Essay
Write an essay on any one of the following topics -about 800 words
1. What do you think should be the 3 major macroeconomic goals of an economy? What policy mix helps government attain these goals? Explain the trade off and conflicts in these goals both short term and long term.
2. How can we measure our nation's economic performance? Explain what factors make it difficult to calculate GDP accurately? How does GDP fail to measure economic welfare accurately, provide three examples excluding those from the textbook?
3. Trace Canada's GDP over the past 40 years. Which years did Canada experience recessions? Categorise the recessions as short lived or prolonged. What were the causes for this difference? What policies did the country generally follow under these circumstances?
4. Compared to the United States, Canada's unemployment rate has generally been higher than that of the U.S. Highlight and explain the reasons for this. What remedial actions can be taken to reverse this trend.
5. Trace the relationship between the US dollar and the Canadian dollar. What are the major factors that determine this relationship. What are the implications ? Focus on the past 18 months when answering this question
Outline for Assignment 2
The paper must be divided into basically 3 sections:
Part1: Introduction - Choose any one topic from the list assigned. Give a brief introduction about the topic of your choice. Trace its economic significance and the justification for your choice.
Part2: Body of paper. This is the central analysis of your paper. It may be divided into 2 parts - qualitative and quantitative. You must be able to substantiate your arguments and information with facts. This latter may be gathered from various sources: data published by Statistics Canada, the internet or any other published sources. The data must be accompanied by economic analysis. Simple statistical charts like bar charts, pie charts, trend lines etc will help enhance your analysis. This is the central part of your paper.
Part 3. Conclusion: What conclusions do you draw from your study? What are the economic policy issues that can be drawn from your conclusions?
Length of paper 800 to about 850 words. The paper must be accompanied by a bibliography.
Please note that the above is only a guide line. Please also note that just lifting an article from internet sources carries a penalty. You may use internet sources, but just "lifting" an article and presenting it as your own is disallowed.