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ECON1020
Country Report Instruction



Context:
As a staff member for a newly elected politician, you have been assigned a task by the Chief of Staff
to provide a comprehensive assessment of Australia’s economic performance following the COVID-
19 pandemic.
This report will serve as a resource for the politician, who possesses a general understanding of
economics but may not have in-depth expertise.
Consequently, the report must be accessible and easily understandable, while maintaining a high
level of accuracy and rigor. The findings should be substantiated with data from authoritative,
primary sources (e.g., the Australian Bureau of Statistics) to ensure credibility, as these insights will
inform policy decisions.
Tasks:
As a researcher within the office, your assigned tasks for the report are as follows:
1. Descriptive Economic Assessment:
o Provide a detailed assessment of Australia’s economic performance from the onset
of the recovery period post-COVID to the present day.
2. Benchmarking Against Peer Economies:
o Compare Australia’s recovery trajectory and economic performance with that of
peer economies, specifically the Group of Seven (G7) countries.
In doing so, you will deliver a structured Country Report, which includes the following illustrative
features:
Up to four (4) figures (diagrams, graphs or tables) in total. Here, you can use a mixture of
diagrams, graphs and tables provided the total number is no more than 4.
You can include more than one variable in a graph or table.
You must produce your figures, rather than cut and paste from some sources. You must
keep a copy of the file that you use to create your figures as you could be asked to provide it
as proof that those figures are your work.
You can use direct quotes provided the total number of quoted words sums to 20 words or
less in the whole of the report. This rule is intended to prevent students from over-relying
on direct quotes without critically analysing the content of the source.

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WARNING: This assessment task evaluates students' abilities, skills and knowledge without the aid of Artificial
Intelligence (AI) such as ChatGPT. Students are advised that the use of AI technologies to develop responses is
strictly prohibited and may constitute student misconduct under the Student Code of Conduct.
However, you are allowed to use proofreading software, such as Grammarly (www.grammarly.com), to help you
proofread your report.

Penalty Rates

LATE SUBMISSION:
● When an extension has not been previously approved, a penalty of 10 marks (out of 100) will be deducted
for every 24-hour block up to 7 calendar days, at which point any submission will not receive any marks.
That is:
o 10 marks penalty if submitted within 24 hours after the deadline
o 20 marks penalty if submitted between 24 to 48 hours after the deadline
o …
o 70 marks penalty if submitted between 144 to 168 hours after the deadline
o After 168 hours, a zero mark will be given.

HIGH TURNITIN SIMILARITY INDEX VALUE:
● 8-10: as much as 5 marks (out of 100) may be deducted
● 11-15: as much as 10 marks (out of 100) may be deducted
● 16-20: as much as 15 marks (out of 100) may be deducted
● > 20: as much as 30 or more marks (out of 100) may be deducted.

Besides mark deduction, cases of alleged plagiarism will be reported to the School’s Integrity Officer for
investigation following the University’s policy.

Similarity index values change slightly over time as Turnitin continuously add new materials to its database. The
best strategy is to keep your similarity index value sufficiently low, e.g., below 5, so that even though it goes up a
little bit after submission it will not exceed 7.

You are given a buffer of 7 for the Similarity Index Value to cover some unavoidable similarities. In addition,
anything on the template and references is excluded from the index, and Turnitin will ignore a small amount of
unavoidable similarity.

COPYING FIGURES:
● For each copied figure (diagrams, graphs, or tables): 15 marks (out of 100) will be deducted.
● The penalty remains the same even if references are provided for the copied figures.
● You must keep a copy of the file that you use to create your figures as you could be asked to provide it as
proof that those figures are your own work.

EXCEEDING FIGURE LIMIT:
• 10 marks for each figure over 4.
• E.g. 10 mark penalty for 5 figures, 20 marks penalty for 6 etc.

OMITTING THE COVER SHEET:
● Omitting the whole cover sheet: 10 marks (out of 100) will be deducted.
● Omitting some parts of the cover sheet: 5 marks (out of 100) will be deducted.

EXCEEDING THE WORDCOUNT LIMIT (1200 ± 100):
● 5 marks for every 50 words exceeding 1300.
● E.g., 5 marks for 1308; 10 marks for 1375 etc.
● No penalty for less than 1100 words. But students may lose marks for insufficient content.

