Here are two observations - mundane, but this is how you think when you are in grading mode.
1. Regarding musical selection - many, but not all, of the pieces selected are more my vintage (or earlier) than your vintage. I wonder if this reflects a subtle form of moral hazard or some fear/concern that I wouldn't get your vintage stuff. (That fear is rational. Making reference to TV shows or movies I haven't seen might very well communicate to students your age, but not to me.)
2. I forgot to give you instructions about the end of the slideshow. In fact, many presentations end before the music ends, so there is an abrupt conclusion that the viewer can be expecting (at least if the viewer is familiar with the music). The right way to do this is either to time the slides to coincide with the end of the music or to gently fade out the music before the slides end. Nobody will be penalized for not doing this, since the error is mine. But note that they are less interesting to showcase as is.
As a result of 2, I am lest concern about the videos I'm recording of the slide presentation, particularly when they end. I do a bit of snipping so there isn't a lot of dead video after the slideshow is over, but it is not elegant.
Showing posts with label 09. Course Projects. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 09. Course Projects. Show all posts
Friday, December 15, 2017
Sunday, November 26, 2017
Where I am on the Second Drafts/Moving on to the last phase of the project
So far I have received submissions from 7 teams. I have read and returned 5 of them and I am done for today. If I didn't get to yours yet, I apologize. Something else came up today and that took a chunk of time. I will get it back to you tomorrow. If your team hasn't yet submitted the second draft, you better get it to me tomorrow, early afternoon by the latest. Otherwise, your team will be put in jeopardy for not doing the work.
Many teams didn't do the references correctly. While I try to be causal about many matters, references in papers are something that academics take seriously. In the body of the paper, the reference should read Last Name of Author(s) (year of publication). Then at the end of the paper there should be a references list with a full citation of the paper. You ultimate submission of the your paper has to have the references done correctly.
In addition, I marked up papers, as my way to read through them again seriously. I want to note that I enjoyed the cover letters and really it is the best thing I did about the project - requiring them. One thing I hope you get from my class is that thinking is conversation. The cover letters are conversation with your thinking in response to mine. I wish I could do more assignments like that.
However, I didn't mark them up. From the point of view of production, the cover letters are intermediate product. The next version of the paper that you will submit is closer to final product.
Once I receive those and verify the references are done okay, I will post your papers to a folder in Moodle, so if you are interested you can see the papers of other teams. Having your paper posted in Moodle means your team is cleared to do the last phase of the project, the virtual elevator speech.
Many teams didn't do the references correctly. While I try to be causal about many matters, references in papers are something that academics take seriously. In the body of the paper, the reference should read Last Name of Author(s) (year of publication). Then at the end of the paper there should be a references list with a full citation of the paper. You ultimate submission of the your paper has to have the references done correctly.
In addition, I marked up papers, as my way to read through them again seriously. I want to note that I enjoyed the cover letters and really it is the best thing I did about the project - requiring them. One thing I hope you get from my class is that thinking is conversation. The cover letters are conversation with your thinking in response to mine. I wish I could do more assignments like that.
However, I didn't mark them up. From the point of view of production, the cover letters are intermediate product. The next version of the paper that you will submit is closer to final product.
Once I receive those and verify the references are done okay, I will post your papers to a folder in Moodle, so if you are interested you can see the papers of other teams. Having your paper posted in Moodle means your team is cleared to do the last phase of the project, the virtual elevator speech.
Tuesday, October 3, 2017
Team Assignments
For students not in class today, I allocated papers to teams based on the first preference of each team. The results are below. Note there are three teams doing Coase and another three teams doing Akerlof and Kranton. Some of you may want to reconsider your preference, particular if other teams are doing the same paper as you. If I hear from you about that before the week is out, you can change your mind. Otherwise, we'll go with this allocation.
Thursday, September 28, 2017
About the Course Project - Process
The previous post described the format and length requirements for the paper. In this post we will consider more about what you are to deliver and when.
There will be two drafts - a first draft and a subsequent revision. The first draft needs to be an earnest effort. I will then provide detailed feedback on that first draft within the body of the paper using the Track Changes feature of Word and the Comment tool. I will provide a demo of how to use those tools in class.
When you submit your second draft, accompanying your revision you will included to me a memo of how you addressed each comment from what I sent in the first draft. This memo is very helpful to me to understand what you did in response. I will comment on your second draft, probably not inline only at the end, unless there are egregious errors that still need to be fixed.
Assuming your second draft is okay, I will let you know that. From there you are to make a virtual elevator speech - an overview presentation of your project. In form, those will be like the PowerPoint presentations I've made for the first few weeks of the class. These will be posted in Moodle for the class to see. I will give more instructions on the virtual elevator speech neared to when you will be working on it.
