ECON7021 Impact Comparison Assessment Task Impact Comparison Assessment Type Research Essay Group or Individual Individual Weighting 25% of course (100 marks reweighted to 25%) Word Limit 1,000 words, excluding the cover sheet and reference list Due Date 16 September 2022, 4 pm Marking Rubric Blackboard > Assessment > Impact Comparison > Marking Rubric Submission Submit your assessment as a Word document on Turnitin via the course Blackboard site. (See submission details on page 6) Academic Integrity UQ has strict rules against academic misconduct, including cheating, plagiarism, colluding and solicitation. You are responsible for maintaining the highest standards of academic integrity in your work. Please read and familiarise yourself with these rules: PPL 3.60.01 Student Code of Conduct and PPL 3.60.04 Student Integrity and Misconduct. Context The COVID-19 pandemic forced most countries to pursue social distancing practices, close borders for international travel, and shut down business venues such as cafes, restaurants, gyms, and cinemas for public gatherings. As a result, governments and central banks worldwide implemented various policy actions to limit the contraction of their economies and speed up their recovery. The global economy contracted by 3.1% in 2020 (compared to a 0.1% global contraction during the 2009 Global Financial Crisis). However, the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) World Economic Outlook, published in April 2022, showed the global economy recovered strongly in 2021, growing by an estimated 6.1%. In this assessment task, you need to compare the macroeconomic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the fiscal and monetary policies implemented in response to the pandemic for two allocated countries. 2 Task For the two allocated countries, compare the macroeconomic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the fiscal and monetary policies implemented in response to the pandemic. Your essay should include up to four (4) figures (diagrams, graphs, or tables). Note the following stipulations: You can use a mixture of diagrams, graphs and tables, provided the total number is no more than four. You can include more than one variable in a graph or table. You must produce your own figures rather than cut and paste them from other sources. Insert figures as images rather than Excel objects in your document. Country Allocation The countries you must use for this essay are based on the last digit of your student number. So, for example, if your student number is 44194356, then you need to compare the macroeconomic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Norway and Australia. Last digit Country 0 or 1 Denmark and Australia 2 or 3 Finland and Australia 4 or 5 Iceland and Australia 6 or 7 Norway and Australia 8 or 9 Sweden and Australia PLEASE NOTE: The number in your student email address (e.g., S4419435) is not your student number; it misses the last digit (i.e., 6 in this example). A 10-mark penalty (out of 100 marks) will be applied if you fail to follow the country allocation rules. 3 Research Essay Structure The following is your guide to researching and writing your essay. PLEASE NOTE: You must use the essay template on Blackboard > Assessment > Impact Comparison > Template. Formatting requirements: Font type: Arial Font size: 11 Line space: 1.5 1,000 words, excluding the cover sheet and references Referencing style: APA 7th You can use direct quotes provided the total number of quoted words sums to 20 words or less in the whole research essay. The essay template includes a cover sheet. You must complete and include this cover sheet with your submission. A penalty will be applied if you fail to do so. Do not write your essay on the cover page. Instead, the first page of your essay should be the page after the coversheet (as it is in the template). The word count excludes: Cover sheet Figures Figure headings Source notes underneath figures [E.g., Source: World Bank (2022)] Reference list The word count includes in-text citations, footnotes, and endnotes. 4 Macroeconomic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic: A comparison (Maximum 1,000 words) In the introductory paragraph, briefly introduce the two countries and the aim of the essay. In the body paragraphs of the essay, compare the macroeconomic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the two countries by assessing and comparing the following: their macroeconomic performance before and at the start of the pandemic according to key macroeconomic indicators in 2019 and 2020; the key fiscal and monetary policy actions that the two countries implemented in response to the pandemic; and the impact of these policies according to the key macroeconomic indicators in 2021. In the conclusion paragraph, indicate which of the two countries handled the pandemic best based on your economic analysis. TIPS: You should consider economic data before and during the pandemic. At a minimum, you need to find annual data for 2019 (before the pandemic), 2020 (the start of the pandemic) and 2021 (effect of the implemented policies). Your