CONTENTS

1.0 Overview

1.1 Career Preparation

1.2 Technical Communication

1.3 Decision Making Challenges

1.4 Decision Analysis

1.5 Strategies for Success

2.0 Market Analysis

2.1 Importance of Market Analyses

2.2 Types of Market Analyses

2.3 Features of Market Analyses

2.4 Similarities and Differences

3.0 Course Design and Rationale

3.1 Product Versus Process Approach

3.2 Imitation Versus Expression Approach

4.0 Assignments

4.1 Overview

4.2 Prescribed Outline

5.0 Identifying a Topic

5.1 Research, Evidence, and Analysis

5.2 Trust the Process

5.3 Pursue Your Interests

5.4 Be Practical

6.0 Example Student Presentations

1.0 OVERVIEW

1.1 Career Preparation

This course is designed to help you advance your career. According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers, employers want students to have high grades as well as the following key attributes ranked from most to least desirable (Job Outlook, 2024):

• Problems-solving skills (#1)

In essence, this text asks you to be a consultant. Your work aims to help others clarify, understand, and make difficult decisions (i.e., solve problems). As you do that, you will encounter your own problems. You will struggle. Think about it. Your global commodity analysis will indicate to your readers the likely direction of change (i.e., increase or decrease) in the market price and quantity for your commodity over the next five to 15 year period. You will write and publish your findings a report of about 4,500 words and 10 minute video summary. What employers want to see is that you can solve problems and successfully deliver these kinds of project results without excuses.

• Ability to work in a team (#2)

Unless your instructor says otherwise, you will have to write your own paper and prepare your own presentation. However, that does not mean that you have to or should work alone. Employers want to see that you know how to interact with others to improve your work. That's the definition of teamwork. Who is in your network of colleagues and friends who you can call on for ideas, help, and/or feedback (i.e., "peer review")? Employers want to see that you are nurturing and building your own strong peer support and consultation network. How will you interact with your instructor? What efforts will you make to work with other students if your instructor gives you that option or expectation? Be aware that the default expectation to avoid plagiarism is that you clearly acknowledge others' work that you use. Having an individually strong work ethic--apart from the ability to work in a team--is also important (#6 ranking). 

• Communication skills (#3 and #6)

Employers want employees who they can rely on to publish content (e.g., emails, corporate memos, videos, speeches, etc.) that reflects positively on them. Employers want employees who can articulate complex ideas and suggestions succinctly in writing. Even if you are not a confident writer now, this text will guide you step-by-step how to write and publish a final product that will make you proud. Employers highly value both written (#3) and spoken (#6) communication skills. Employers say that there is a 45 percent difference--the largest of any skill area--between the "importance" of communication skills and new employees' "proficiency."  

• Strong work ethic (#4) and Initiative (#9)

This text includes a lot of detailed instructions. It's not possible to anticipate and answer every question that every student might have. Similarly, employers are not able to describe every expectation of you in your written job description or even in a verbal summary. Instead, employers want employees who are self-motivated, employees who demonstrate initiative, employees who see what needs to be done and do it without having to be asked. This is especially true when an employer assigns an employee a significant project to complete over a relatively long time period. Employers want employees who can document that they have initiative to get work done on time with minimum supervision.  

• Flexibility / Adaptability (#5)

Sometimes your initial plan won't work. you may on occasion underestimate the requirements for an assigned project. Be prepared for unexpected challenges, especially as deadlines approach. When you need others to be flexible, learn professional ways to ask. Ask ahead of time, if possible. When you ask for flexibility, propose a specific alternative to make it easy for others simply to reply, "Okay, I approve. What you have proposed will be the new expectations."

• Technical Skills (#7)

Employers value your ability to solve problems using hardware (e.g., video recording), software (e.g., spreadsheet), and internet search tools (e.g., to find public data). The assignments in this text require technical skills in these areas. Your success on these assignments can provide clear and strong evidence about the strength of your technical skills.   