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REPORT STRUCTURE

1. Macroeconomic Performance (~700-800 words)

• Assess the macroeconomic performance of Australia since it started its recovery from the
economic contraction brought on by COVID pandemic (up to end 2024).
− You need to assess when the economic recovery began.
− You might also need to benchmark the economic performance over the recovery
period against pre-pandemic economic performance.
• The assessment must be substantiated with the macroeconomic indicators covered in
Topics 1 to 4 of the course.
− Gross Domestic Product
− Unemployment
− Inflation
• You need to provide an assessment as to whether the economic performance of Australia
was good, bad or mixed, relative to Australia’s economy pre-pandemic and/or with other
commonly used benchmarks.
− Your findings will need to be substantiated against macroeconomic data from
authoritative primary sources such as the Australian Bureau of Statistics and the
Reserve Bank of Australia.
− You should present the data in a form that is easily and intuitively understood, e.g. in
the form of tables or graphs.
− Benchmarks might include long-run trends or averages from the pre-COVID era,
estimates of the natural rate of unemployment and potential GDP, or central bank
targets.
• You only need to provide a qualitative assessment of Australia’s economic performance
over the period (good or bad) – you do not need to provide an analysis of the underlying
economic processes driving the macroeconomic trends (e.g. you do not need to provide an
AD-AS analysis). Of course, describing the events or shocks which resulted in the
macroeconomic trends observed might be insightful for your audience.
• Hints:
− For GDP:
i. Should you consider real GDP or nominal GDP?
ii. Would total GDP or GDP per capita be more important in assessing economic
performance?
iii. Are absolute figures more important or growth rates? Or would both have
something to say?

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− For Unemployment:
i. Is there an authoritative estimate of the natural rate of unemployment in
Australia?
ii. If not, what benchmarks against which can you assess whether
unemployment was high or low relative to the pre-COVID period and/or full
employment?
iii. Bonus marks – is headline unemployment sufficient or would other measures
of employment (e.g. underemployment rate) also be informative?
− For inflation:
i. What is the Reserve Bank’s inflation rate target?
ii. Are domestic factors solely responsible for the inflation observed in
Australia?

2. Benchmarking (~400-500 words)
• The G7 countries will serve as the benchmark against which to assess Australia’s economic
performance.
• How did Australia’s economic performance over the recovery from COVID compare to its
peers over the same period?
− Did Australia outperform its peers, or did not recover as quickly? Or did Australia did
better by some measures and worse in others?
− How would you substantiate your assessment – i.e. by which macroeconomic
metrics?
• Overall, how would you gauge Australia’s economic performance over the recovery period
having taken into consideration the performance of peer economies?


3. References
References and citations must be in the APA 7th style.


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PLEASE NOTE: You must use the report template on Blackboard > Assessment > Country
Report > Report Template.

The formatting requirements are:

Font type: Arial
Font size: 11
Line space: 1.15
1200 ± 100 words

You must include the cover sheet (in the template) in your submission.

The wordcount does not include:
the coversheet
the references
section headings
figures
figure headings
short notes underneath figures, e.g., Source: WDI (2021).

The wordcount includes in-text citations.



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Tips for Section 4 References:
 Having more in-text citations and references will reduce the number of words for the
main body while having too few in-text citations and references will reduce the
credibility of the report. Therefore, you need to balance the two.
 Use a variety of sources (rather than just one or two) and use credible sources, e.g., WDI
indicators by the World Bank, official government websites and academic journals.
 Consult UQ’s referencing style guide for the APA 7th styles.
 You must reference sources that you use for your text, graphs or tables.
 You must reference a source even when you have paraphrased the original content.
 You can refer to non-English material sources only if no equivalent English sources are
available, but you should keep such sources to a minimum.
 If you refer to non-English material sources, you need to provide the English-translated
references with a note at the end, e.g., “(original in German)”. The marker will consider
the availability of English material sources for your country to ensure fairness in
marking.
 You could use the EndNote program (downloadable from the UQ library) to manage
your references instead of doing it manually.
 For references to data sources, you should follow the Dataset format in the UQ APA 7th
style guide, e.g.,
World Bank (2020a). World Development Indicators. GDP (current US$) [Data file].
https://databank.worldbank.org/source/world-development-indicators

World Bank (2020b). World Development Indicators. GDP growth (annual %) [Data
file]. https://databank.worldbank.org/source/world-development-indicators
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DATA REQUIREMENTS

Your primary data sources should be:
a. National agencies, e.g., Statistical Bureau, Treasury, Central Bank; or
b. Multinational agencies, e.g., the World Bank, the United Nations, the International Monetary
Fund, the European Central Bank, the Bank for International Settlements, Eurostat.