comparison of macroeconomic indicators should consider at least these three macroeconomic indicators: real GDP growth (or growth in real GDP per capita), the inflation rate, and the unemployment rate. Create and include graphs and tables and refer to these to support your writing. You should not explain the concepts and definitions of commonly used macroeconomic indicators. You may need to mention the countries’ non-economic responses to the pandemic (e.g., social distancing and closing the international borders) and how it affected their economies. The IMF Policy Tracker records the policy responses to COVID-19 by country. Do not list all the policy actions. Instead, summarise and focus on the key ones. You are not required to use economic models or theories in this assessment. However, if you want to, you could illustrate the effect of the pandemic and the combined policies using the aggregate demand-aggregate supply (AD-AS) modelling framework of Topic 6. References References and citations must be in APA 7th referencing style. 5 TIPS: Use credible sources, e.g., the World Bank’s World Development Indicators (WDI). Only refer to English sources. Consult the APA 7th referencing style guide. You must reference sources for your text, graphs, or tables. You must reference even when you have paraphrased the original content. If you directly quote the original content word by word, it must be in quotation marks. When to paraphrase and when to quote This guide from the University of Adelaide may be helpful to you. Accessing Data Your primary data sources should be national or multinational agencies, e.g., The World Bank, OECD, IMF, and the Bank for International Settlements. Data from secondary sources may be used as a supplement only if those data are not available from any primary sources. Using non- primary data when primary source data is available can lead to a loss of marks. The World Bank’s World Development Indicators (WDI) database contains most national data collected by national and multinational agencies, and you may use it as a primary data source. Here are some YouTube tutorials on how to extract data from the WDI: https://www.youtube.com/watch v=JGJhI_YqFuI (7 March 2019) https://www.youtube.com/watch v=f_B1t4BRQ94&t=64s (22 September 2018) https://www.youtube.com/watch v=MKANl-ZWUTY (9 March 2017) PLEASE NOTE: Do not falsely claim that specific data are not readily available from a primary source without doing your due diligence. Only national or multinational agencies have the capacity to collect data at the national level (e.g., GDP and unemployment rate). Therefore, it is doubtful that these data are available from a secondary source but not a primary one. If you use data from a source (e.g., a report) that indicates it drew the data from a government statistical bureau, your data is from a secondary source, not a primary source. However, if you go to the government statistical bureau and extract the same data (and verify that what you read is accurate), it is considered to have come from a primary source. WDI data are on an annual basis. For monthly or quarterly data, you need to access statistics directly from the countries’ statistical bureaus and central banks. 6 Submitting Your Assessment Your essay must be submitted as a Microsoft Word document through Turnitin on Blackboard. While most instances of plagiarism are unintentional (e.g., forgetting to close a quotation mark), the Turnitin originality report will reveal any form of plagiarism (intentional or unintentional). Your essay should have a Turnitin similarity index value of 15% or less. From the originality report, the marker will check whether any part of your essay is potentially plagiarised from other sources, which could result in mark penalties, as shown in the marking rubric. Therefore, you should carefully review the originality report before your final submission. After uploading your essay, you must click the Submit to Turnitin button. Then, download your digital receipt in your Assignment inbox to confirm successful submission (refer to the Turnitin Student guide). UQ ITS rule: No digital receipt, no submission. The deadline for submission is based on the time your assessment has been successfully uploaded on Turnitin as recorded by Turnitin, not the time you tried to upload it. Many students fail to meet the deadline because they have internet connection problems on their side, but they mistake it as an IT problem of UQ. If UQ has any internet connection problems, it will keep a record of it. The only way to guarantee not missing the deadline is to submit your research essay well before the deadline. Having more in-text citations and references will reduce the number of words for the main body. But having too few in-text citations and references will lessen the credibility of the essay. Therefore, you need to balance the two. There is a penalty if the number of words exceeds the word limit (see marking rubric for details). In addition to the penalty specified in the marking rubric, the marker will not read beyond 1,000 words. Thus, the marker will ignore words over the word limit.