• Analytical / quantitative skills (#8)

Human beings are miserly cognitive processors, meaning they generally resist analytical reflection and instead prefer the instantaneous satisfaction that comes from a relatively quick intuitive or "gut" response, even if such a quick response is more likely to make them worse off [1, 2]. The assignments in this text ask you to use an analytical approach--which is admittedly slower than most intuitive processes--to help inform or help someone make a difficult decision. Most employers want to hire college graduates with strong analytical skills because those employers know that, more often than not, the extra investment of time and energy in analytical thinking is worth it to them. Don't believe me? Consider this question: "A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?" [3]. If you said, "Ten cents," congratulations! That's the answer that most people give who rely on their intuition, but unfortunately that's the wrong answer. Analytical reflection should lead you quickly to see that the correct answer is five cents. Score one for analytical thinking!

• Detailed-oriented (#10)

Most technical writing involves trying to persuade someone to do or think something based on a set of facts. No matter how brilliant your ideas might be, if you are not well-versed in the facts of the matter, you won't be persuasive. Details matter. This text provides clear instructions about how to use details--particularly in footnotes--to build your credibility as an analyst and thus make your recommendations more persuasive. 

The paper and presentation assignments described in this text are designed to help you not only strengthen these highly valued skills but also to demonstrate them in concrete ways that employers will easily recognize. Be sure to read the "Strategies for Success" section below for helpful advice about how to work effectively with a key member of your team--your instructor--to solve assignment-related problems and complete and publish your detailed analysis.   

1.2 Technical Communication

There are many different kinds of assignments that students could complete to learn and demonstrate the desirable career skills just mentioned. This text teaches these skills by guiding students how to complete two major technical communication assignments: a paper and presentation. 

Technical communication examples include resumes, cover letters, user manuals, textbooks, policy briefs, legal analyses, journal articles, and economic forecasts. Oral examples of technical communication include audio or video documentaries, commercials, public service announcements, news broadcasts, class lectures, and academic presentations. Even logos (e.g., the Nike swoosh) and brands (e.g., distinctive symbols burned into the skin of free-roaming cattle) qualify as technical communication. 

All of these examples involve someone (i.e., a technical writer or presenter) simplifying complex information and presenting it to people (e.g., employers, consumers, lawmakers, and investors) who need it to accomplish particular tasks or goals (e.g., hire a qualified employee, make a worthwhile purchase, approve a beneficial law, select an undervalued stock, or differentiate their cattle from others' cattle). Technical communication is sharing complex information in simplified ways to help their audiences accomplish particular tasks or goals.

But, technical communication is not usually a stand-alone skill. Prize-winning author and historian David McCullough once said, "Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That's why it's so hard" [4]. An economist might say that thinking and communication are produced jointly (i.e., they are complements in production). If you want to be an effective analyst, consultant, inventor, entrepreneur, or researcher, you'd better learn how to communicate your useful ideas clearly and vice versa. Technical communicators are thus typically skilled at organizing information to form logical analytical arguments. These organizing skills include knowing--or learning--how to define unclear terms and concepts, how to identify and justify simplifying assumptions, and how to estimate unknown values. It includes knowing how to identify and order a set of claims that, if true, logically lead to a specific conclusion. And, it includes knowing how to gather and arrange relevant factual details (i.e., evidence) to support those claims convincingly. 

1.3 Decision Making Challenges

In his book Thinking, Fast and Slow, Nobel Prize winning author Daniel Kahneman describes how "fast" (i.e., instinctive and emotional) thinking is different than "slow" (i.e., deliberative, logical, and analytical) thinking [5]. The "fast" system of thinking is quick, almost automatic, requires little energy or thought, but it is also error prone. The "slow" system of thinking takes more conscious effort, but it is also more reliable. Kahneman describes several experiments showing that people often reach different conclusions depending on which of these two systems of thinking they use. 

Some decisions, Kahneman suggests, are better suited to the "fast" system of thinking (e.g.,  day-to-day questions like what to eat for dinner) while other decisions (e.g., complex decisions like where should I live or what investments should I make) are better suited to the "slow" system of thinking. If you make a decision with the wrong kind of thinking, it can result in problems. If you use "slow" thinking to decide what to eat for dinner, you may waste valuable time and energy, not to mention you may cause a delay in your mealtime and get grumpy. If you use "slow" thinking to decide where to live, you might regret or underestimate the career, personal, or quality of life impacts. The analytical decision making processes described in this text clearly align with the "slow" type of thinking processes and, as such, are designed to help you avoid the impulsive responses that might seem initially correct but are more typically wrong or misguided.