Data from secondary sources can still be used as a supplement only if those data are not available
from any primary sources. Using non-primary data can lead to a loss of marks when primary
source data is available for your country.

The World Bank’s World Development Indicators (WDI) database contains most of the national data
collected by national and multinational agencies and can be used as a primary data source. Here
are some YouTube tutorials on how to extra data from the WDI:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGJhI_YqFuI (May 7, 2019)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_B1t4BRQ94&t=64s (Sept 21, 2018)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKANl-ZWUTY (March 9, 2017)

However, the Australian Bureau of Statistics should provide most of the macroeconomic data you
need for Australia, but data for the peer economies can be obtained from the WDI databse.


Tips for Data:
 Do not falsely claim that certain data are not readily available from a primary source
without doing your due diligence. For most data at the national level (e.g., GDP,
unemployment rate), only national or multinational agencies have the capacity to collect
those data. Therefore, it is extremely unlikely that they are available from a secondary
source but not from a primary source.
 If you use data from a source (e.g., a report) that indicates that it drew the data from a
government statistical bureau, the data is considered to have come from a secondary
source, not a primary source. However, if you go to the government statistical bureau and
extract the same data (and verify what you read is indeed accurate), then it is considered
to have come from a primary source.
 Trading Economics (https://tradingeconomics.com) is a secondary source, not a primary
source. You should not use it for your report.
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SUBMITTING YOUR COUNTRY REPORT


o Your report must be submitted through Turnitin on Blackboard to check for plagiarism.
While most instances of plagiarism are unintentional, any form of plagiarism (intentional
or unintentional) will be revealed in the originality report.

o From the originality report, the marker will check whether any part of your report is
considered as having potentially plagiarised from other sources, rather than just relying
on the similarity index value. Therefore, you are expected to carefully check the
originality report before your final submission. (Also see the Penalty section above.)

o You can resubmit your report unlimited times before the due date. However, after three
resubmissions, the similarity report is generated after 24 hours.

o Turnitin will not provide you with a confirmation email after successful submission.
However, you can download a digital receipt as proof of submission. UQ Library
provides a guide on how to submit a Turnitin assignment, get a digital receipt, and view
Similarity Report and marks.

o The time of submission is based on the time your report was successfully uploaded on
Turnitin as recorded by Turnitin, not the time you tried to upload it.

o Many students failed to meet the deadline because they had internet connection
problems on their side, but they mistook it as an IT problem of UQ. If UQ has any
internet connection problems, there will be a record of it.

o The only way to guarantee not missing the deadline is to submit your report well before
the deadline.



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FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS (FAQs)
QUESTIONS ANSWERS
Why do we need to do this
assignment?

To excel in the workplace, professional economists need
to be able to:

● analyse problems;
● identify potential solutions and their limitations;
● find, extract and organise good quality and
relevant data; and
● present findings precisely and concisely.
This assignment aims to provide you with an opportunity
to develop these skills.
Why can’t I use more than four
figures?

Reports for decision makers are typically very concise so
that (busy) readers can focus on the most relevant
information. As the number of figures is limited to no
more than four, you need to think carefully about where
to use them to maximise the overall impact of the report.
Why can’t I cut and paste figures
from other sources?
This is part of real-world training on how to extract and
organise data and present findings.
If I want to include a graph, how
should I do this?
Insert your graph as an image, rather than as an Excel
object, in your report.
How should I include a diagram
(e.g., an AD-AS model) in my
report?
A simple way to do so is to draw it in PowerPoint, copy it,
and then paste it as an image in your report.
How should I cite any data source
used for a figure?
Include the data source below each figure. For example:
“Source: World Bank (2020)”.
Why are there so many penalties? In the real world, a submitted document that does not
follow the instructions could be rejected entirely.
Why only limited direct quotes are
allowed?
Students often misuse direct quotes as a way to avoid
paraphrasing.
Can I see some samples? No. Once people have seen some samples, they naturally
want to copy them rather than thinking independently.
However, in the tutorial, we will provide a ‘bad example’
to show you what could go wrong. Also, see the Past
Common Feedback on Blackboard.
How do I know if I do paraphrasing
and referencing correctly?
In the tutorials, we will provide exercises on how to do
referencing and paraphrasing, respectively.

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End of The Instruction

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