ECON5004: Communication in Economics
Semester 2, 2023
Instructor: Russell Toth
1
Assignment: Essay 1: Academic
Assignment Outline
Students will draft an academic essay over the course of the first 8 weeks of the semester. The
paper will be drafted in phases, with opportunities for detailed feedback, revision and
improvement at each phase. Since it is not possible to write a full academic paper in 1500 words
(and the research required for a full academic paper would exceed the workload requirements for
this course), the essays will follow one of the following formats:1
1. Persuasive literature review. Students can write a review of the literature in a specific
topic area. This will need to be more than just a summary of various papers – it will need
to have a central thesis (main argument) and cite academic literature to support that
argument (most likely, arguing what the main takeaway of the literature is). So, ideally,
for this kind of essay the student would identify an area of literature where there is some
debate, with multiple credible academic papers taking different sides of an issue. The
student’s essay would then argue in support of one side of the debate, citing and
acknowledging literature on both sides of the debate, but ultimately coming down in
support of one side.
2. Research proposal. Students can write a proposal for a specific research project. You can
think about this in a number of ways – as the narrative section of a research grant, as a
proposal that one would write to receive permission to conduct research in a public sector
or professional context, or as the proposal for a masters or PhD thesis. If you are
choosing this option, please make it clear in your essay (e.g., in the title, or with a quick
note just below the title).
Students are encouraged to select an essay format that best fits their personal and professional
interests. The topic of their essay should fall under the theme of their tutorial group. The essay
should use economic reasoning and evidence to support its main argument, and be based on
credible academic literature in economics.
What is “credible” academic literature in economics? While there is some debate on this, a good
starting point would be to draw most references from academic journals ranked in the top 500 in
the world on this listing of journals for IDEAS/RePEc:
https://ideas.repec.org/top/top.journals.simple.html
and at least 2-3 more recent citations from the top 200 journals. It is not enough just to cite
papers from these journals (e.g., as secondary citations), as it is critical that you identify multiple
papers from this set of journals that are directly relevant to your main argument (i.e., you should
be speaking to an issue that has been debated in such journals). An argument that is so general
1 Typically the significant majority of students choose option 1.
What’s the bottom line?
You need to write a 1500-word essay intended for an academic audience. The
essay has to be built around a main argument that is engaged with credible
academic economics literature. The essay project will proceed in 3 phases as
part of a cumulative assessment: (1) a “pitch” of your main topic, (2) a first full
outline of the essay, (3) writing final essay in lecture period.
ECON5004: Communication in Economics
Semester 2, 2023
Instructor: Russell Toth
2
that it would never be debated by academic economists (e.g., “trade affects the economy”), even
if you can cite papers on trade, is not acceptable. An argument that is so specific it would not be
directly debated in academic journals (e.g., something about the price of goods sold on campus at
the University of Sydney Union) is not acceptable, though it’s fine to use a specific example as
motivation for a broader issue. Given academic publishing lags, it may be hard to find published
research on important and current economic issues. For example, there’s now a lot of academic
literature on the impacts of COVID-19, but less on the post-COVID inflation and potential
recession. If debate on the issue has not yet emerged in the academic literature, such that you can
find papers on either side of the debate, then it is not an acceptable topic. For more information
searching the literature, see the end of this document.
In general the essays will have the following format: short introduction (1 or 2 short paragraphs
max), evidence/exposition, short conclusion. The introduction will motivate the central argument
(the “hook”), outline the main aspects of the essay, and argue for the importance of the topic of
the essay. The evidence/exposition is the meat of the essay – it will bring the student’s research
to bear, in outlining the evidence for the main argument or point of the essay, while the
conclusion will succinctly tie up the essay.
The final submission will be capped at 1500 words, not counting literature references. Format:
double spaced, 12-point font, 2.5 cm margins.
Phases and due dates
The assignment will be completed in phases. The phases are meant to build on each other.
Phase 1 (pitch abstract and presentation; 8/34 points)
In Phase 1 students will pitch their essay topic and get direction on the focus of their essay.
By Tuesday 22 August at 11:59 pm, students will submit a pitch abstract (3 points):
• A 1-sentence topic statement for their essay (the main topic or ideally the main argument
they will pursue);
• What kind of essay they intend to pursue (persuasive literature review, research
proposal); and
• An indication of what debate in academic economics their essay will speak to (a 3-4
sentence summary of the main prior literature, 2-4 papers). These sentences will provide
citations to these main 2-4 papers (more than 4 is fine, but not required) and hence a
citations list below the abstract with full citations.
Students will get feedback on their pitch abstract from their tutor by Friday 25 August. We will
also hold a peer review session on Friday 25 August in which students will give and receive peer
feedback on their pitch (2 points). Students failing to participate in the peer review session will
receive 0/3 for the pitch abstract.
