ECS4861 Assignment 3 (DETAILED ANSWERS) 2025 - DISTINCTION GUARANTEED

ECS4861 Assignment 3 (DETAILED ANSWERS) 2025 - DISTINCTION GUARANTEED - DISTINCTION GUARANTEED - DISTINCTION GUARANTEED Answers, guidelines, workings and references , Instructions on writing the assignment ⇒ The essay should be a maximum of 10 pages (excluding your list of references at the end of the essay), using double-spacing and a minimum 12 font print size (about 4 000 words). Your essay must be submitted on myUnisa in PDF format. No word document will be marked. ⇒ Note that your essay will only be marked up to the maximum 10 pages allowed. Anything written beyond this will not be marked. Our assessment of your essay will depend on how well you extract the essential issues and arguments from what you have read and integrate this in a well-structured essay in your own words. We are not interested in seeing if you can copy or barely paraphrase large chunks of the prescribed reading in a cut-and-paste fashion in the hope that you will include something relevant. The mark you get will thus reflect how well you have understood and integrated the essential ideas in your essay, as expressed in your own words. ⇒ To encourage you to write in your own words, you are instructed not to include any quotes from the prescribed reading in your essays. Any such quotes will be ignored. ⇒ Before attempting to answer the essay questions, please also read the sections on plagiarism and guidelines on how to write a good essay below: Here are some general guidelines as to what we are looking for in a good essay: While you will obviously derive most of your ideas from the prescribed readings, you must express them in your own words. Essays with large sections copied or paraphrased from the literature are unacceptable and will receive few marks, if any. We are going to be quite strict about this. Unless you express yourself in your own words, it is obviously impossible for us to assess your understanding of the content. Also, essay-writing is an important and useful skill and an essential part of a postgraduate module. ⇒ An essay should be focussed on answering the question, have a clear logical structure and your argument should be systematically developed. Hence, sentences and paragraphs should follow logically on one another. A collection of disjointed comments on the literature is not our idea of a good essay. Also do not let your essay consist of a succession of summaries of your readings. Try to combine these readings, and the topics mentioned therein, into a single integrated essay with its own logical structure. You are free to organise your essay in the way you find most appropriate yourself. The use of subsections will, however, help you develop your argument systematically. ⇒ When discussing some author’s theoretical argument, do not merely give its conclusion, but also explain the logic of the argument itself. Otherwise, don’t mention the issue at all. ⇒ The essay should be a maximum of 10 pages (excluding your list of references at the end of the essay), using double-spacing and a minimum 12 font print size (about 4 000 words). Your essay must be submitted on myUnisa in PDF format. No word document will be marked. ⇒ Note that your essay will only be marked up to the maximum 10 pages allowed. Anything written beyond this will not be marked. Our assessment of your essay will depend on how well you extract the essential issues and arguments from what you have read and integrate this in a well-structured essay in your own words. We are not interested in seeing if you can copy or barely paraphrase large chunks of the prescribed reading in a cut-and-paste fashion in the hope that you will include something relevant. The mark you get will thus reflect how well you have understood and integrated the essential ideas in your essay, as expressed in your own words. ⇒ To encourage you to write in your own words, you are instructed not to include any quotes from the prescribed reading in your essays. Any such quotes will be ignored. ⇒ Before attempting to answer the essay questions, please also read the sections on plagiarism and guidelines on how to write a good essay below: Here are some general guidelines as to what we are looking for in a good essay: While you will obviously derive most of your ideas from the prescribed readings, you must express them in your own words. Essays with large sections copied or paraphrased from the literature are unacceptable and will receive few marks, if any. We are going to be quite strict about this. Unless you express yourself in your own words, it is obviously impossible for us to assess your understanding of the content. Also, essay-writing is an important and useful skill and an essential part of a postgraduate module. ⇒ An essay should be focussed on answering the question, have a clear logical structure and your argument should be systematically developed. Hence, sentences and paragraphs should follow logically on one another. A collection of disjointed comments on the literature is not our idea of a good essay. Also do not let your essay consist of a succession of summaries of your readings. Try to combine these readings, and the topics mentioned therein, into a single integrated essay with its own logical structure. You are free to organise your essay in the way you find most appropriate yourself. The use of subsections will, however, help you develop your argument systematically. ⇒ When discussing some author’s theoretical argument, do not merely give its conclusion, but also explain the logic of the argument itself. Otherwise, don’t mention the issue at all. ⇒ Stay within the prescribed number of pages for answering the essay. It is part of the exercise that you present your argument within limited space. ⇒ Obscurity is not a sign of profundity. An essay should, therefore, be as clear, concise and to the point as possible. Some