Economics Essay /Business
Rough Draft Due Date: October 28, 2017 (11:59pm)
Final Submission Due Date: November 4, 2017 (11:59pm)
Article Report #2: Cost & Market Structure
Description
“Cost & Market Structure” is pretty easy to understand. Businesses face various costs in order to produce
goods and sell them, and identifying those costs shouldn’t be difficult. Applying a market structure to that
good will require a little more thought, since the newspaper article will not likely talk about the market
structure for that firm’s industry. This assignment focuses on applied knowledge with a little bit of
creative skill, But just a little bit. And only in the “market structure” part.
In this assignment, you must choose a newspaper article written after August 1, 2017, and explain how
costs of production apply to that article. Whenever possible, integrate the vocabulary terms. Be
descriptive, demonstrate your understanding of 100–level “theory of the firm”, and apply that knowledge
to the article. This part of the writing assignment involves no creativity. All identified costs must be
contained in the article…do not talk about rent as a fixed cost if the article does not mention rent.
You must also characterize the market structure of the industry as “pure (or perfect) competition”, “pure
(or near) monopoly”, “monopolistic competition”, or “oligopoly”. This part of the assignment will likely
be based on your own analysis, since newspaper articles rarely talk about market structure. This replaces
the “analysis” part of previous written assignments, and you should fully explain why you think that firm
fits the specific properties of your chosen market structure. Remember that it’s your opinion.
Requirements
Length: The writing assignment must be at least 600 words long. It can be more, if you need more. If
the writing assignment comes up short of 600 words, the grade received will be a percentage that
corresponds to the percentage of the length of the assignment.
Grammar: The “Flesch–Kincaid Grade Level” readability statistic must be at or above the ninth grade
when entered into a Microsoft Word document. If you do not know what or how this is measured,
long and detailed explanations are readily available on the internet. Any writing assignment with
a Flesch–Kincaid Grade Level below ninth grade will receive a score of zero.
Citations: You must include a full bibliographical citation in this assignment. If you find the
newspaper article in a non–newspaper source (like a news aggregator on the internet), you should
still cite the original article in a newspaper as if you used the actual newspaper. Any incorrect
citation (or use of a non–newspaper article) will result in a significantly lowered grade.
If you need to cite something from your textbook (for this or any other assignment), feel free to
do so without including a full citation, since your textbook is fully cited in the course summary.
Submission
Submission Date: November 4, 2017 (11:59 pm)
All students must turn in their writing assignment in its final and finished form before the
deadline, and late assignments get half credit. There is only one way to submit this document:
• You may submit your assignment electronically, through email or the Laulima Dropbox.
Your submission must be in rich text format. You should know how this works. The
filename should read:
wa02ref#name.rtf (writing assignment two, your four–digit reference number, your first
name or nickname, then “rich text format”. My submission would
be “wa028601jerm.rtf”. Please use your four-digit reference
number. You should know it!)
Deal Breakers
Some errors are so bad that they almost always cause students to do a terrible job. So I’ve listed them
here, so that you know what NOT to do:
Does the writing assignment use a non–newspaper article? (that cannot be found in a real newspaper. The
Huffington Post isn’t a newspaper. Yahoo News isn’t a newspaper. Use a newspaper, people!)
! Yes (20 point deduction)
! No. Full credit is possible.
Does the writing assignment discuss “rent” as fixed cost or “workers” as variable cost, where those
concepts are NOT described in the article itself?
! Yes (30 point deduction)
! No. Full credit is possible.
Does the writing assignment mix up “cost” and “price”?
! Yes (20 point deduction)
! No. Full credit is possible.
Point Breakdown
10 points Rough Draft. All students get either full credit (10 pts) or no credit (0 pts). The rough
draft can be a traditional draft of the entire assignment OR a “bare bones” outline that
answers all of the questions outlined on the Laulima message board. Due October 28.
10 points Description of the article. There should be a quick summary of the article. You don’t have
to repeat the whole news article, but you should name the article title and author (2
points) and quickly note the parts that you’ll be discussing in depth later (8 points).
20 points First cost concept (from the economics lessons). This should include an official definition
from the book or lecture notes (5 points). It should also include a description of this
concept IN THE ARTICLE ITSELF (5 points), as well as an explanation linking the
economic concept to the real–world example (10 points).
20 points Second cost concept (from the economics lessons). This should include an official
definition from the book or lecture notes (5 points). It should also include a description of
this concept IN THE ARTICLE ITSELF (5 points), as well as an explanation linking the
economic concept to the real–world example (10 points).
0 points Third cost concept (from the economics lessons). There’s no reason to have more than
two concepts. But it shouldn’t hurt you to have a three one, I guess.
–10 points Every additional cost concept (from the economics lessons). Three is probably too many.
More than three concepts means that your grade will go down. You should stick to a full
description of two or three economics concepts.
20 points First market structure property. Choose one of the four market structures (5 points) and
describe one of the properties of that market structure (5 points), as well as why that
property applies to the business in the article (10 points). This is your opinion.
10 points Second market structure property. Describe another property of that market structure (5
points), as well as why that property applies to the business in the article (5 points). This
is your still your opinion, and it probably isn’t stated in the article. This is creative.
–5 points Every additional market structure property. Stick to a full description of two economics
concepts. More than two is too many. Just pick the two easiest/best, and describe those.
10 points Citation. All students get either full credit (10pts) or no credit (0 pts). You can use either
MLA or APA style…that decision doesn’t matter. But a web address is not a full citation.
If you use an online citation tool, be sure to check that the output isn’t garbage.