1.4 Decision Analysis

There are nearly as many decision analysis approaches as there are decisions. This text describes decision making processes that are rational and evidence-based. While there are many different ways to analyze and make decisions, there are many common underlying skills [6]. These skills include thinking skills such as the ability to form arguments, define terms, identify assumptions, and estimate unknown values. These skills also include communication skills such as giving attribution correctly, using footnotes effectively, and formatting tables and figures properly. Details and guidance about about skills are found in the "Helpful Resources" section of this page. 

1.5 Strategies for Success

Students completing the assignments in this text should already have had some basic exposure to college-level writing (e.g., ENG 101). Some knowledge of the principles of microeconomics (e.g., ECO 201) or basic statistics (e.g., correlation) may also be useful or needed. 

Beyond these content prerequisites, students using this text should also agree to three other learning prerequisites. First, students should trust the author of this text and their instructor to guide them to a successful learning outcome (e.g., a particular desired grade in the course). Second, students should always pursue excellence which at minimum means doing one's best work. And third, students should expect positive results for their efforts.  

First, students must decide whether they are going to trust this text and their instructor to guide them to success. The alternative is instead to follow one's own ideas about how to do well. That is strongly discouraged. Trust is important in any course, but it is particularly important in a writing-intensive course. This is true for two related reasons. One, writing is hard work. Learning to write well is not a natural gift, and just about everyone who writes must work hard to become a better writer. Two, the harder something is, the more students face temptation to take short-cuts, to create for example writing products aided by cheating rather than by working hard and trusting the instructor's guidance. The Internet provides numerous links to unoriginal texts and to ghost writers who will write term papers for a fee. Make no mistake, copying someone else's work without clear attribution (i.e., plagiarism) is not the same as imitating a prescribed form with permission and filling that form with one's own content. The latter approach is adopted by this text with careful efforts to distinguish it from the former academically dishonest approach. 

Students have a decision to make. Students can either follow their own plan (cheat, plagiarize, or whatever), or they can follow the instructor's plan prescribed in this detailed text. This text is designed to guide students to success with their instructor's help. Students that do not trust the text or their instructor to do that and who think it is better to follow their own plan will most likely fail. Students that trust this text and their instructors may fail too, but this text is specifically designed to help students be successful, even students who struggle with analysis, writing, and presenting. 

Second, students must decide either to pursue excellence or not. It's that simple. Excellence basically means that students do their best and not merely convince themselves that something less than their best is the same thing as excellence. The two are different. To pursue excellence means that you avoid making excuses. It means that you accept that improved writing and communication is hard work that requires regular practice and attention. It means that you study (not just read) this text, prepare your assignments in advance, and review your work regularly. Making excuses and throwing something together at the last minute without studying the detailed instructions in this text should embarrass any student who thinks such an approach deserves any merit; it does not. Do your best and be proud of that. If you do your best, you certainly should be proud of the work you do and products you deliver.

Third, students should expect results. Students that trust their instructors and that really seek to understand their assignments should learn quickly. You should see obvious results. The results should excite you and make you excited to keep working hard. If you do not experience significant boosts to your confidence, you should check with your instructor immediately. Something is wrong. You should see exciting improvements in your writing every week that build your confidence and pride in your work. The lessons from this text should make your analysis, writing, and presentation skills better in ways that are obvious and clear to you.

In short, students who trust their instructors and pursue excellence should expect strong results.

2.0 MARKET ANALYSIS

2.1 Importance of Market Analyses

If you are reading this text, you may be majoring or minoring in agricultural or applied economics in college. Imagine after you graduate, you go to a neighborhood dinner party. At this party, suppose you meet an attorney and a physical therapist. It's generally gauche to talk too much about work at such events, but suppose after a few drinks, you hear the attorney ask the physical therapist, "So, you're a physical therapist. You know, I've got this bad tennis elbow that just keeps giving me problems. What do you think?". The physical therapist then talks about treatments for tennis elbow. Next, the physical therapist says to the attorney, "So, you're an attorney. You know, my parents need help with their will. Do you know anything about that?" So, the attorney talks about the legal aspects of estate planning. Next, the attorney and physical therapist turn to you and one says, "So, you're an economist." What happens next?

What question do people most often ask economists? The answer is, they most often ask about future changes in market prices. If you're an economist, people will expect you to know or at least have an opinion about, for example, what will happen in the future to gas prices, home prices, stock prices, etc. The assignments in this text will show you how to analyze questions like this.  

