Purpose of Assignment
The theory of market economies emphasizes freedom of choice and limited government intervention. The classic argument for government intervention is market failure – the inability of the market economy to correct itself from a dysfunctional state (such as the Great Depression). Students will examine articles from the University library to analyze real-world examples of U.S. government intervention programs and apply current week readings to make intelligent conclusions about the economic policies.
Assignment Steps
Resources: Tutorial help on Excel® and Word functions can be found on the Microsoft®Office website. There are also additional tutorials via the web offering support for Office products.
Using the University Library, EBSCOhost, or ProQuest data bases, locate up to three different articles/publications and/or use The Economist Online from the University Library to examine one case of significant government intervention of Low-income rent controls and housing vouchers.
You may access EBSCOhost, ProQuest or The Economist Online through the University Library homepage:
- Click on the Library tab.
- Click on the underlined University Library link.
- Click on General Resources under Library Resources.
- Click on either EBSCOhost or ProQuest.
- Go back Library Resources list.
- Click on View All Resources Alphabetically.
- Click on Economist.com.
- Develop a minimum 10-slide Microsoft® PowerPoint® presentation including detailed speaker notes or voiceover including the following:
- Describe the intervention and detail its history.
- Analyze the arguments for government intervention as opposed to arguments for market-based solutions. Hint: See the information in our course textbook on market failures.
- Examine who may be helped and who may be hurt by the selected government intervention.
- Examine externalities and/or unintended consequences of such intervention.
- Determine the cost trend of the intervention program since its implementation including whether costs are increasing, decreasing, or vary with the state of the economy.
- Evaluate the success or failure of the intervention in achieving its objectives and develop conclusions.
- Recommend whether the program should be continued as is, discontinued, or modified and defend your recommendation.
Note: The use of tables and/or charts to display economic data over the time period discussed is highly encouraged. However, if your source includes the copyright symbol, which looks like this: ©, then you should not copy any table and/or charts from that source. You could use, but are not required to use, charts/graphs retrieved from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis FRED web site as long as the data sources used by FRED to create those charts are government sources such as the Bureau of Economic Analysis or the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Cite a minimum of three scholarly, peer-reviewed references.