Students will prepare a maximum 1-minute verbal pitch based on their pitch abstract, which they
will deliver in a tutorial group session in the week of 28 August (3 points).
ECON5004: Communication in Economics
Semester 2, 2023
Instructor: Russell Toth
3
A good guideline is that the typical student should expect to put at least 5-10 hours of research
into the essay before delivering the pitch in week 5. Largely writing the essay based on your own
opinions and finding a few loosely-related citations to sprinkle in, is not acceptable. The best
approach is for the student to start with research, first familiarizing themself with the research
topic they will focus on (e.g., rapidly skimming 20-30 or more academic papers in the topic
area), and honing in on a key debate or disagreement in the literature that will form the basis of
their main argument.
Phase 2 (1500 words; 10/34 points): due Friday 8 September 5:00 pm, then Sunday 10
September at 11:59 pm
Students will create a detailed outline of their essay, maximum 500 words, including annotated
bibliography. The outline will have:
• A 1-sentence main argument for the essay;
• Essay type (persuasive literature review, research proposal);
• 1-sentence motivation.
• 1-sentence hook.
• An outline of the main arguments with any sub-points in bullet point form.
• An annotated bibliography. This will be the full, formatted list of references,2 but below
each reference will be a 1-3 sentence summary of the paper.
Please see the outline template, which has been posted on Canvas.
This outline is all that you will bring with you to the essay writing session on 22 September.
Phase 2 will involve (1) participating in a live peer review session during class on 8 September
(2 points), (2) having their essay read and receiving detailed written feedback from a course tutor
through submitting the essay in soft copy through Canvas (4 points) on Sunday 10 September by
11:59 pm, and (3) attending a 30-minute consultation (in week of 18 September) before which
the students revise their outline in light of the tutor’s written feedback, and meet the tutor in a
group of 5 students to discuss their revision and any further changes (4 points).
Phase 3 (1500 words; 18/34 points): written in lecture on Friday 22 September, 6-9 pm
This is the final submission of the essay, written during the regular lecture period in week 8 and
assessed by the tutorial group marker. 1500 words excluding title and bibliography. Further
instructions will be provided on how the in-lecture writing will work, but I am hoping that it will
be possible for you to bring a device and type your essay.
Grading Weight
Overall, the academic essay carries 34% of the grading weight for the course.
Tools for Searching Academic Literature
2 Students often ask “how many references do I have to have?” There is no formal answer – you need to
show that you’ve done a thorough review of the literature. For some this could be 6-8 references, for
others this could be 15-20 references. Most essays would probably have around 8-12 references, but
there is no concrete rule and you will not be assessed purely on counting references.
ECON5004: Communication in Economics
Semester 2, 2023
Instructor: Russell Toth
4
If you have a basic topic or even potential main argument in mind, you can use online tools to try
to refine your ideas and discover the most relevant literature to your topic.
Google Scholar
Google Scholar provides a useful way to forward- and backward-search specific research papers,
allowing you to identify the discourse around them.
• On the left, you can set the time period. For example, if you want more recent literature
you might limit it to “Since 2015.”
• You can click Cite and it will give you a citation you can copy-paste in many format.
• “Cited by …” shows how you many other papers have cited this one. This can be a good
hint to find other authors with directly relevant work.
• “Related articles” suggests related pieces of research, which may again help you find
directly relevant work.
• The “All … versions” button can be helpful if the main version linked in the title is
paywalled. You should be able to access paywalled papers through the University library
website, but the process of doing so can be slightly tedious. If you’re conducting your
essay research, you may want to quickly see the whole paper, or its citation list (another
good source of ideas for directly relevant work).
AI-based Research Tools
It is the early days of AI-based writing tools. The free version of ChatGPT through OpenAI,
which is based on GPT3.5, can “hallucinate” – e.g., if you ask it for academic literature, it may
make up fake citations or research. GPT3.5 is also based on training data only up to 2021, and
doesn’t have access to the internet. So you can try to use GPT3.5 for research, but you should be
very careful to double check any outputs from it. This is definitely not to say that GPT3.5 is
useless for research – it can definitely generate useful content – but you just need to be very
cautious about taking it all at face value.
The more advanced model of ChatGPT is version 4.0, but that costs 20 USD per month for a
Plus subscription. You can access version 4.0 of ChatGPT for free through the Microsoft Bing
chatbot.
There are also other AI-powered chatbot tools, such as Google’s Bard.
ECON5004: Communication in Economics
Semester 2, 2023
Instructor: Russell Toth
5
AI startups have also emerged that build on the APIs of popular AI models like ChatGPT. These
tools are purpose-designed for academic research, and hence may perform better than the
baseline model of ChatGPT. In particular, these tools may be purpose-designed not to
“hallucinate” about academic literature, and not produce fake citations. One of the best-known of
these is Scite, which can respond to prompts like ChatGPT, but provides more rigorous academic
literature references with explicit citations. E.g., this is a search I ran on Scite