POLICY PAPER ASSIGNMENT
Due date: April 16, 2018, 11:30pm
This assignment requires the submission of a 9-12 page policy paper, due by 11:30PM on
Monday, April 16. The final draft of the paper must be submitted electronically through
myCourses (in PDF or Word format), as well as in print. When you submit the paper, title the
file using this format: “TITLE_LASTNAME”.
Write a policy paper evaluating a policy that was pursued or recommending a policy approach
for the future in one of the areas considered in class. You can choose among different topics
discussed in class, or you may select an alternative if there is a specific area of economics that
you wish to investigate further. The policy paper should draw on sources well beyond those
on the reading list and should go beyond what is in the existing policy literature. Moreover, it
must bring an improvement over the scope and the depth of class discussion.
It might be helpful in structuring this paper to pretend that you are a senior economist at the
Central Bank or the Ministry of Finance of any given country, and you are writing this as a report
to senior management to give them the background on the topic of your choice.
The report should be structured as follows:
1. Brief introduction and current situation
2. Analysis
3. Policy options (with analysis of likely outcomes) and recommendations
The report should also incorporate informational graphs (with data) and tables if useful.
In addition, follow the usually conventions: include page numbers, label sources for tables and
graphs, and list references.
You should feel free to consult published papers, certain web blogs (Econbrowser, WSJ RealTime
Economics, CBO Blog, Economists View blog) or periodicals to get ideas and links to documents,
but do not cite weblog posts as references. Also, do not cite lecture notes.
The evaluation of the paper will be based upon the following criteria:
1. How well is the paper organized, and how clear it is in terms of exposition.
2. How well the situation is summarized (including the use of statistics and graphs).
3. How well models are used to analyze the situation.
4. How well your policy recommendations fit in with the analysis you present.