One of the best things about studying international trade and finance is that the topic is in the news every day. Make a habit of reading the international business and economics news.

How to choose your current event:

The current event must have been in the news within the last six months. To find a topic of interest, start reading the financial and business news now. Once you find a news story, you will research it more deeply, including the relevant economic facts and/or model.

What to include in your paper:

• a detailed description of the current event
• a detailed discussion of the relevant economic models – explain from the very beginning, as if your reader knows nothing about the topic; this is how you demonstrate your understanding of the theory.
• an analysis of the current event – Why is it important to the industry? What companies will care about this news story? What will its impact be? Who will win? Why? You can choose to answer any or all of these questions (or any other question). The goal is to demonstrate meaningful application of economic theory to facts, and deep thinking about the issues presented by the news story

Logistics:

• 8-10 pages, single spaced
• Citation required anytime what you just wrote down did not originate in your own brain.
• The paper should be prepared using the APA writing style and guideline for reference format. You must provide a bibliography, and all quotations and sources must be properly cited.
• The Department uses the APA style to facilitate reading the paper and understanding references without being as cumbersome as some other styles (such as Chicago or MLA).
• Students can download the student style guide from the American Psychological Association (http://www.apastyle.org/elecref.html) web site or you can purchase the APA style guide from the book store. There is even a help disk that can be purchased for about $ 40 (http://www.apa.org/software/) that will walk you through the process as you write the paper if you desire a more “personal assistance”.
• Papers are to be RESEARCH PAPERS. Remember that work that you use from other authors MUST be referenced. Since it is assumed that you are not an authority on the topic that you are writing, it is expected that this paper is an overview of many different sources of information. Each of these must be attributed to the author using the APA format.
• This is your paper and not the cut and paste of someone else’s work. The internet has led to a false sense of what research is all about. Those new to research tend to think that it means spending an afternoon surfing the internet and then an afternoon cutting from material available.
• Keep in mind that the Internet: (1) is not quality oriented as it has good materials and not so good materials, and does not know the difference; (2) is NOT a sole source location.In particular, sources such as Wikipedia are the works of individual submitters which are not reviewed.Thus while many entries provide excellent information, some are fundamentally flawed or just plain wrong.