issues are difficult and you will obviously not be able to avoid complexity discussing them. But that does not excuse you from trying to keep your discussion as simple and clear as possible. Evaluate the statement “Wage and price rigidities are necessary for Keynesian economics to explain involuntary unemployment” with reference to Keynes’s general theory, New Keynesian economics and the orthodox Keynesian school If, after having studied the literature and discussed possible problems with your lecturers, you still fail to grasp some finer theoretical point, there is no shame in simply admitting your difficulty in your essay, provided you explain where your problems lie. It is better to show us that you have grappled with the issues, than to be caught out purposefully fudging them to hide your own lack of understanding. And in expressing your difficulty in understanding some theory, ⇒ While we encourage you to read more widely, your essay should show proof of your having read and understood at least the prescribed literature. Essays which ignore the prescribed readings will be unlikely to get a pass mark. ⇒ It is customary in academic discourse to acknowledge the work that you have drawn from. Therefore, whenever you mention someone else’s ideas or directly quote his or her words, you should provide a reference. There are various ways of doing this, but we recommend that you acquaint yourself with the Harvard system as it is the most widely used in economics. According to this system of referencing, you do not use footnotes to provide the full bibliographical particulars of the 2 referred source, as is customary in other systems. Instead, the bare essentials to identify the source, such as the name of the author, the year of publication and the page reference (where appropriate) are given in the text itself, making use of brackets. ⇒ The reader is thus referred to the bibliography for the full particulars of Keynes (1936) or Snowdon and Vane (2005) should he or she wish to consult the source. Note that it is not necessary to give all the authors’ names in the text when there is more than one author. The abbreviation et al indicates that there are also other authors. The important point here is that the Harvard method requires you to add a detailed bibliography or list of references at the end of the text. In this list of references all the authors’ names will be listed. ⇒ Quotations, using quotation marks, are often used to enhance an essay. However, in this course (unlike perhaps in other courses) we do not want you to use any quotations. We want to see if you can present the ideas of an author in your own words. Note, however, that you must still acknowledge the ideas and arguments of an author even when you present them in your own words without quoting verbatim. Use the system and rules for referencing your sources in the text and the bibliography as explained above ⇒ You may find it useful to go through the following steps in preparation for an essay: ⇒ Think carefully about the question and make sure what is required from you. You must focus on the question. ⇒ Study the various prescribed readings (and any other sources you find useful), making notes in the process. ⇒ Devise a logical structure for your essay. In other words, decide which issues you want to discuss and in which order. Essays generally take the form of an introduction-body-conclusion. Note that it is not necessary to have a table of contents but you may want to give headings to the main sections of your essay. ⇒ Write a first draft of your essay. To keep yourself from copying or paraphrasing the literature, consult only your notes, keeping your books as much as possible closed. Evaluate the statement “Wage and price rigidities are necessary for Keynesian economics to explain involuntary unemployment” with reference to Keynes’s general theory, New Keynesian economics and the orthodox Keynesian school ⇒ You will find that you only start to get a grip on a topic once being forced to write about it. In the light of the insights which you gained in the process of writing your first draft, adapt the logical structure and 3 wording of your essay where necessary. You may need to write many drafts of your essay before you are happy with it. ⇒ Write the final draft. Your assignment must be proofread before you submit it. You must obviously proofread it yourself, but you should also acquire the habit of getting somebody else to proofread it as well. Spelling, typing and grammatical errors create a bad impression. N.B.: ∗ Referencing carries 5 marks of the total score ∗ The list of references must be arranged alphabetically according to author’s surname. The date of publication appears immediately after the author’s name. If the bibliographical entry is a book, the name of the book must be underlined or italicised. The place of publication and the publisher’s name must be specified. If the entry is a journal article, the title of the article included and the name of the journal must be provided. The name of the journal must be italicised. The volume of the journal and the page references must also be provided. ∗ You can refer to Snowdon and Vane (2005: sections 2.9, 7.8 and 3.4) for Keynes general theory; New Keynesian economics and The Orthodox Keynesian school, respectively. You are welcome to consult other resources that you may find relevant. ∗ Your submission will be subjected to plagiarism check, including Artificial Evaluate the statement “Wage and price rigidities are necessary for Keynesian economics to explain involuntary unemployment” with reference to Keynes’s general theory, New Keynesian economics and the orthodox Keynesian school Intelligence (AI) eg ChatGPT, OpenAI, AI Chat etc, assistance checks. If your work is found to have evidence of plagiarism or have used AI, you will be heavily penalized. AI must not be used and cannot be referenced in your work.