The purpose of the final paper is for students to summarize their learning during the semester into a coherent answer to an economic topic of current relevance.  The paper should ultimately demonstrate what you have learned about U.S. economic development and industrialization that is supportive in understanding our current economic processes.

ADMINSTRATIVE INSTRUCTIONS
Please submit your final paper in a .doc, .docx, or .pdf format.  Following are key requirements for the paper:

The body/writing portion of the paper should be approximately 10 pages in length (20 pages for 6470 students).  You can use any standard line spacing or font choice.  Please use paragraphs to separate your writing into complete and coherent ideas.
You must reference a minimum of 5 peer-reviewed articles in the paper (10 sources for 6470 students) three from your resource outlines and no more than two from assigned class readings in the paper and include a full bibliography in any standard citation format . 
Make sure that your focus in the paper is on answering the question in your assigned topic.  The topic questions can be answered in a variety of ways, so pick one or two avenues that you feel are most relevant and focus on those – I don’t expect an over-arching treatise on any topic, but would like to see a thoughtful deep-dive in one or two areas. 
Your submission will be run through a plagiarism detection software.  If more than 15% of your submitted writing is copied from another source you will receive a point penalty, with the possibility of receiving a 0 score for highly plagiarized content.  Please submit your own work.
See rubric for grading details, and contact me or visit a weekly Zoom meeting if you have any questions or concerns.  I love talking with my students 🙂
BIG TOPIC QUESTIONS
As a reminder, here are the “big topic” question prompts:

Can economic growth be sustained in the future in the US? Should growth be our primary policy objective? (sustainability element)
Why is inequality rising in the US, and does inequality matter for the functioning of the US economy and society?
What does new technology do to the conditions faced by workers levels of pay, unemployment, working conditions?
Why has the economic presence of the government grown, and how does the growth of government affect the economy?
EVERY SINGLE PAPER should also address the question:

What evidence from US economic history supports your conclusions?