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MMM143 - International Business and the World Economy
Coursework guidelines
General information
The coursework consists of a group assignment in the form. of report on the international business activity in a given country. Students will be assigned to teams of four, and each team will be given a reference country. Teams are randomly formed.
Coursework will count for 40% of the module mark
Length
3,000 words (+/- 10%), excluding tables, figures and references. Sometimes it may be necessary to form. teams of three. In these cases, the word limit is set to 2,400.
Formative assessment
Teams who submit an outline of their coursework (up to 1,000 words not including references, figures and tables) will be given feedback for improvement. The outline must be submitted via Blackboard, by 13 March 2024 at 14:00. The submission of an outline is optional and will not be marked.
Summative assessment
The coursework will be marked as a group, but since each team member have to declare which section they are responsible for (see below), they will get an individual grade that will account for 50% of their grade.
Example:
Student X is part of group A and is responsible for section 2 of the report. Section 2 is marked at 72 and the overall report is marked at 64. In this case, the grade for Student X is 68 (0.5*72 + 0.5*64).
Contents
The report will illustrate the international business activity of a country, with respect to:
1. Balance of payments
2. Activity of exporters
3. Activity of MNEs
4. Participation in global value chains
Each team will need to define a benchmark for comparing their country (which could be another country or a group of countries). The choice of benchmark should be motivated and the findings for the reference country must be compared, when possible, to the benchmark.
The main source of data will be the OECD.Stats website (https://stats.oecd.org/), but data can also be derived from existing studies and report, or from other databases available online. Tutorial sessions 1-8 will be devoted to providing the tools to find, elaborate (in the form of tables and graphs) and interpret OECD.Stats data. Tutorial videos on how to download data are also available on BB.
Appropriate scholarship, style. and referencing to data sources or existing studies (either providing theoretical or empirical results) is also assessed.
Proposed structure of the report
Title |
Weight* |
Introduction |
10% |
Section 1: Balance of payment |
20% |
Section 2: Activity of exporters |
20% |
Section 3: Activity of MNEs |
20% |
Section 4: Participation in GVCs |
20% |
Concluding remarks |
5% |
Scholarship, style. and referencing |
5% |
* The group mark will reflect these weights.
Each team member will be responsible for one of the Sections 1-4. The cover page will specify who is responsible for each section. It remains that all members of the team are jointly responsible for the overall quality of the essay and should contribute to the overall design of the report, to introduction and concluding remarks.
A key element in the assessment of this coursework will be quality of the data analysis. In this respect, a good report will:
(i) present data clearly making use of the appropriate tables and graphs,
(ii) critically interpret them and, whenever possible, use the benchmark country as a reference point,
(iii) link the analysis of data to theoretical explanations.
In the case of groups composed of n< 4 team members, Sections 1-4 are reduced to 1-n and each will account for (80/n)% of the overall mark. E.g., a group composed by three members can submit three sections among Sections 1-4.