Please remember - in all communication with me about your project copy your teammates on your message.
Deadlines:
First Draft Due - October 27 at noon. The October 27 part is a hard deadline. I will not accept a paper turned in the next day. I will process these as fast as I can so you can start on the revision asap.
Second Draft Due - Novemeber 17 at noon. This is the Friday before the Thanksgiving break. There is a soft deadline here because we don't have class the following week. But you will enjoy your break more if you meet this deadline as well.
Virtual Elevator Speech Due - December 14 at noon. This is Reading Day.
There will be two drafts - a first draft and a subsequent revision. The first draft needs to be an earnest effort. I will then provide detailed feedback on that first draft within the body of the paper using the Track Changes feature of Word and the Comment tool. I will provide a demo of how to use those tools in class.
When you submit your second draft, accompanying your revision you will included to me a memo of how you addressed each comment from what I sent in the first draft. This memo is very helpful to me to understand what you did in response. I will comment on your second draft, probably not inline only at the end, unless there are egregious errors that still need to be fixed.
Assuming your second draft is okay, I will let you know that. From there you are to make a virtual elevator speech - an overview presentation of your project. In form, those will be like the PowerPoint presentations I've made for the first few weeks of the class. These will be posted in Moodle for the class to see. I will give more instructions on the virtual elevator speech neared to when you will be working on it.
Please remember - in all communication with me about your project copy your teammates on your message.
Deadlines:
First Draft Due - October 27 at noon. The October 27 part is a hard deadline. I will not accept a paper turned in the next day. I will process these as fast as I can so you can start on the revision asap.
Second Draft Due - Novemeber 17 at noon. This is the Friday before the Thanksgiving break. There is a soft deadline here because we don't have class the following week. But you will enjoy your break more if you meet this deadline as well.
Virtual Elevator Speech Due - December 14 at noon. This is Reading Day.
Wednesday, September 27, 2017
Suggestions for Course Paper
The paper is meant to be formal writing, yet with the intended audience students who will take the class in the future. I know much student to student communication is quite informal and full of abbreviations, driven by how texting has changed the way we communicate. So what I mean here is that student readers should find your paper not too difficult to understand, if they put in the effort to read it. This means that if you use jargon, you must define it in understandable terms. It also means that you shouldn't take long excerpts from the paper you are reviewing and instead put the arguments in the paper into your own words. Beyond that, here are several specific suggestions.
Chunk the paper and use section headings for each chunk.
Some specific sections that you should include are (You can have other sections as well and/or have multiple sections associated with any one of these.):
1. What is the main issue that the paper deals with? (You should come up with your one section heading for this and the remaining sections.)
2. What is the contribution of the paper? If others have also written on this issue how has this paper added to our understanding as compared to what came before?
3. How do the issues of the paper tie into what we've done in the class?
4. What are some lessons learned from the paper?
5. Do you have your own views on the matter or some examples you can bring in that are not discussed in the paper but that might illustrate ideas in the paper?
6. Conclusion
A big deal issue with formal writing is the sequencing of your presentation. Even after you know what you are going to say, you need to order your presentation that will make it logical for the reader. One thought that guides formal writing is that the authors do the work so the readers don't have to.
Each team member needs to own the whole paper.
This means, in particular, that if one team member writes a section of the paper, the other edits that section and makes changes to it in an effort to improve things. It also means that each team member is concerned with whether one section flows into the next in a smooth way. Abrupt transitions are to be avoided, because they confuse the reader.
Format of the paper
Please submit a Word document, preferably a docx file. I may use Track Changes in giving my response. I will try to give a demo in class of how to use Track Changes, as my prior experience is that some students are unfamiliar with it.
You need a title page. It has the name of the paper, the team name, the date, and an abstract, which is a brief summary of what the paper is about.
Starting with the next page, the body of the paper should be between 6 and 10 pages, single space within paragraphs, line space between paragraphs. Font size should be 11 or 12 point. Margins should be 1 inch. Since the paper this would be printed out on is 8.5 x 11 inches, this means the writing area is 6.5 x 9 inches.
Please use page numbers as it makes it easier to refer to parts of your paper in an email. Do not number the title page. I prefer page numbers to be on the bottom of the page. If you start a New Section after the title page and you format page numbers so the new section begins with page 1, that will give you the desired result.
After the body of the paper you need a page for references, rather than put footnotes to references in the body of the paper. My preferred way of doing this is that the first time you refer to the reference in your paper you list authors only, not the title of the piece. If you make subsequent use of the references you can then repeat the authors names. Then in the reference area, you can make a full reference. I like to have those hyperlinked to the source if possible. And if you are real slick, you can put in internal links in the paper from where you refer to the piece to the reference item. That makes things quite convenient for the reader.
