EC202 Spring 09 Sections 1 and 2, instructions for the first essay.
The essay requires using the turn-it-in website. The web-site address is
www.turnitin.com. If you have not registered with this site before you will need to
create an account. Follow the instructions and it is simple to do. To link to this
class, you need the class ID that turn-it-in assigned to us plus the password I
created. These are:
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Submit your essay to the site, it accepts most word processing formats, at worst
case, you’ll have to reformat just for the submission. Please make sure you
understand how to do this and don’t forget to do it. The site gives me a report of
all submissions, if your name isn’t on the list, I will not accept your assignment.
Your TA’s and I will be reminding you to be sure to get this done.
Assignment instructions:
You are being asked to read a couple of short articles and to listen to a 6 minute
web-broadcast that covers the housing market in America. The first essay is from
an economist in England, who talks about the supply and demand for housing in
terms you should be familiar with. The second article is by a professor of Urban
Studies on how home-ownership in American may actually by a bad thing for
people. He is also the person being interviewed on the web-cast. The final article
is from a blog written by an economist from Michigan. He looks at recent data on
housing prices and sales of houses and reaches an interesting conclusion. From
these readings (and listening!) I want you to write a 2-3 page paper. The referred
format is 12 point font with 1.5 line spacing in the paragraph formatting. You
should write at least 500 words but no more than 1,000. In your essay on
housing, please address the following topics:
A) In your opinion, does the housing market follow the law of demand?
B) How does the government encourage demand for housing?
C) Have we efficiently used our resources in creating the housing supply that
exists today?
D) What is happening in the market now, particularly in areas that have been
hard hit by the bursting of the housing bubble?
E) Which path do you think is best, letting market forces correct for a new
equilibrium in supply and demand or changing the way government supports the
demand for housing? Can both things happen? If you were in charge, what
would you recommend?
When answering these questions, use some of your newly acquired economic
language, such as incentives, opportunity costs, trade-offs, shortages, surplus,
supply, demand, etc. Be sure to use quotation marks when you are “borrowing”
directly from an article. You don’t need to formally site the articles, we know what
they are. But if you use other outside information, please site those sources.
Your grade will be a composite grade reflecting quality of writing, word choice,
punctuation, spelling, as well as your ability to write intelligently and coherently.
Approach this assignment as if your work was going to be published in the
college newspaper, for all the members of the CSU community to see. What
impression do you want them to have of you after reading your work?
FYI….this instruction sheet is 560 words, and is formatted with 1.5 line spacing, 1
inch margins.