Critical Analysis of Key Economic Issues in International Business

In this assignment, you are required to write a 3000-word essay on a topic of your choice drawing upon the lectures, seminar and reading material for the module MN7406. You should complete an essay on ONE of the following questions:

‘Attempts to ‘green’ capitalism, to make it ‘ecological’, are doomed by the very nature of the system as a system of endless growth’ (Boockhin, 1990). Do you agree with Boockhin’s assessment? Drawing on relevant studies and examples critically explain why.

Discuss the importance of central banks in the global economy, with reference to  cases such as the European Central Bank. Do they have too much political power? Or is their power essential to avert future economic crises?

‘With the value of bitcoin having fallen by around 70% since its peak late last year, the mother of all bubbles has now gone bust. More generally, cryptocurrencies have entered a not-so-cryptic apocalypse’ (Roubini, 2018). Do you agree? Using relevant literature explain why.

So how do you write a really good essay? What are your examiners looking for? These are questions everyone is thinking about, or should be thinking about, before starting on the journey of writing their assessed essay. So here we provide some guidance on what examiners are looking for and include four key tips for writing a good essay, the tips which we explain below are as follows:

1. Answer the question

2. Have a clear structure

3. Adopt a good writing style: Use references and examples to  support points

4. Present an independent perspective and argument

People sometimes get irritated about being told this but it is absolutely crucial to writing a good essay. What this means is that examiners don’t want you to just mention everything that is relevant to the topic they want to see you using research to clearly and explicitly answer the essay question.

So here are the questions for International Business: ‘Attempts to ‘green’ capitalism, to make it ‘ecological’ ,are doomed by the very nature of the system as a system of endless growth’ (Boockhin, 1990). Do you agree with Boockhin’s assessment? Drawing on relevant studies and examples critically explain why.

Discuss the importance of central banks in the global economy, with reference to cases such as the European Central Bank. Do they have too much political power? Or is their power essential to avert future economic crises?

‘With the value of bitcoin having fallen by around 70% since its peak late last year, the mother of all bubbles has now gone bust. More generally, cryptocurrencies have entered a not-so-cryptic apocalypse’ (Roubini, 2018). Do you agree? Using relevant literature explain why.

All of these questions are asking you to make an argument and develop your own perspective, based on your own research. Two of them are based on a quote, and the other question presents two contrasting views on the role of central banks.

In the Introduction you need to state your basic argument. And also you then need to outline what you will focus on in the main part of the essay.

Then in the main part you need to, on the basis of your own  reading and research, decide on around three topics that are relevant to the question and that help you to answer it.

So to give a mock example, lets say this was the essay question: ‘The charge is sometimes levelled—usually by manufacturing firms in the developed world, or their political allies—that China has achieved its industrial and export success by “cheating’’ (Kroeber, 2014). Do you think that critics of the Chinese economy are correct in this assessment?

Now this is NOT one of your essay questions but we are using it to provide an example of what a good essay might look like. In the Introduction we should try to clearly outline an overall  argument in response to the question, such as:

‘While, as Kroeber argues, China is sometimes accused of  cheating through selective subsidies and exchange rate manipulation, I would ultimately disagree with this  perspective because historically speaking state intervention and protectionism has been characteristic of successful economies in terms of their economic development (see Chang, 2011). For example, selective protectionism helped the UK economy became dominant in the colonial era when it retained a number of protectionist measures (see Stein, 1984) and it was central to much of the success of the East Asian economies in the 1990s

Thus in my view, the argument that China is somehow cheating the global economy and this is why it has become an export powerhouse is misplaced and in the following sections I will outline why.’ That would be a good passage to have in the Introduction: You are clearly answering the question by summarizing your overall argument, note also that I have included some references to back up my basic arguments.

I would then decide on three relevant topics to base my analysis around, such as:

- Chinese government subsidies

- Intellectual property

- State directed bank lending

Each of these three topics would be discussed in detail and I would explain, drawing on relevant research, why each of these issues is relevant to the essay question and how they help me to answer it.

So that gives you an example of how to answer the question which should be the clear and explicit focus of any essay.