Chunk the paper and use section headings for each chunk.
Some specific sections that you should include are (You can have other sections as well and/or have multiple sections associated with any one of these.):
1. What is the main issue that the paper deals with? (You should come up with your one section heading for this and the remaining sections.)
2. What is the contribution of the paper? If others have also written on this issue how has this paper added to our understanding as compared to what came before?
3. How do the issues of the paper tie into what we've done in the class?
4. What are some lessons learned from the paper?
5. Do you have your own views on the matter or some examples you can bring in that are not discussed in the paper but that might illustrate ideas in the paper?
6. Conclusion
A big deal issue with formal writing is the sequencing of your presentation. Even after you know what you are going to say, you need to order your presentation that will make it logical for the reader. One thought that guides formal writing is that the authors do the work so the readers don't have to.
Each team member needs to own the whole paper.
This means, in particular, that if one team member writes a section of the paper, the other edits that section and makes changes to it in an effort to improve things. It also means that each team member is concerned with whether one section flows into the next in a smooth way. Abrupt transitions are to be avoided, because they confuse the reader.
Format of the paper
Please submit a Word document, preferably a docx file. I may use Track Changes in giving my response. I will try to give a demo in class of how to use Track Changes, as my prior experience is that some students are unfamiliar with it.
You need a title page. It has the name of the paper, the team name, the date, and an abstract, which is a brief summary of what the paper is about.
Starting with the next page, the body of the paper should be between 6 and 10 pages, single space within paragraphs, line space between paragraphs. Font size should be 11 or 12 point. Margins should be 1 inch. Since the paper this would be printed out on is 8.5 x 11 inches, this means the writing area is 6.5 x 9 inches.
Please use page numbers as it makes it easier to refer to parts of your paper in an email. Do not number the title page. I prefer page numbers to be on the bottom of the page. If you start a New Section after the title page and you format page numbers so the new section begins with page 1, that will give you the desired result.
After the body of the paper you need a page for references, rather than put footnotes to references in the body of the paper. My preferred way of doing this is that the first time you refer to the reference in your paper you list authors only, not the title of the piece. If you make subsequent use of the references you can then repeat the authors names. Then in the reference area, you can make a full reference. I like to have those hyperlinked to the source if possible. And if you are real slick, you can put in internal links in the paper from where you refer to the piece to the reference item. That makes things quite convenient for the reader.
Monday, September 25, 2017
Papers for Course Projects
Below is the list from last year. I think it is a pretty good set to choose from. These are papers published for professional economists, but don't have math that would be a barrier for undergraduate students. Last year I made sure there was no overlap between the teams in assigning the papers. This year, I'm going to allow overlap. So if two teams want to do the same paper, that's okay. But note that it gives me ammunition to compare what you do.
We'll allocate papers to teams a week from tomorrow. Between now and then I will give some instructions on what the course projects will be like. For now, you might see if you have a preference for a particular paper.
1. Ronald Coase - The Nature of the Firm
This is where the subject matter all started. Coase, who won the Nobel prize for Economics though he actually was a Law professor at the University of Chicago, asks a very elemental question. Why are there firms? Whey don't all transactions happen within markets? '
2. Oliver Williamson - Transaction Cost Economics: An Introduction
Williamson is another Nobel Prize winner and the person who took the baton from Coase and advanced the field. He is most known for his work on governance of contracts and this paper gives a nice overview of how that works and helps to keep transaction costs under control.
3. Alchian and Demsetz - Production, Information Costs, and Economic Organization
This paper gives an answer to the question of why there are firms - team production. It also explains why the owner/entrepreneur should be the manager of the other team members as well as the residual claimant on the profit the firm generates. It offers a very good theory of the capitalism of small businesses.
4. Alfred Chandler - Organizational Capabilities and the Economic History of the Industrial Enterprise
While we have been emphasizing transaction costs in class, this paper takes a comparative view of various possible explanations of the firm and notes that the evidence doesn't really favor the transactions cost approach. It is interesting to see the implications of the different approaches when contrasted side by side.
5. Klein, Crawford, and Alchian - Vertical Integration, Appropriable Rents, and the Competitive Contracting Process
This is the most famous paper on the holdup problem. It gives a very general description of the issue and then uses some historical examples to illustrate. One of those examples we will discuss in class, the case of Fisher Body and General Motors.
6. Arthur Okun - The Invisible Handshake and the Inflationary Process
NOTE: This paper is freely available to you if either (1) you are on the campus network or (2) you use VPN (TunnelAll) when you are on the commercial Internet. Otherwise you see it costs $45 to download. Don't pay that.
