Term Paper: For this course, you are asked to select a country of the region, and write a short research paper (minimum 3000 words). The goal is to understand the practical challenges experienced by Middle Eastern economies. Each student will either choose or be assigned a particular country (called the Practice County) by the end of the fourth week and during the semester gather information and data related to each section topic about that country. Students should make a folder for your country and include in it such things as the World Fact Book report, Census population pyramids, etc., and bring that folder to class so that you will have basic facts available during the discussion. Throughout the semester, you will be asked to present this information in the class. (For example, when we talk about poverty and income inequality and you chose Iran as your practice country. You should collect information about poverty and income inequality in Iran and have them ready to present in the class.) The paper should be done individually. You need to have a theme or hypothesis, provide an economic profile, develop and argue your case, examine government policies/attempts towards the issue, and come up with policy recommendations. The paper needs to address the different economic factors related to your chosen topic and facing the given country, and produce an outlook for the future (not necessarily a forecast).

Stage 3)

Report #2: the goal of this exercise is to encourage you to gain experience working with data. This part of the paper corresponds to empirical evidence on your topic. You should gather and present data in graphical form, with discussion. After downloading the data supporting your claims/research question, convert it into a graph (using a spreadsheet like Excel). Find a complete time series (from 1970 to as close to the present as possible). Examples of statistical series would be labor force participation rates, unemployment, literacy, inflation, growth of GDP, or per capita GDP. What do you think may explain the change over time and why? Show your work (copying and pasting charts from other sources will adversely impact your grade). No more than three pages of text in addition to the tables/graphs. Be sure to indicate your sources in detail. The discussion for this report should begin with an introduction of what series and countries you decided to include, and what trend you expected (or hoped!) to see in the data. After the presentation of the data in graphical form, end with a similarly brief discussion of what lessons can be learned from the data. Accessing and downloading the data will be demonstrated in class.

Stage 4)

Final Paper: This is the part where you bring everything together and form a comprehensive research paper. The final output should not exceed 3750 words. (15 pages, excluding graphs/tables, double space, Times New Roman, 12 point font). You need to start with your theme or hypothesis, develop and argue your case (using report 1), present empirical evidence (using report 2), and come with policy recommendations or how other countries have approached this problem. The paper needs to address the different economic factors related to your chosen topic and facing the given country, and produce an outlook for the future (not necessarily a forecast). The paper should be focused, analytic, reflect critical thinking of materials read and must be well-documented with complete references given. Remember, you need to make sure that your paper is well written, complete with references and a bibliography. The final paper is due at midnight on April 24th Since we are not having a final exam, and in view of the time that it takes to carefully read and grade all the papers, I need them by that date. Any paper turned in after that deadline will lose 10% of total paper points for every late day. The research paper is worth 25% of your final grade.