You will be expected to write a research paper investigating some aspect of economic, political, or social relations in a state of the Asia Pacific.
If you would like a base score of 90, you should write a paper between 10-11 pages in length.
Points will be deducted for poor writing, bad organization, weak substance, illogical argumentation or other errors that reduce the quality of your work. Similarly, points can be added for skillful writing, clear organization, strong substance, solid logical argumentation, and other quality enhancing elements.
Please use Arial 12 point font for your paper. You may use APA, MLA, or Chicago Manual style.
The more quality resources you use, the better your paper will be. Including books by scholars that are at the cutting edge of research in your field of investigation is important to your success. For example, if you were doing research in Orientalism, it might be important to include Edward Said in your bibliography.
I will evaluate you using the following criteria:
1. Is your writing clear, concise, comprehensive, engaging, and grammatically correct?
2. Does your research rely on a sufficient depth and breadth of quality resources?
3. Is your thesis falsifiable and do you muster sufficient evidence and logic to justify your conclusions?
Some topic areas you might consider include:
1. What role does ethnicity play in the politics of a given Asian Pacific country?
2. How does film, fiction, or art represent economic, political, or social trends in a given Asian Pacific country?
3. How do debates about the teaching of history reflect current economic, political, and or social trends?
4. What has been the path of democratization or economic development in a given Asian Pacific country?
5. How does ideology impact the economy, politics and society of a given Asian Pacific country?
6. How does corruption influence the economy, politics, and society of a given Asian Pacific country?
7. What role do global justice concerns play in the economy, politics and society of a given Asian Pacific country?
8. What role do environmental concerns play in the economy, politics and society of a given Asian Pacific country?
9. How do geopolitical concerns impact the politics of the various states in the region?
Plagiarism will result in no credit for the plagiarized assignment.
SAMPLE THESIS
You should select a thesis and build an outline about how you are going to approach researching that thesis. Here is an example of what I would do:
My thesis is Asian direct foreign investment in East Africa is detrimental to the economic development of that region.
I will try to prove this thesis by examining three case studies including Sudan, South Sudan, and Ethiopia.
My dependent variable is economic growth, my independent variables are direct foreign investment, ethnic relations, sectoral growth, inflation, arms sales, and human rights abuses. I will examine the independent variables in each of the three case studies and try to build a relationship between these variables and economic growth over the last 10-20 years.
This is one example of what you could construct, but feel free to be creative.
My outline would look something like this:
I. Introduction – Asian direct foreign investment in East Africa is detrimental to the economic development of the region
II. Explanation of model
a. Measuring Growth
b. Measuring Direct Foreign Investment
c. Measuring Inflation
d. Measuring Arms Sales
e. Measuring human rights abuses
f. Measuring ethnic conflict
III. Sudan Case Study
a. Growth
b Direct Foreign Investment
c. Inflation
d. Arms Sales
e. ethnic conflict
f. human rights abuses
IV. South Sudan
a. Growth
b Direct Foreign Investment
c. Inflation
d. Arms Sales
e. ethnic conflict
f. human rights abuses
IV. Ethiopia
a. Growth
b Direct Foreign Investment
c. Inflation
d. Arms Sales
e. ethnic conflict
f. human rights abuses
V. Conclusion – What was discovered and the implications of those discoveries for further investigating the impact of Asian direct foreign investment in East Africa.
SAMPLE BIBLIOGRAPHY
It would be great if you could begin reading some of the works you select and get a sense of what scholars have said about your topic up to this time. The more sources you have and the better quality those sources are, the better quality research paper you are likely to write. Here is a sample bibliography from a paper I wrote for a class here at SDSU.
Bibliography
Balderston, T. Review of Hyperinflation and Stabilization in Weimar Germany by Steven Webb in The Economic History Review, New Series, Vol. 45, No. 3, European Special Issue (Aug, 1992), pp. 626-627.
Barbezat, Daniel Review of The Great Disorder: Politics, Economics, and Society in the German Inflation, 1914-1924 by Gerald Feldman in The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 56, No. 3 (Sep., 1996), pp. 720-722.
Block, Thorsten H. Economic Stagnation in Weimar Germany: A Structuralist Perspective in Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, volume 13, Issue 2, June 2002, pp. 127-150. http://www.sciencedirect.com.libproxy.sdsu.edu/science/article/pii/S0954349X02000036
Feldman, Gerald The Great Disorder: Politics, Economics, and Society in the German Inflation, New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
Fergusson, Adam When Money Dies: The Nightmare of Deficit Spending, Devaluation, and Hyperinflation in Weimar Germany, New York: Public Affairs, 2010.
Fisher, Irving The Purchasing Power of Money, New York, New York: Cosimo, 2007, originally published in 1911.
Friedman, Milton Dollars and Deficits: Inflation, Monetary Policy, and the Balance of Payments, Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall Publishing, 1968.
Graham, Frank Exchange Prices and Production in Hyper Inflation: Germany 1920-1923, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1930.
http://library.mises.org/books/Frank%20D%20Graham/Exchange,%20Prices,%20and%20Production%20in%20Hyper-Inflation%20Germany%201920-1923.pdf
Holtfrerich, Carl The German Inflation, 1914-1923: Causes and Effects in International Perspective, translated by Theo Balderston, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1986.
Heyn, Udo Review of The German Inflation, 1914-1923: Causes and Effects in International Perspective, The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 48, No.1 (Mar., 1988), pp. 183-185.
Keynes, John Maynard The Economic Consequences of the Peace downloaded December 2, 2014 from
http://socserv2.socsci.mcmaster.ca/econ/ugcm/3ll3/keynes/pdf%26filename%3Dpeace3.pdf
Laidler, David E. and Stadler, George W. Monetary Explanations of the Weimar Republics Hyperinflation: Some Neglected Contributions in Contemporary German Literature in Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking 30.4, November 1998, pp. 816-831.
http://search.proquest.com.libproxy.sdsu.edu/docview/195344147/TextPlusGraphics/$N/0?accountid=13758
Instrumentalist Hyperinflation: Did Adolph Lowe Learn Anything from the Austrian Hyperinflation? in The American Journal of Economic and Sociology Volume. 56, No. 3, July 1997, pp. 317-318.
http://www.jstor.org.libproxy.sdsu.edu/stable/3487239?seq=2
Sokic, Alexandre The Monetary Analysis of Hyperinflation and the Appropriate Specification of the Demand for Money in German Economic Review 13(2), 2012, pp.142-160.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.libproxy.sdsu.edu/store/10.1111/j.1468-0475.2011.00543.x/asset/geer543.pdf?v=1&t=i0rt215b&s=8d1ee401e2712429ad2c4dc633ff6636bd9f8ad5
Taylor, Frederick The Downfall of Money: Germanys Hyperinflation and the Destruction of the Middle Class, London: Bloomsbury Press, 2013.
Vazquez, Jesus How High Can Inflation Get During Hyperinflation? A Transaction Cost Demand for Money Approach in European Journal of Political Economy, Volume 14, Issue 3, August, 1998, pp. 433-451.
http://www.sciencedirect.com.libproxy.sdsu.edu/science/article/pii/S0176268098000160
Webb, Steven Hyperinflation and Stabilization in Weimar Germany, New York, New York: Oxford University Press 1989.
Weber, Max From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, edited by H.H. Gerth and C. Wright Mill, London: University of Oxford Press, 1958.
Widdig, Bernd Culture and Inflation in Weimar Germany, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001.