You have probably heard folks on the news make predictions about how prices will change in the future. For example, a news reporter might say that wholesale gasoline prices in the U.S. are projected to increase over the next year because of rising demand for energy in fast-growing China. Or, a government report might predict that water scarcity in California will challenge some high-cost vegetable producers, some of whom may shut down in the short-run, leading to shortages and higher prices in the current national wholesale market for market fresh vegetables in the United States.

As of 2021 and according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the occupational outlook for "Market Research Analysts" is expected to grow from 2019 to 2029 by 18 percent (i.e., "much faster than average"). The typical entry-level education is a Bachelor's degree, and the medial pay in 2020 was $65,810 per year.  

This textbook describes how to conduct several basic kinds of market analyses. You might be interested to know market research firms regularly produce market research reports for sale to individual firms in the market. As you might guess, market research firms tend to focus their analyses on markets that have a larger number of firms, have higher total revenues, or have rapidly increasing sales. A single copy of a single market report typically costs between $2,000 and $6,000 (e.g., see here). 

2.2 Types of Market Analyses

These claims about the direction and/or magnitude of future changes in market prices and/or quantities are the product of market analysis usually conducted by economists. As you can see, market analysis sometimes seeks to predict future market conditions. These kinds of market analyses are sometimes called "current" market analyses. Two examples from this text are the global commodity market analysis and the niche market analyses. The other main type of market analysis seeks to explain past market changes. This type of analysis, often called an historical market analysis, is also described in this text.

People are generally more interested in what will happen in the future than why something happened in the past. For this reason, current market analyses are more common than historical market analyses. However, studies of history often reveal important lessons for the future, and so the most important consideration for an historical market analysis is finding an out-of-trend change in either market price or market quantity that invites analysis and explanation. 

Global commodity market have lots of market buyers and sellers with relatively high total market revenues. Market research firms often complete to provide useful analysis and forecasts in this space. Such firms often prepare marketing reports and then advertise them for sale. Niche market analyses, however, are typically commissioned by individual firms and/or sometimes by groups of firms (e.g., industry associations).   

2.3 Features of Market Analyses

Typically market reports have two main sections: (1) market definition and (2) market analysis. 

The purpose of the market definition section of the report is to establish clearly the market's defining characteristics and space and the time frame that the analysis covers (e.g., some period of time in the past or some period of time in the future). The market definition section of an analysis often includes definitions of key terms (e.g., what is "roundwood" timber and how is it different from "sawnwood" timber), descriptions of typical characteristics and lists of producers and consumers in the market, and initial or current estimates for market price and quantity. 

The purpose of the market analysis section of the report is to identify factors that shift the market supply or market demand curves either left or right. These shifts individually affect and jointly predict or explain the direction of change in the market's equilibrium price and quantity.  As noted, this textbook describes how to conduct only basic analyses. The basic analyses described in this textbook show how to predict or explain merely the overall direction of change in market price and quantity over a specified period of time. More complex analyses not covered by this textbook (e.g., using equilibrium displacement modelling)may additionally focus on forecasting the level--not just the direction--of change in market price and quantity over a specified period of time. 

2.4 Similarities and Differences

An noted, there are two main kinds of market analyses. A "current" market analysis seeks to predict future market changes. An "historical" market analysis seeks to explain past market changes. This text describes how to conduct a "current" market analysis for "global commodity" and "niche" markets; however, it is possible that--while not described in this text--an analyst could conduct an historical analysis of a global commodity or niche market.   

Period of Analysis versus Timing of Analysis. The most basic difference between historical and current market analyses is the period of time the analysis examines versus when the analysis is conducted. Historical analyses look at the past. Current market analyses look at the future. This should see self evident, but keep this in mind as you consider the examples given in the text. An analysis that examines the period 2002 to 2007 might seem like a historical analysis, but there is no way to judge without knowing when the analysis was conducted. If the analysis was conducted in 2002, it is now (i.e., this year) an outdated current market analysis. If the analysis was conducted after 2007, then the analysis is a historical analysis. The time when the analysis was conducted is as important as the time period analyzed.

