Paper summary

You are expected to read and summarize scholarly academic journal articles as a part of your class work. I will assign one article every Thursday, and you will have one week to carefully study it. The following Thursday, you will submit a one or two pages of summary of the assigned article. The organization your summary is flexible, but make sure that it covers the following components:

• –  Motivation: What is the main research question of the paper?

• –  Methodology: How do they answer their research question?

• –  Main results of the paper

• –  Your comments

  Please read the entire paper carefully. You will greatly benefit from doing so. A quick skim of the paper may help you produce a low quality summary, but it will not have the same learning benefits as reading the paper. The activity of reading will not only help you internalize and apply the academic literature, it will also give you a broader perspective on the research topics in modern economics. There are many additional benefits of intensive scholarly reading: it will improve your vocabulary, your language skills (whether you are an ESL student or not), and it will help you articulate your ideas more effectively.

  The paper summaries can be hand-written or typed. If it is typed, the format should be as follows:

  • –  It should have single or 1.5 line spacing.

  • –  The font size should be 10 or 11.

  • –  Please choose a font that is easy to read, such as Times New Roman or Calibri.

  • –  The margins should be 1 inch on all sides.

    We will mark your summaries as not submitted (0), check minus (3), check (6), and check plus (10), and returned them to you within a week. Please submit your summaries on e-Class. There will approximately 10 summary assignments throughout the semester. A simple average of your marks will constitute 20% of your final grade for this class.