Economic arguments

  critically evaluate economic arguments and convey your reasoning to a general audience in writing. This writing assignment will help you develop these skills. You will need to demonstrate your ability to apply economic concepts and tools to different, more open-ended contexts. This will also help you develop your ability to apply and to view events through the lens of economics. The critical examination involves a few steps. First, translating a written argument into a form that can be analyzed using tools you have learned in class. The next step is to use these tools to critically examine the argument being made. The analysis involves doing more than merely paraphrasing the textbook, class notes, or using jargon. It involves things like identifying which model/tool is appropriate for this context, checking to see if the assumptions required are satisfied, identifying any changes in circumstances, and working through the predictions, etc. You need to be able to compare your analysis with the author’s arguments and be able to articulate any differences or similarities in a precise manner. The final step is translating all of this back into clear language that readers can easily understand.   Task There will be two writing assignments in this course to give you practice and opportunities to get feedback on your writing. This is an individual writing assignment. For this writing assignment, you will be given an economic podcast and will be asked to critically evaluate it. You will be graded on the quality and thoroughness of your analysis. Therefore, you will also be graded on the clarity, flow and overall cohesiveness of the writing in your paper