ASSIGNMENT: ECONOMIC STATISTICS
Title: Critical evaluation of microeconomic impact of any policy or Structural change or cyclical event.
Objective: To critically evaluate the microeconomic implications of a suggested Contemporary issue that affects consumers and businesses in Australia. The evaluation is to be presented as a business report, which needs to include a critical evaluation of why and how consumers and businesses are affected or going to be affected by this particular issue.
Follow the following steps:
1. Choose a suitable topic from the list provided below. Any topic that is not on the list will not be accepted.
2. Critically evaluate the issue in terms of its microeconomic implication in reference to consumers and businesses. Clearly highlight the current and future response strategies of affected parties. Analysis must be logical and evidence based. Use journal articles, government and business reports and media reports to support economic theories and your personal opinions and ideas. A good report will be backed by sufficient evidence.
3. The structure of the report should be based around the following headings:
Executive summary: This part includes a general overview of the whole report. Therefore, briefly write the background, purpose, scope, and limitations of the report including the method that is used, important findings, conclusion and recommendations. However, the section should be very brief.
Introduction/Background: This section should orientate the reader to the whole document. Therefore, provide a clear description of the issue that you have selected, highlight the sectors of the economy such as firms, businesses and consumers that are affected by the issue. Identify appropriate economic variables for your analysis such as impact in production, profit, investment, price, consumption, risk factors etc. Also highlight the purpose and rationale of the report.
Evaluation: This part is the main part of the report. You have to critically analyse and evaluate all the relevant components very clearly by providing sufficient evidence. Provide a description of how the sectors of the economy have responded and may respond in future, whether or not their response has achieved the outcomes intended and whether there were any unintended consequences arising from their response. Although, this section is the body of the report, the information should be presented as economically as possible so that you can encompass a range of relevant components within the given word limit.
Conclusion and recommendation: Write a balanced conclusion on the basis of your analysis.
References - Include all references used for the evaluation and report, and cite them correctly using the CDU Harvard Referencing System.
Appendices - Attach any supporting tables, graphs, media releases etc. as appendices at the end. All appendices attached must be referred to somewhere in the report.
The report has a limit of 2000 words, which excludes list of references and appendices.
Suggested Topics (Students are encouraged to choose any topic of their choice apart from the suggested topics below).
1. Social Service Minister in Australia to initiate a new debate on tightening up eligibility rules for the pension, including the assets test for wealthy retirees. If the proposal gets approved, approximately 91,000 pensioners would lose the pension completely and approximately 236,000 would have their part pension reduced. But approximately 172, 000 pensioners would be about $30 a fortnight better off and 50,000 part -pensioners would qualify for full pension.
2. The Australian Prime Minister conforms that the small business tax cut will be effective from July 1, 2015. The cut would be at least 1.5 precent for small businesses in Australia; however, big business would not receive a tax cut.
3. The Government, in its federal budget 2015, announced $237 million in cut to the health and education departments. Likewise, other eight different departments are under functional and an efficiency review, which may cause more cuts and more job losses.
4. Inflated Residential Property Prices in Australia, particularly in major cities such as Sydney and Melbourne, property market. At the same time Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has decreased the official cash rate to 2%, which is record low. Therefore, the situation of property market may get more volatile.
5. Recent years have been turbulent times for the Australian airline industry. It has been confronted with a number of factors such as, a market decline in international tourism; raising costs; increased terrorist activities; falling number of travellers choosing to fly with Qantas (around 16%); price and frequency; competition etc.