Economic Development
Econ 520
Guidelines for The Project
The project should analyze a particular development issue of your choice. It can be empirical, theoretical, or related to development policies. The issue can be related to one country or a region or many countries.
The project should be narrow in focus and devoted to a single issue rather than addressing many issues at the same time. It should read coherently and contain a clear description of the issue and its importance. It should discuss assumptions made and frameworks and methods used to analyze the issue. Don’t just state results, but provide explanations. It is very important to discuss the underlying mechanisms and economic intuitions. If you are reviewing papers, make sure to highlight how these papers are related to the issue and also to one other.
Students are expected to choose their topics/issues, analyze them and research for relevant material on their own. Note that only broad advise and guidance will be provided. Web-sites of World Bank, United Nations, UNICEF, UNDP, WHO and ILO contain wealth of information regarding development issues. These are also very good sources of data. You can access these web-sites through the course web page. While searching for material, following web-sites may be very helpful: ECONLIT, WoPEc, IDEAS, and JSTOR.
Following are the some of the most prominent journals devoted to devel- opment issues: Journal of Development Economics, Journal of Development Studies, World Bank Economic Review, World Development, World Bank Research Observer, and Economic Development and Cultural Change. You may also like to consult Journal of Economic Literature and Journal of Eco- nomic Issues. These journals provide highly accessible survey of different economic issues. All these journals can be accessed through UVIC library gateway.
Each student should discuss topic with me prior to the start of any sig-nificant work. You are expected to provide a five-page proposal (double- spaced, Times New Roman 12 point) on the topic chosen by the project proposal due date. The proposal will describe the motivation, nature and import of the topic, questions to be addressed, the framework which is going to be used (e.g. survey, modelling exercise etc), data sources in the case of empirical work, a brief survey of literature, and a detailed list of references. For some important points regarding referencing see below. In particular, the proposal must address the question whether the project is feasible given the time-constraint and availability of material including adequate data. The proposal carries weight of 15%.
Some Important Points for Final Project Report
The report should be well-written and read coherently. As mentioned earlier, it should contain a clear description of the issue and its importance. It must provide complete reference. Please edit the report thoroughly before you submit it.
The project report should be minimum of 20 pages and should not exceed 25 pages (double-spaced, font Times New Roman 12 point), excluding title page, references, appendices, graphs and tables. For footnotes, please use the font-size of 10 point. For typing the project report use MS-Word.
Format
The report should conform to the following format:
Title Page
Introduction
Analysis/Discussion
Conclusion References Appendices
Title page should also contain an abstract of about 200 words. No page number should appear on the title page. The remainder of the document should be numbered consecutively with Arabic numerals, beginning with “1” on the first page of introduction.
The introduction should be about two-three pages long and provide a brief introduction to the issue, its motivation, and the overview of the project and its main findings. Analysis/discussion part of the project report is the most important part and you can break them into several sections. The concluding section should provide a brief summary and discussion of issue, method and approach, and main findings of your project (about one page). In addition, it is a good place to discuss some of the short-comings of the project and future direction. Complete reference should be reported in the reference section.
You can put graphs and tables at the end of the paper or embed in the paper itself. For graphs and tables, please use softwares which displays properly in MS Word.
Referencing
Please use the APA style for referencing. See the guidelines provided by the UVIC library at:
https://www.uvic.ca/library/research/citation/documents/APA %20Style%20Guide%2024 Sept %202014 8%20pages.pdf.
For referencing, only use sources which are credible and authoritative. Ex- amples include books and journal articles which have gone through formal reviewing process, government reports, publications and reports of interna- tional organizations such as the United Nations, World Bank, ILO, UNICEF. To the extent possible avoid references to blogs and other internet sources such as WIKIPIDEA. Also be careful, when you use reports or publications of advocacy groups. Whole idea of the project is to try to produce an objective, analytical and scientific report.