Econ1540 Final Exam Part 2 – Take Home Writing Assignment

Purpose
Demonstrate your ability of translating between math and English using mathematical tools learned in this course.
Instructions
From your personal experience, identify an action you had to choose or are frequently choosing, a trade-off or cost associated with that action, and the overarching motivation that is driving your action choice. Capture the essential aspects of your choice in an optimization problem including at least one parameter. Solve the model you have set up. Find at least one comparative static and interpret your formal results in the context of the original setting.
Submission details
A complete submission should contain:

1.      (1)  A concise description of the real-world observation.

2.      (2)  A set-up of the model, including at least one parameter in addition to the choice variable(s).

Explain what the variable and parameter names mean, which real-world quantities they

represent, and how essential relationships between them are captured in the model.

3.      (3)  A formal solution of the model, clearly highlighting the key result, and including sufficiently

many intermediate steps so an interested peer can easily follow along.

4.      (4)  A comparative static result with respect to at least one parameter.

5.      (5)  A discussion that interprets the formal result and the comparative static result in light of the original real-world observation.

Format requirements
All submissions are individual submissions. Submissions must satisfy the following 9 requirements:

·         ·  Typed (please let me know if that is a problem).

·         ·  PDF format only. Text, doc, odt, or other formats are not accepted.

·         ·  Using a sans-serif font (e.g. Calibri).

·         ·  1 in margin, 11 pt setting, 1.15 spacing.

·         ·  Maximum length: 3 pages. There is no minimum page requirement.

·         ·  Top right-hand corner of first page, include your first and last name, York ID, and email address.

·         ·  Formulas should be properly formatted, for example using the MS Word Equation editor.

·         ·  Consistent formatting throughout your document, e.g., using the same font.

·         ·  Satisfies minimal editing standards: Complete sentences, consistent tense, few if any passive

sentences (10% of sentences or less), no obvious grammatical or spelling errors (that might be caught by MS Word), reasonable ease of readability (a score of 40 or higher).

Submission

·         ·  Submit your assignment to the turn-it-in link on Moodle.

If you have a preliminary version, you can submit it and resubmit a revised version later.

·         ·  Submit your assignment to the back-up link posted on Moodle.

The purpose of the back-up-submission is to time-stamp your submission in case there are

technical difficulties with the turn-it-in submission.
I strongly encourage you to submit your assignments no later than Sunday night. In case you encounter technical difficulties, you will have time to address them.

Late-Submission Policy
Submissions are open past the submission deadline. Late submissions loose 1 point per started 2h period. For example, if you submit at 1:40pm you would loose 1 point. If you submit at 6:15pm you would loose 4 points. If you submit at 10:20am the next morning, you would loose 12 points.

If the current global pandemic prevents you from working on or submitting the take-home assignment, please reach out to me as soon as possible to make alternative arrangements.

Turn-It-In Policy
Students are required to submit their course essays to Turnitin through Moodle for a review of textual similarity and detection of possible plagiarism. In doing so, students allow their essays to be included as source documents in the Turnitin.com reference database, where they will be used solely for the purpose of detecting plagiarism. The terms that apply to the University's use of the Turnitin.com service are described on the Turnitin.com web site.

You can choose to opt out of TI. If you want to opt out, please contact me to make alternative arrangements no later than April 15th.

Grading Policy
You can earn up to 20 points on this assignment. Your submission will be graded using a rubric. A rubric is an assessment tool frequently used to systematically grade essay-type assignments. The rubric for this assignment is included below. On the left, in the first column, you see a list of ten criteria. On the right, the grader will assess to what extend your submission satisfies each criterion. Your overall score will be the sum of your individual scores.

The criteria are listed in the order in which I expect you will satisfy them in your submission. Different criteria link to different learning objectives for this course. To make the rubric a bit clearer, I have color the different criteria:

Criteria assessing mastery of translating between math and English and vice versa. Criteria assessing mastery of mathematical concepts taught in Econ1540.
Criteria assessing overall quality of submission.