BG Help: Economics college final, housing markets.

[Guitarman]

Hey folks. Like many of you, finals are this week for me. I'm having a hell of a time with my final paper for Econ. The teacher has done NO lecturing on housing markets, yet our final is on that. Here's his directions:

TASK:

In macroeconomics, the Federal Bank fights inflation by increasing
interest rates in our economy. This increases the price, or the
penalty we pay for going to the bank to get money/liquidity we do not
have. Based on this, and anything else you can think of (SITE YOUR
SOURCES!), make an educated guess as to what you think will happen to
the housing market in Portland, why this will happen, and WHEN AND WHY
you think it will happen by that date!

Use graphs, use examples from previous housing bubbles, site sources
of information and be sure to address all the main microeconomics
variables when and where applicable to include, but not limited to
shifts in demand, supply, new levels of
equilibrium or any other variable when and where necessary.


DIRECTION:

Do not use Wikipedia, blogs or newspapers. If you found it on the web
and not in a text/journal, IT'S PROBABLY WRONG.

Site text books, scholarly books or scholarly journals. If you site a
webpage, I will mark off. SO DON'T DO THIS.

If you have a point, site a source, do not "shoot from the hip" and
guess without referencing a source. I will mark off for this.

Use foot notes and a bibliography. I will be checking your
bibliography more than debating your point of view.

Help me BG. Where the hell do I go for resources on this? Newspapers and the web are out for bibliographies, so where do i look? I would think the library would be outdated, wouldn't it? If anyone has any input on where I can begin to look for information that won't get me marked down, i'd be hugely appreciative.

[Syntex]

Well from the sounds of it s/he wants you to go to the library.

To me it I see it as they said don't use a computer and you're like "I dunno what to do"

[Cadsuane]

What year are you in?

[solanis]

get PDFs of the latest interest rates, census information for Portland, and scholarly papers on the history of changing interest rates and inflation. get some data on unemployment, income, and family size too. it probably shouldn't be too hard to incorporate consumer theory since she wants micro, so break out the Lagrange functions.

she basically wants you to create a comprehensive hypothesis based on government PDFs and scholarly theories on inflation, which doesn't mean you can't use the internet. use the net to find PDFs of the data you need, and use books/papers from the library to find interest rate theories. I'm guessing this is an intro class?

[solanis]

also that paper isn't about the housing market. she's testing your ability to take the concepts you learned during the term and apply them to a real-world situation. I wish my Econ classes had final papers instead of final exams, mine is in two days and I'm super fucked.

[Ferion]

What year are you in?

This. If you've taken econometrics just find a data set and do a little forecasting.

[Tyche]

SITE YOUR SOURCES INTERNET IS BAD.

Is your instructor 70?

[Tyche]

Also, your library probably subscribes to a large array of journal publications (EBSCO). There's also http://scholar.google.com

[Cadsuane]

Seriously, your proff sounds like a douche. It's not at all clear what knowledge you're expected to demonstrate here.

[Tyche]

What I do in these instances. Find an article you like on google scholar. Chances are that you're only going to get the abstract of the journal and not the full text. Get the article name, then go to your school's library website (or whatever portal they use for their online publication subscriptions), and do a search through the many publications they subscribe to. Sometimes you'll find the full text, sometimes you won't. YOu can also just do a search from that portal. You have to know how to access these online publications, which likely will have a specific login for different providers. It seems like 95% of students don't seem to bother to use this, or I should say students seem surprised that the library grants access to tens of thousands of scholarly journals on just about any topic. I swear to god students would have so much of an easier time writing research papers if they took the time to go to the library and see what they offer. There's much more to it than books on a shelf. IIRC, our library spends over a third of it's budget on online subscriptions.

[vagus]

Also, your library probably subscribes to a large array of journal publications (EBSCO). There's also http://scholar.google.com

Wow. Wish i had this when i was in college. Fuck searching through books without a search engine. Lol.

[Guitarman]

SITE YOUR SOURCES INTERNET IS BAD.

Is your instructor 70?

like 35. He was incredibly lenient until now, then all of a sudden sgt. stern pops outta nowhere.

edit: its economics 101, so first level.

[Guitarman]

also that paper isn't about the housing market. she's testing your ability to take the concepts you learned during the term and apply them to a real-world situation. I wish my Econ classes had final papers instead of final exams, mine is in two days and I'm super fucked.

make an educated guess as to what you think will happen to
the housing market in Portland,

Unless I misunderstood you. (which could be the case, stressed out of my mind and have a migraine that wont quit).

[Overburn]

I think the 'Educated Guess' part doesn't mean you really need to know too much about Housing Market theory, you just need to know how to read data and demonstrate that you can do it. Show the data that is available and figure out from scholarly reports what this might mean, while citing the information and reports that gave you your conclusion.

I had a similar final for a 103 class this semester (8 page research paper + 25 multiple choice question test that he had actually just taken from his review section) and he basically told us that he was checking to see how we used our sources and if we did so properly more than what we were talking about. As long as we talked about something on topic, and backed it up with reliable information, we'd do fine on the paper.

[Ishido]

The housing market will follow what the economy does, but delayed and will recover at a slower pace.

[Drex]

sounds like he wants you to do some market research on the recent portland market, and then treat it like any other market in determining where it will go from here. he even told you to use supply/demand and equilibrium, so that shouldn't be too difficult really (is there a lot of supply in portland? what's demand like? you can probably find out the estimated amount of time a properly priced house would take to sell from just about any realtor in the phone book and decide for yourself, or research houses that have sold recently to find out how long they were on the market, etc. etc.)

real estate is local so it'd be almost impossible for someone to answer for you without pretty much doing all of the research and writing the paper in your place, unless someone on here happens to be an expert on the portland housing market. if it's like other markets, it's probably oversaturated with supply and relatively low demand (people still stinging from "the crash") so the equilibrium level (and therefore interest rates) will still fall for another couple years, but that may be a completely retarded answer if portland is different.

[Hosom]

The stipulations on sources are far from unreasonable. The professor seems to only want credible sources, which are considered to be published journals and peer reviewed studies. As Tyche said, most universities subscribe to EBSCO, and f you lack EBSCO you can use google scholar. There are other studies which can be considered credible, but it sounds like your professor doesn't want those (for example, a study published on the website of a company). Look at the economy in Portland and compare it to similar economic situations in the past. This is neither a complicated or unreasonable task. Your professor says what sources he wants to see. He even states that he isn't looking at your ability to predict so much as site and find credible sources. Do your best at predicting what you're looking for, but back it up with another person's data. It's econ 101, your professor isn't expecting you to reinvent the wheel, but he wants to see effort.

[Odon]

Hey folks. Like many of you, finals are this week for me. I'm having a hell of a time with my final paper for Econ. The teacher has done NO lecturing on housing markets, yet our final is on that. Here's his directions:


Help me BG. Where the hell do I go for resources on this? Newspapers and the web are out for bibliographies, so where do i look? I would think the library would be outdated, wouldn't it? If anyone has any input on where I can begin to look for information that won't get me marked down, i'd be hugely appreciative.

Do not use Wikipedia, blogs or newspapers. If you found it on the web
and not in a text/journal, IT'S PROBABLY WRONG.

Gimmie your number I'll text you some info off the internet.

[wop]

It's cite not site.

[Melchiah]

It's cite not site.

Your teacher isn't professional enough to proof read a document he wrote and disseminated; this error occurred twice in that assignment. I'd use the words cite and citation as many times as possible in your paper.