There are trade-offs involved in selecting/defining an analytical time period. In general, a five year time period (e.g., 2018 to 2023) is good for analyses that seek to predict the future (i.e., current market analyses). This period of time is long enough that the usefulness of the analysis does not expire too soon but short enough that market predictions are still relatively accurate. Predicting the future becomes more difficult the farther into the future one looks. Remember, the analytical time period for current analyses typically begins with the present year. Sometimes an analyst may choose one year prior if data for the prior year is more accurate and/or available (e.g., to estimate market boundaries or current equilibrium price or quantity).

Since historical analyses seek to explain past market events, no particular time period guideline (e.g., five years) exists for these analyses. For historical market analyses, the time period usually begins and ends at the two points of relative extreme change in market price or quantity. For example, the time period for the analysis would appropriately start when price was relatively low (or high) and end when market price was relatively high (or low). Or, alternatively, the analytical period could begin when the market quantity was relatively high (or low) and end when it was relatively low (or high). 

Purposes are Different. Current market analyses start by defining markets characteristically and spatially as they appear presently and then seek to predict what market conditions will be in the future. In contrast, historical market analyses start by defining market characteristically and spatially as they appears some time in the past and then seek to explain what factors caused the market conditions to change over some particular period of time that may or may not end at the present period. 

Again, a current market analysis is concerned with predicting what market conditions will be (e.g., how will market price and quantity change during some particular future time period). In contrast, the focus of an historical market analysis is explaining why market conditions changed (e.g., why did market price and quantity change during a particular time period in the past). These are subtle but important differences. Another way to think about this difference is to identify what is useful about a current versus historical market analysis. The useful part of a current market analysis is the ability to predict what market conditions will be in the future. The useful part of a historical analysis is the ability to explain why market conditions changed in the past.

Data Requirements and Conclusions are Different. Current market analyses also differ from historical market analyses in the data that is needed. A current market analysis starts by defining the initial (i.e., the "current" or present) market equilibrium quantity and price (e.g., P1 and Q1) and then seeks to predict what will happen to them in the future. A basic analysis (like the one described in this text) seeks to predict merely the direction of change. For example, what direction is equilibrium market quantity and price expected to go in the future from their original starting points of P1 and Q1? More complex current market analyses seek to predict not only the direction of change but also the magnitude of the change. For example, how much will market equilibrium quantity and price change from their original starting points of P1 and Q1? 

In contrast, a historical market analysis starts by defining both an initial (i.e., sometime in the past) market equilibrium quantity and price (e.g., P1 and Q1) and also a subsequent market equilibrium quantity and price (e.g., e.g., P2 and Q2) that is also in the past. Historical market analyses thus seek to explain what supply and demand shift factors likely caused the change from Q1 to Q2 and from P1 to P2. A current market analysis, by contract, focuses on the direction and/or magnitude of change from an initial (i.e., current) condition (e.g., P1 and Q1). An historical market analysis focuses on causal factors that explain the direction and magnitude of change from a set of initial market conditions (e.g., P1 and Q1) to a subsequent one (e.g., P2 and Q2).

Existence of Consumers and Producers. A current market analysis requires that consumers and producers presently exist in the relevant market area and there must be a reasonable expectation that consumers and producers will exist throughout the entire time of analysis. A historical market analysis does not have these requirements. A historical market analysis merely requires that consumers and producers previously existed in the relevant market area. For example, it would be fine to do an historical analysis of the regional farm-level market for trained cart-pulling mules in London, England from 1870 to 1920. But, it would not make sense, for example, to do this same analysis and merely switch the dates to a period that ranges from the present year plus five years. The problem with doing this as a current market analysis is that trained cart-pulling mules are no longer currently produced and consumed in the London, England area.  

3.0 COURSE DESIGN AND RATIONALE

3.1 Product Versus Process Approach

The instructional approached used in this text emphasizes the quality of students' final products and not the creative process students use to create technical assignments. Since the mid-1990's, writing pedagogy in the US has emphasized the process of writing: brainstorming, outlines, drafts, peer-review, and revisions. The writing process is clearly important. No serious writer and certainly no serious technical writer prepares a single draft and then stops. And, the writing process is critical as a means to clear thinking and learning. This text does include process-oriented expectations and assignments. However, to meet the learning outcomes, students cannot merely or mechanically follow a particular writing process. Instead, this text and its prescribed argument and language emphasize final product quality as the greatest priority.  

