevant information about the sector,
- a section explaining the analysis on which the recommendations are based,
- a conclusion that addresses the extent to which your team is confident of your recommendations.
- A bibliography.
The bibliography must list references in alphabetical order. In-text citations should include hyperlinks if possible.
Grades will be based on professional writing, comprehensive coverage, and economically sound reasoning.
The visual aids will contain some but not all the information in the comprehensive reports. The purpose of the visual aids is to “sell” the team’s main recommendation(s) to the rest of the class, or in other words, to convince your classmates that the main recommendation is a good way to help society achieve an optimal outcome in this sector.
No one is required to participate in the oral presentation, although all team members are required to contribute to the preparation of the visual aids. Who will present is an item to be discussed in your team’s working session with Dr. Clement on 4/19 if you are member of teams 1-4, on 4/24 if you are a member of teams 5-7, and on 4/26 if you are a member of teams 8-10.
The format of the visual aids is flexible: a Prezi presentation, a set of powerpoint slides, an audio-video recording are all possibilities, and I am open to other suggestions. Whereas format is flexible, length is not; each team’s presentation must take less than 15 minutes to complete, not counting a question and answer period at the end.
Each visual aid must include key details about the team’s sector, at least one recommendation for government intervention, and a clear and convincing reasoning for the recommendation(s). One way to structure your “sales pitch” is to describe a problem, a solution, and then an assessment of the benefits and costs associated with that solution. But you can choose a different structure – the key point is to make sure you provide a straightforward (but not simplistic) rationale for a government action that benefits society as a whole. Your audience is your classmates, so remember that they have not studied your sector, but they do have knowledge of economic concepts, regulatory context, and the specific types of regulation covered in ECON461.
Grades for the visual aid will depend on the extent to which the document is well organized, interesting and engaging, and convincing.
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