ECON 2302 | Principles of Microeconomics

Prompt: The Texas Senate and Governor has hired you as an economic and policy advisor.  Your clients would like to know if they should raise minimum wages, inclusive of the minimum wages of wait staff.  What are your policy recommendations?

The paper must be written in Chicago style and accompanied by an annotated bibliography.

It must be at least five pages, not including title page, works cited, footnotes, and graphics such as data tables, images, etc.

Source Requirements:

• At least three peer-reviewed articles not provided in the assignment instructions
• Authoritative websites
• The provided articles (this is optional, but helpful)

Things to consider as you prepare your proposal for the Governor:

• Include different perspectives such as businesses, households, workers, the government, etc.
• Analyze the articles you are using.
  • Analyze the evidence authors use to support their thesis: What types of evidence are being used? Does the evidence support their thesis?
  • Evaluate the qualification of the authors: What bias might the authors have? Who employs them? How might this influence their work?
  • Use statistics, facts, and economic theories to evaluate the articles. Some microeconomic theories to consider are: Theory of the Firm, Costs of Production, Resources Costs, MRP, MC, etc. Some macroeconomic theories are: CPI, GDP Economic Growth, Aggregate Demand and Aggregate Supply, Multiplier effect, Public Policy Fiscal and Monetary policy, etc.
  • Older articles may be critiqued in newer articles. Students should perform a literature review to see what arguments authors make against eachother.
• Consider the strategic goals your proposed policy will try to achieve:
  • What is the strategic goal of the policy? 
  • Are there better tactical goals to reach the strategic Goals?
  • What are the best tactical polices to attain the strategic Goals?