ASSIGNMENT
Select a company, government agency or any other service outlet and one of its products that interest you to study from an applied economic point of view. You are encouraged to look up articles about your chosen company or agency utilizing such sources as Business Week, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, Marketing Communications, Media-Scope, Advertising Age, Law Enforcement Magazines, Health Magazines, and etc. If possible, you should visit or correspond with the company or agency, contact distributors or agents, and discuss the product(s) or service(s) with actual or potential users. Collect economic data in the product(s) or service(s) you have chosen.
A. At the end of this course, you should turn in a term paper that analyzes and estimates the demand of your chosen firm’s product(s) or service(s) USING REGRESSIONAL ANALYSIS.
B. Assume that your company or agency is concerned about near-term economic conditions and wishes to obtain a qualitative forecast of sales or service in the upcoming quarter. Assume also that you are the market analyst for your company or agency planning to use one or more of the leading economic indicators (LEI) published by the US Department of Commerce to formulate your qualitative forecast. You can Google TheLeading Economic Indicator (LEI).
C. Explain how the indicator or each of the indicators might affect future sales and/or service. (For example, if the average work week of production workers in manufacturing increased, explain the affect on your company’s sales.) Explain which or among these indicators would be most important in formulating your qualitative forecast.
Your paper will be graded on the following criteria:
1. Use of REGRESSION ANALYSIS to analyze the company or agency and its product(s) or service(s). Explain your REGRESSION ANALYSIS model(s) OUTPUT.
2. Degree to which information was sought and attained.
3. Quality of your analysis of the firm’s pricing.
4. Quality of your recommendations for future new or current product(s)/service(s) pricing.
GUIDELINES FOR YOUR TERM PAPER
In writing your term paper below are some guidelines that will assist you.
A. Start by defining your objective for the problem you are about to solve. For example, I wish to find out why my grades are low? My demand equation will be:
Qd of grades = F(# of Hrs. spent studying, Understanding the textbook, following course instructions and etc). That is Qd of g=a-Hrs+Ut+Ins.
1. Show your data
2. Show your equation – either demand or supply (Chapter 2)
3. Show your Regression analysis (Chapter 4) See examples on pages 128,139, 143.
4. Interpret your regression analysis Chapters 4, 7)
5. Show your elasticity calculation (Chapter 6.)
6. Show your forecasting (Chapter 7) See examples on pages 253 – 274.
7. Show your marginal analysis (Chapter 3)
8. Conclusion.
