In this individual essay, you are asked to perform analysis on a recent policy issue in international economics. Imagine working for the head of state of a country of your choice

Overview

In this individual essay, you are asked to perform analysis on a recent policy issue in international economics. Imagine working for the head of state of a country of your choice (or other relevant policymakers, e.g., head of the Department of Commerce in China). This policymaker requests to be briefed on a recent issue/policy in international economics. She/he wants to understand the following after reading
your analysis:
(1) what the issue or policy is about
(2) the causes of the issue or the rationale of the policy
(3) the potential impact on aggregate economic outcomes or industry outcomes, as well as the implications for businesses
(4) how the government or businesses should react

Your assignment is to analyze the issue/policy in a “policy memo”, which the policy maker can refer to.

When writing the policy memo, assume that the policymaker is
comfortable with straightforward economics. You should incorporate tools you
learned in this course as much as possible. You can include tables or figures
to make your analysis easier to understand.

Choose Topics

Choosing the topic is very important. First, the
topic must be related to international economics, or at least have implications
for international businesses. Second, the issue or policy should be
well-defined so that your analysis does not lose focus. For example,
“antidumping” would be a bad topic since it is too broad and you cannot analyze
it clearly within the page limit. You can narrow the topic to “antidumping
Chinese solar panels”, which is much more
specific. Third, the issue or policy must be recent (later than 2005). You
probably won’t brief President Biden about the establishment of WTO (1995). Here
are some sample topics for you to consider (of course, some are harder to
analyze than the others):

The US-China Trade War and the US Agriculture
Sector
The Japan-Korea Trade Conflict
Trump’s Tax Reform
Renminbi Internationalization
Shanghai Free Trade Zone
Trans-Pacific Partnership
The Belt and Road Initiative
Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership
European Debt Crisis
Panama Papers
Bitcoin and cryptocurrency
The Global Financial Crisis of 2007-2008
Quantitative Easing
US Federal Reserve Rate Rises since 2015
The Great Trade Collapse during 2008-2009
US Ban on Huawei and ZTE
Brexit
Abenomics
Trump’s
attempt to build a wall along the US-Mexico border
Debate
about Euro adoption in Poland
China’s
Capital Control
The Regional
Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP)
Export
Restrictions on Medical Supply during the Pandemic
Hong Kong’s Anti-epidemic
Fund
The Inflation
Reduction Act of 2022
CHIPS for
America Act

You can also choose a topic not listed above. If
you are not sure whether it is a valid topic, send me an email.

Policy Memo

The due date of the policy memo can be found in Lecture 0. You need
to submit the memo as a Turnitin assignment on Moodle.

The format of the memo:
·
Six to ten double-spaced pages
(excluding references, graphs, and
tables)
·
Times New Roman 12, one-inch
margins
·
no cover page; indicate your
and the recipient’s names and the memo topic at the top of page 1, see the
example at the end of the guide
·
Include references, graphs, and tables at the end of the memo (not counted
against page limit)
·
Reference style: Chicago Manual
of Style – https://goo.gl/azHfye

The memo should be structured based on the four major questions I
mentioned in the “overview” section above. Each part will be evaluated at a scale of 1-5 (1 is the worst
and 5 is the best). To obtain a good
grade for the memo, make sure that:
·
The memo is written succinctly
– if you can convey all your messages and analyses within eight pages, don’t
add redundant information and extend it to the ninth page
·
All
your arguments should be supported by evidence.
Evidence can be references, data, other case studies or theoretical analysis
·
Writing should be clear. Typos
and grammar mistakes are minuses. Clear structure within paragraphs and
connections between paragraphs are pluses
·
More guidance on memo writing
can be found online. For example, here: https://goo.gl/nVVxJV
These scores are then aggregated (with equal weights) and scaled to 35%
of the final grade.