Monopsony: Labour market for specific jobs, role of unions.

The essay assignment will assess your ability to analyse a real world problem based on microeconomic theory in an original way. You should not use equations, but diagrams may be useful in some cases. The marking criteria will be as follows:

•   Identification of an issue (15%). You will have to identify an economic phenomenon documented in some reliable source (examples: a news article, a report or website information from an international organisation, government agency or industry organisation, etc.). Possible sources of information are discussed in section 5.
•   Relevant information (15%). You will have to provide relevant data or evidence supporting the main discussion in your essay.
•   Application of discipline knowledge and critical thinking (55%). You will have to demonstrate ability to apply microeconomic concepts to the analysis of real world situations. Originality and own critical thinking will be highly rewarded.
•   Conclusions and/or recommendations (5%). Your analysis has to lead a concrete conclusion, policy recommendation or interesting open questions.
•   Professional writing skills and discipline conventions (10%). This criterion assesses your ability to convey information and express ideas in a clear, concise way. Grammar errors and misspellings will not affect your mark, but the general presentation of your ideas will. Hand‐written scanned graphs are acceptable and will not lead to deduction of points.

  2. Format

•   Your essay assignment should be typed in Microsoft Word or a similar word processor.
•   You should NOT use any equations in your essay. Other assessments focus heavily on the mathematical and modelling aspects of microeconomic concept. The purpose of the essay assignment

  is different: you should try to explain and analyse real world phenomena in plain words.

•   The Assignment should not exceed the 1,500‐word limit. In Microsoft Word, you can count the

  number of words with the Word Count tool in the Review menu.

•   For references, use the Chicago Author‐Date style (IN TEXT AND REFERENCE)

   

  Your essay should provide microeconomic analysis of a real world problem. Your first step consists in finding a suitable problem to analyse and some facts. To do this, you will have to find some background information in one (or more than one) of the following sources:

  •   A piece of news collected from a newspaper, a news website or a specialised magazine such asThe Economist.
  •   Textbooks case‐studies that you can extend in a discussion. For example, Perloff, J (2008),Microeconomics: Theory and Applications with Calculus, Boston: Pearson International, provides several interesting case studies.
  •   A government report (examples: a Western Australia government report, an Australia Federal Government report, a report by an overseas government written in English, etc.)
  •   A report by an international organisation (examples: OECD, European Union, NAFTA, World Bank, IMF, WTO, ILO, WHO, etc.).
  •   Official webpages of governments, international organisations or business organisation.
  •   A specialised industry report published by a business organisation or association.