One purported advantage of a process-oriented pedagogy is that, having learned how to write, students will appreciate and value writing more for its own sake. The expectation is that students who are rewarded early for mastery of the writing process will want to build on these initial successes and will want to write more and through additional practice over time eventually better.

The author of this text does not disagree with this approach. However, satisfaction and confidence in writing comes not only from understanding and even appreciating the value of the writing process. It also comes from creating high-quality final products. It is very rewarding to create a thoughtful, complete, technically accurate, well-reasoned, and highly-polished analysis. This text and its seven related assignments discuss the writing process mostly as a means to improving students' final products. The goal here is that students create high-quality final products that students find personally significant and worthwhile.  In the typical time allotted for a course like this, there simply is not enough time for every student to develop and propose a unique argumentative structure for analyzing a unique economic question. Instead, this text gives students a head-start by asking everyone to adapt the same flexible argumentative structure.  

We sometimes tell children that "it's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game." That is fine for children. And, it is true that winning is not everything, but in most professional situations winning is important. Strong technical communication is important. An illogical argument, an ill-defined term, or an unreasonable assumption in a technical proposal will result in less than zero credit; the author will lose credit, credibility, and maybe the job. Professionally, no one cares what process you use to create the final product (short of stealing; don't do that).  Instead, people care about the quality of the final product.

This text shows students what high-quality final products look like, how they sound, and how they are organized. This text is designed to show students how to create final products that they will be proud to keep and share with others, not because of what their work represents (i.e., a process followed) but because of what their work is (i.e., a high-quality product). 

PROCESS VERSUS PRODUCT APPROACH VIDEO (6:22)

3.2 Imitation Versus Expression Approach

When students are learning about the process of writing, teachers often encourage students to "free write" or "brainstorm" initially about what they want to write. The emphasis is on the individual student's ideas and especially the expression of those ideas. Again, individual expression is important and often very rewarding, but in the professional world we rarely have such latitude. Instead, we typically have much more specific communication assignments (e.g., write a resume, prepare a cover letter, conduct a market analysis, write a business plan, or present a new product proposal). And these tasks often have specific forms that we are expected to reproduce, more or less, through imitation. In other words, professional communication assignments tend to constrain open-ended personal expression and instead favor imitation of established forms.     

This author of this text believes that imitation of a given form is a useful way for students to understand what a high-quality final product looks and sounds like and, paradoxically, it also liberates students to think about to fill the given organizational structure creatively with compelling evidence. While free writing, journal keeping, conferencing, and other "process" techniques are helpful for what they do (i.e., help student discover what they want to say), these techniques do not especially help students write strong sentences, improve the organization of their arguments, or arrange their essays to appeal rhetorically to the demands of specific audiences or specific circumstances.

Imitation of a given form also forces students to be creative. An empty form begs students to fill it. Far from encouraging conformity, imitation helps student discover their own voices. Imitation and attention to form provide a discovery pathway that starts with students wrestling to understand the given organizational structure and then how to fill it. Freed from the logical demands of organizing an argument, students are able to focus on interpreting its structure and then filling the empty form with meaningful and appropriate content.

It is possible, however, to provide too explicit instructions. It is useful to give students an empty form and ask them to wrestle with how to fill it. It is not useful to give students a completed example and ask them merely or simply to copy it. An empty form creates anxiety for students because they desire to fill it. Most people want to avoid anxiety. But some discomfort of this sort is essential for learning to take place. When imitation involves mere replication there is no anxiety, discomfort, or learning. For this reason, the text does not provide--and students are strongly advised to avoid consulting--completed examples of the written assignments described in this text.

IMMITATION VERSUS EXPRESSION VIDEO (7:13)

You might wonder how a text can be highly prescriptive--including a prescribed outline and even prescribed language--without raising issues with plagiarism. Good question. The standard expectation is that any work (e.g., ideas, organization, wording, images, etc.) that authors do not clearly attribute to others is their own original work. Students using this text will clarify an alternate expectation, namely that you will make no effort to distinguish your work from the work in this text but that in all other instances the standard attribution expectations will apply. More details and a rationale are given in the Proposal assignment. 

4.0 ASSIGNMENTS

4.1 Overview

The historical market analysis report includes a proposal assignment, only some of which should appear in the final written report, plus four more sections ("Characteristics", "Space", "Estimates", and "Analysis"). After submitting and typically receiving instructor feedback on these five assignments, students will adapt and improve them to create a final written report with about 5,000 words and a final presentation that is as close to 10 minutes as possible. 

