ECON30007 Applied Economic Topics A

Students are strongly advised to submit their work ahead of the deadline. Should you have a problem with submission

to Blackboard you should email econ-ug@bristol.ac.uk for guidance immediately.

•    Your answer should not exceed 2,000 words. Exceeding this word-limit will incur a penalty You should include an accurate word count on the front cover of the assignment.  Details relating to penalties are at the end of this document.

•    Assignments handed in after the deadline, without a pre-arranged extension, will be subject to late penalties.

Details relating to penalties are at the end of this document.

•    A reference list/bibliography is recommended. This list does not contribute to the word count. Information on referencing can be found via our library.

•     Please use Arial or Calibri font at 12-point.

•    Your assignment should be combined into a single document and submitted in pdf format with a document name containing your student number.

•    You may include photographs or scans of your own hand-drawn, labelled diagrams or calculations. We would advise you to generate your own diagrams but if you include diagrams or pictures that you have not produced yourself, or are modified versions of existing images, you should ensure you reference them appropriately.

Figures and tables should normally be included inline in the text.

•    Your answer will be assessed using the University Marking Criteria.

This is a piece of COURSEWORK that contributes to your Unit mark and you can:

•     Use resources to support you in completing your answer.

•     Draw upon a range of accepted resources including, your own notes, lecture slides/recordings, course material, textbooks, journal articles, online resources. ALL work should be written in your own words.

•    Ask for help from your personal tutors or academic lecturers if you do not understand an aspect of the coursework.

•     Broad discussion with your tutors, fellow students, friends and family on the assessment topic and your ideas/approach may help you to further your knowledge and understanding.

•     Use your network of family and friends to gain support and encouragement during the assessment period.

Please remember this is a formal assessment and you should behave in a manner consistent with our values. This means you cannot:

•    Allow others to directly contribute to your written answer by revising or adding to the academic content. This is collusion and is against University Regulations.

•     Share your assessment with others or ask others to share their work with you.

•     Copy and paste any material (text, images, coding, calculations) from other sources, including teaching material and shared revision notes directly into your answer without appropriate acknowledgement. This is plagiarism and is against University Regulations.

•     Pay another person or company to complete the assessment for you. This is contract cheating and is against University Regulations.

Assignment Brief

Choose one of the following two essays

Question 1 - Education

Why is education important, and what do we need to do to ensure good outcomes for children from all backgrounds?

Write a 2,000 word essay answering this question.

•   Your essay should include a critical evaluation of at least one policy that could be introduced to ensure good outcomes for children

•   Your essay should include critical evaluation of the evidence that is supportive (or opposed) to the policies discussed in the essay.

Your starting point should be the material that we have seen in lectures, small group classes, and on the reading list, but, you may wish to appeal to sources from beyond the reading list to support your arguments.

Question 2 - Innovation

Choose a country and identify an area where innovation is insufficient. In a 2,000-word essay, develop and justify an innovation policy to address this shortcoming, making explicit use of the theoretical frameworks and empirical evidence examined in the course.

•   Your essay should include critical evaluation of the evidence that is supportive (or opposed) to the policy discussed in the essay.

Your starting point should be the material that we have seen in lectures, small group classes, and on the reading list, but, you may wish to appeal to sources from beyond the reading list to support your arguments.

The maximum word count is 2,000 words

Requirements

•   At the start of the essay, you should include a short paragraph (approximately 100 words) detailing how you have improved your essay, based on the feedback from the first assignment.

This is an opportunity for you to reflect on the feedback you have received, to help you to improve your essay; this will not count towards your mark, and will not count towards the word-count.

•    Your essay must not exceed 2,000 words.  You must include a word-count on the cover page.

•    The basis of your essays should be the reading list and the lecture slides, but you will be rewarded for how you build upon this material, and your ability to evaluate and synthesise information from the published literature, alongside with the quality of your arguments in answering the question.

Marking criteria

This assignment will be assessed, focussing on the following criteria:

•   Content knowledge*

•   Critical approach*

•    Use of evidence and sources*

•    Explanation and interpretation*

•    Research

•   Academic Skills

•   Communication

The assignment will be marked holistically, with more weight will be applied to the criteria marked with an asterisk.

Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence in coursework

You are not allowed to use GenAI to complete any part of your assessment except for what is explicitly allowed below. The restriction includes original drafting but also text that results from prompts like “Improve the writing in this paragraph.” Your assignment should never contain passages, sentences or phrases that are taken word-for-word from artificial intelligence output.

You must also not write any part of your assignment in another language and use automated tools or a translator to translate it into English. We expect our students to be able to communicate in written as well as spoken English.

The level of GenAI usage that is allowed for this assessment is:

Selective use:

For this assessment, you may use GenAI in the following ways:

1.    Provide general feedback on draft work: “General” here refers to spelling, punctuation and grammar changes, or enhancements to conciseness and structure. However, you should not allow AI to make changes to that work directly and should check suggestions you are unsure about with academic teaching staff.

2.    Spelling and grammar checkers: you can use spelling and grammar checkers in this assignment, although they should be used to correct rather than conduct substantial re-writes.

3.    Suggesting structures: AI can suggest structures and templates for you to consider, such as an essay plan or report structure

4.    Cited AI: acknowledging if AI was used in drafting, editing or correcting of any written material submitted. This acknowledgement must include the AI used (e.g., ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, etc).

If you use AI in this assignment, you must provide a clear citation of the AI used, and you should provide any AI prompts and output as part of an appendix, which does not count towards the overall wordcount.

You are advised never to take output from artificial intelligence tools at face value. Always fact-check any information it provides and cite reputable sources, such as peer-reviewed publications, in your coursework. And be aware that the economic reasoning in artificial intelligence output is often poor and would in many cases receive a low mark if submitted as coursework, even if re-written in your own words.

Penalties for late work

Assignments handed in after the deadline, without a pre-arranged extension will be subject to the following penalty:

•    the late submission period is four days (i.e. 4 x 24 hour periods) from the submission deadline

•    the late submission of work will incur a fixed absolute penalty of 10 marks for each 24-hour period after the agreed submission deadline, not including public holidays in England or University closure days.

•    if the work is not submitted by the end of the late submission period, the assessment will be considered to be a non-submission.

Penalties for work over the maximum word count

You are expected to include a word-count on the first page of the assignment.  Footnotes should be avoided.

•    Direct quotations will count towards the word-count

• Reference lists/bibliographies will not count within the word-count

•    Coversheets will not count within the word counts

•    Tables and figures (i.e. diagrams) will not count within the word counts.

If you are found to have put an inaccurate word-count on your submission, a penalty of 5 marks may be imposed, over and above the penalties below:

For example, for a 2,000 word assignment, if a student handed in a piece of work consisting of 2,050 words, your mark would be reduced by 5 marks. This is because the piece of work is between 0% and 5% over the maximum limit.