Topic: Behavioural Economics and the Car Industry

Order Description
Behavioural Economics and the Car Industry
Type: Paper
Learning Objectives Assessed: 1, 2, 3, 5
Due Date:
19 May 16 23:00
Weight: 30%
Task Description:
Imagine you have been asked to give a presentation to a meeting of the Motor Traders Association of Queensland about the significance of behavioural and evolutionary economics for the automotive sector. Your task is to write a full-text version of the presentation that you would give at this meeting. Imagine that your presentation is to take about 30 minutes to deliver. Given this, your draft should be about 4000 words in length, excluding references.
Your presentation draft should be typed double-spaced, with a reference list at the end that sets out your sources and any suggestions for things that might be useful for your audience to read if they want to learn more on this topic. It should be submitted as a Word document so that the word count for the presentation text can be checked.
To decide whether you are making appropriate reference to any sources within your draft presentation, you should imagine that you would actually present the text verbatim to your audience in a professional, authoritative but engaging manner. Hence you should be avoiding the repeatedly including (Author, Date) references at the ends of sentences and write it more as you would have done had this been an exam question (it was an exam question in 2015 and was done very well, though on a smaller scale). You can use footnotes, where necessary, to point to particular references (e.g., ‘see Earl, 1986, chapter 7’, but it would also be perfectly possible to say, for example, ‘Last year, two Nobel Prize winning economist, George Akerlof and Robert Shiller offered a very critical view of the motoring trade in their book Phishing for Phools; they argued that ….’ (and then just give the full publication details in the list of references).
Note that this presentation need not be purely about vehicle retailing. Your audience might also be interested in what you can say, from the standpoint of behavioural and evolutionary economics, about the competitive process between the vehicle manufacturers.

Criteria & Marking:
Marks will be awarded for:
(i) Evidence of the extent of relevant reading that has been undertaken, both in terms of breadth and depth (10 marks);
(ii) Insight and creativity evident in applying theoretical literature to the automotive sector (12 marks) ;
(iii) Quality of writing and suitability) for verbal presentation to the target audience (6 marks);
(iv) Accuracy and consistency of referencing (2 marks).

Submission: To be submitted via Blackboard as a Word file. Do not submit in hard-copy form.