4.2 Prescribed Outline

This text describes in very prescribed ways how students must complete the written report and video presentation. The text has separate chapters that describe each assignment and required section of the report. Here, I will just give a basic overview of each assignment and the prescribed outline for the report. The 10-minute presentation is a video summary of the report's analysis and findings. 

For the reasons given in the previous section ("Course Design and Rationale"), you must carefully study and exactly follow the detailed instructions in this textbook if you want to do well.   

After each prescribed item below, you will see in parentheses the typical number of paragraphs (P) needed (e.g., "1-2P" means "1 to 2 paragraphs are typically needed). The outline below also indicates when a figure (F) or table (T) is needed (e.g., "1F" and "1T" mean one figure and one table is needed, respectively). Details about how to create and format figures and tables is in the "Helpful Resources" section of this textbook.  

The Proposal assignment is the first assignment. The goal of this assignment is to convince your instructor that the market you want to analyze is appropriate and feasible. You must create at least one but you may create as many as three proposals for your instructor. Each proposal should be one page in length.

The Proposal assignment must include the following components which are described in detail in the "Proposal" chapter:

1. Your name, email address, and phone number in the upper left-hand corner. 

2. A draft title appropriately adapted as prescribed.

3. A purpose statement paragraph, appropriately adapted as prescribed, that includes a prescribed footnote. (1P)

4. A methods statement paragraph, that is adapted appropriately as prescribed. (1P)

5. A statement about who are the market's typical producers and consumers.

6. A statement defining the proposed period of analysis.

7. A statement about what is the typical unit of exchange in the market.

8. A description that identifies how/where you will get data for this market. For an historical market analysis, you need to identify an out-of-trend change in either market price or quantity and also be able to find market price and quantity estimates for both the initial (i.e., beginning) and subsequent (i.e., ending) time periods. (1P)

The Characteristics assignment is the second assignment. Before you begin the Characteristics assignment, your instructor must approve your proposal. The goal of this assignment is to define logically the characteristics of the product or service that distinguish it from other similar products or services. 

The Characteristics assignment must include the following components which are described in detail in the "Characteristics" chapter:

1. An informative title and title page with one artistic visual aid, your name, email address, phone number, and date. (1F)

2. An improved purpose statement paragraph, appropriately adapted as prescribed, that includes prescribed footnote. (1P)

3. An improved methods statement paragraph, appropriately adapted as prescribed. (1P)

4. A description of the product's (or service's) defining characteristics, including general and technical descriptions and a comparison to other products (or services) that are similar but not the same. (3-6P and 1F)

5. A description of the attributes of the market's typical primary producers, including their important inputs and required technologies. (3P and 1F)

6. A description of the attributes of the market's typical primary consumers. (1P)

7. A description of the market's other marketing chain components and how they are distinct from the market under analysis. (1-2P and 1F)

8. A statement specifying the analytical time period and a description of the rationale (1P)  

The Space assignment is the third assignment. The goal of this assignment is to identify logically the factors that affect the spatial boundaries of your market (i.e., the distance across which consumers and producers typically interact) and define clearly and specifically (e.g., on a map) the location of your those spatial boundaries.

The Space assignment must include the following components which are described in detail in the "Space" chapter:

1. An updated and improved version of your Characteristics assignment.

2. Identify the factors that affect the market's spatial boundaries. (2-4P)

3. Define the market's spatial boundaries on a map with justifications. (1-3P and 1F) 

The Estimates assignment is the fourth assignment. The goal of this assignment is to define the unit of exchange  and unit of valuation typically used by market participants and to estimate or otherwise obtain the market price and quantity for both the initial (i.e., beginning) and subsequent (i.e., ending) time periods. 

The Estimates assignment must include the following components which are described in detail in the "Estimates" chapter:

1. An updated and improved version of your Space assignment.

2. Describe the unit of exchange. (1-2P and 1F)

3. Estimate or give values and source(s) for the initial and subsequent equilibrium market quantity (1-2P)

4. Describe the unit of valuation. (1P)

5. Estimate or give values and source(s) for the initial and subsequent equilibrium market price. (1-2P)

The Shifts assignment is the fifth assignment. The goal of this assignment is to explain the observed direction of change (i.e., increase or decrease) in the market's current equilibrium price and quantity over your specified time period of analysis. Your explanation will require you to identify six factors that are most likely over the specified time affected either the market's supply or demand. The number of supply shift factors and demand shift factors must add to six with no less than two of each.