This paper offers an excellent discussion of implicit contracts (the invisible handshake) and explains how they govern the employment relationship. It then talks about the macroeconomic implications of such implicit contracts and, in particular, explains why inflation was persistent in the late 1970s long after the sources that caused the inflation had been removed.
7. Gompers and Lerner - The Venture Capital Revolution
Normal capital markets require collateral from the borrower to secure a loan. This requirement is no big deal for established firms but it is an effective block for startups who are then constrained financially. While most startups fail, some succeed fabulously. There is then reason to have a market for high risk/high reward capital investment. While we won't otherwise spend much time talking about finance issues in the class, this particular type of firm should be considered, and separately from the way we consider other firms that produce goods or services.
8. Richard Freeman - When Workers Share in the Profits
Shared capitalism has been touted as a solution to (1) address the employee moral hazard problem and (2) address income inequality. This paper gives an overview of the various possible ways for shared capitalism to manifest and then offers up a critique of the effectiveness of the various approaches.
9. Akerlof and Kranton - Identity and the Economics of Organizations
As we have tried to stress in the class, there are limits to how much cash incentives can accomplish and indeed those incentives may have pernicious consequences. This paper looks at alternative ways to motivate employees - via Identity, clearly not a pure economics concept but surely an interesting one. This paper represents another of those that meld economics with other social sciences, which really is the direction the discipline should be taking.
We'll allocate papers to teams a week from tomorrow. Between now and then I will give some instructions on what the course projects will be like. For now, you might see if you have a preference for a particular paper.
1. Ronald Coase - The Nature of the Firm
This is where the subject matter all started. Coase, who won the Nobel prize for Economics though he actually was a Law professor at the University of Chicago, asks a very elemental question. Why are there firms? Whey don't all transactions happen within markets? '
2. Oliver Williamson - Transaction Cost Economics: An Introduction
Williamson is another Nobel Prize winner and the person who took the baton from Coase and advanced the field. He is most known for his work on governance of contracts and this paper gives a nice overview of how that works and helps to keep transaction costs under control.
3. Alchian and Demsetz - Production, Information Costs, and Economic Organization
This paper gives an answer to the question of why there are firms - team production. It also explains why the owner/entrepreneur should be the manager of the other team members as well as the residual claimant on the profit the firm generates. It offers a very good theory of the capitalism of small businesses.
4. Alfred Chandler - Organizational Capabilities and the Economic History of the Industrial Enterprise
While we have been emphasizing transaction costs in class, this paper takes a comparative view of various possible explanations of the firm and notes that the evidence doesn't really favor the transactions cost approach. It is interesting to see the implications of the different approaches when contrasted side by side.
5. Klein, Crawford, and Alchian - Vertical Integration, Appropriable Rents, and the Competitive Contracting Process
This is the most famous paper on the holdup problem. It gives a very general description of the issue and then uses some historical examples to illustrate. One of those examples we will discuss in class, the case of Fisher Body and General Motors.
6. Arthur Okun - The Invisible Handshake and the Inflationary Process
NOTE: This paper is freely available to you if either (1) you are on the campus network or (2) you use VPN (TunnelAll) when you are on the commercial Internet. Otherwise you see it costs $45 to download. Don't pay that.
This paper offers an excellent discussion of implicit contracts (the invisible handshake) and explains how they govern the employment relationship. It then talks about the macroeconomic implications of such implicit contracts and, in particular, explains why inflation was persistent in the late 1970s long after the sources that caused the inflation had been removed.
7. Gompers and Lerner - The Venture Capital Revolution
Normal capital markets require collateral from the borrower to secure a loan. This requirement is no big deal for established firms but it is an effective block for startups who are then constrained financially. While most startups fail, some succeed fabulously. There is then reason to have a market for high risk/high reward capital investment. While we won't otherwise spend much time talking about finance issues in the class, this particular type of firm should be considered, and separately from the way we consider other firms that produce goods or services.
8. Richard Freeman - When Workers Share in the Profits
Shared capitalism has been touted as a solution to (1) address the employee moral hazard problem and (2) address income inequality. This paper gives an overview of the various possible ways for shared capitalism to manifest and then offers up a critique of the effectiveness of the various approaches.
9. Akerlof and Kranton - Identity and the Economics of Organizations
As we have tried to stress in the class, there are limits to how much cash incentives can accomplish and indeed those incentives may have pernicious consequences. This paper looks at alternative ways to motivate employees - via Identity, clearly not a pure economics concept but surely an interesting one. This paper represents another of those that meld economics with other social sciences, which really is the direction the discipline should be taking.
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