Political Economy of Inequality

Purpose of the assignment:

The purpose of the assignment is for you to demonstrate your ability to use what you have learnt on the Political Economy of Inequality module to analyse inequality in a specific context and formulate appropriate policy responses. You are expected to carry out research on the problem at hand and collect the relevant descriptive data, in order to analyse the causes and consequences of the inequality and formulate specific policy proposals in response. Your policy analysis should utilize the material gathered from the lectures and seminars, as well as drawing on and critically engaging with the literature from the reading list for the module.

Question:

POLICY ANALYSES: The US government has commissioned you to write a policy analysis on Racial Inequality in the United States, which includes a set of policy recommendations on how best to address the issue. Your policy analysis should draw on the readings and material from the module, as well outside sources and your knowledge of the political economy of the United States. The key questions the US government wants you to focus on are: What are the sources of the inequality? What are its political and economic consequences? And, what would you recommend doing in response to it?

Format:

This assignment is one integrated policy analysis. The report should consist of two parts:

1. An executive summary (approx. 500 words). This section should come at the beginning of the report. It should be written in less technical language than the rest of the report and is aiming to summarise the key finding of the policy analysis—i.e. the causes and consequences of the inequality and your policy recommendations for addressing it. Given this section is a high level summary of your report, it is strongly recommended that you write this section last.
2. The actual policy analysis (approx. 2500 words). The longer analysis should contain (1) an introduction setting out the nature and extent of the inequality and describing the structure of the policy analysis; (2) an analysis of the causes of the inequality that makes use of theories and concepts discussed in the module; (3) a discussion of the political and economic consequences of the inequality; (4) a discussion of the policies that could be implemented to solve the problem and a clear recommendation for which option(s) should be chosen. The last section should consider the effects/side-effects of potential policy responses (i.e. is there an efficiency–equity trade-off? Is the measure likely to lead to a political backlash?), as well as any potential barriers (e.g. political, institutional, cultural etc.) to the implementation of your policy proposals. The policy analysis should be presented as a report and not as a traditional essay—i.e. it should contain a table of contents and be clearly broken down into the sections outlined above

Policy analyses should be no longer than 3,000 words, including everything except the cover sheet, the title, the table of contents, the bibliography, and text in graphs, tables, figures, or illustrations (including their titles and sources). • For work that exceeds the word limit by up to and including 10% (e.g. up to and including 3,300 words) no penalty will be incurred.

Tips for success:

You can use a range of sources (e.g., newspaper articles, policy papers etc.), but you need to make sure you draw on and critically engage with the academic literature from the module (the readings I have uploaded)

Incorporating descriptive data into your analysis is encouraged (e.g., constructing figures showing the evolution of inequality), but econometric analysis is not required (descriptive data can be cited in the same way as the figures in the lecture notes; just make it clear to the reader where the data is from and the date it was accessed)

Make sure your policy recommendations consider the political, institutional, and cultural context; in other words, are they feasible?
You do not need to address your report to the government in the question; write it as a normal policy paper that they (among others) will read.