Macro essay assignment

Dear Students, during the first lecture of the semester, you will have been assigned a country-specific essay assignment. It should be a minimum of 7 pages and YOU MUST FOOTNOTE INFORMATION SOURCES AND ENCLOSE IN QUOTATIONS ANY TEXT YOU HAVE TAKEN WORD FOR WORD FROM ANY SOURCE. Failure to footnote or attribute quotations will result in a fail for the course.

This essay is due November 8 if your class is on Mondays and November 11 if your class is on Thursdays printed and handed in in class before attendance is taken. If you would prefer, you can turn in the essay via email; however, you must COPY/PASTE THE ESSAY INTO THE MESSAGE BODY OF THE EMAIL AND ATTACH THE ESSAY AS AN ATTACHMENT (this is for your protection: if I cannot open it or read it in the email, then the essay will be graded down as late). If it is turned in printed or emailed after attendance is taken, it is already a week late.

The essay assignment is specific to your native country, and includes the following format and questions: Please follow this format exactly and number your essay with Roman numerals as below:

II. A description of the current macroeconomic status of your country; here, you should pick the important factors, some of which may come from this list: employment and unemployment levels, central bank foreign currency and gold reserves, inflation or deflation (even market by market), private debt, government debt, degree of central bank independence from government, strategic resources salable internationally, key technologies, competitive industries, quality of high school and college educations, interest payable on foreign loans (bonds, bank loans), the intelligence of the political class, the development of domestic stock exchange, bond markets, credit card markets, government surplus or deficit, trade surplus or deficit, strategic industries, growing industries, dying industries, education levels, differences between city and countryside, growth in domestic money supply measures (M1, etc.), etc.

III. YOUR OWN summary of professional or informed analyses about your country's economic prospects; these may be found, for instance, at websites for OECD, IMF, World Bank , BIS and also make sure to research in your native language on your country's central bank site, financial sites, financial newspaper and magazine sites, etc. A good start for research is here: https://ellmann0.tripod.com/id241.html but don't forget to use personal contacts (e.g., your parent in an important business or government position) who might have a lot of information you can include here.