The Shifts assignment must include the following components which are described in detail in the "Shifts" chapter:

1. An updated and improved version of your Estimates assignment.

2. A transition paragraph, adapted as prescribed, that describes the additional methods you will use in your analysis. (1P) 

3. A description of the fundamental approach to market analysis adapted appropriately as prescribed. This description must include a statement of the analytical objective and references to the initial and subsequent market equilibria (Figure 6) and the selected analytical time period. (2P)

4. A description of the relevant economic theory adapted appropriately as described. (1P)

5. A description of six factors that you believe affected either the supply or demand in your market during the stated period for your analysis. For each factor, you must identify an actual (not hypothetical), evidence-based rationale for some underlying change you expect occurred in the market during the period of your analysis, identify whether that change affected supply or demand, name whether the change shifted the curve left or right, and then name how the shift independently (i.e., ceteris paribus) affected the market's initial equilibrium price and quantity. The total number of supply and demand shift factors must add to six with no less than two of each (1P and 1F per shift factor; 6P and 6F total).

6. Describe and justify the relative importance of the six six identified changes in the market and quantify such that those changes jointly explain the observed change in market supply and demand over the specified time period of analysis. (2-3P and 1T) 

7. Describe and show graphically the joint effects of the six identified market supply and demand changes. (1-2P and 1F)

8. Identify important caveats and qualifications that limit the accuracy of your analysis, including resource constraints, and specific aspects of your analysis that you would invest more resources to improve if resources were available. (1P)

The Paper assignment is the sixth assignment. The goal of this assignment is to improve the previous written work in all aspects, making it appealing and easy to read, including improvements to the paper's wording, layout, design, footnotes, citations, figures, and tables and elimination of spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors. The Paper assignment must include:

1. An updated and improved version of the Shifts assignment. 

2. About 5,000 words but no more than about 7,000 words. Notice that if you add up the minimum and maximum number of suggested paragraphs above you find that the range for the entire paper is between 32 and 45 paragraphs. These are the approximate minimum and maximum number of paragraphs required to compete the prescribed analysis persuasively. As further guidance, that equates to an average of 111 to 218 words per paragraph, excluding footnotes.

3. At least 15 but not more than 17 visual aids (i.e., figures and tables). There are 13 figures (e.g., 1F) and one tables (e.g., 1T) that are prescribed in the outline plus a prescribed title page figure (1F), making a total of 15 prescribed visual aids. Students may and should consider changes to the number of figures where doing so will improve the value of those visual aids, but in no case should students have fewer than one title page figure, 13 other figures, and one table. You may not have more than 17 visual aids total. 

The Presentation assignment is the seventh assignment. The goal of this assignment is to convey as clearly and completely as possible the process and conclusions of your niche market analysis. The Presentation assignment must be: 

1. A  digital (i.e., recorded) video presentation with 15 to 17 visual aids.

2. As close to 10 minutes in length as possible.

3. In a YouTube-ready (e.g., .MP4 or .MOV) file format.

Students should note that their individual instructor may amend some the assignment requirements and, if so, those expectations (e.g., expressed in the course syllabus) obviously take precedence over the expectation described in this text. 

5.0 IDENTIFYING A TOPIC

5.1 Research, Evidence, and Analysis

If your instructor invites you to choose a topic, situation, or problem to analyze, you might wonder what criteria you should use to identify the "best" topic?  One key is that you understand what the assignments in this textbook ask you to do.

Many student incorrectly think that "research" or writing a "research paper" means merely gathering and summarizing lots of statements and opinions from lots of experts in support and/or contradiction of a particular claim. That is not what this textbook asks you to do. Instead, the assignments in this textbook ask you to find and gather enough high-quality information that you can describe accurately a situation (e.g., a market) and then use your own analysis of that situation to make your own evidence-based claim. 

For the assignments in this textbook, it is critical that you see the important role you have as an analyst. There is not one "right" way to define a situation (e.g., a market) or problem. It is your responsibility as the analyst to gather information and define the situation or problem that makes the most sense to you given the analysis you are going to do. So, your readers (including your instructor) will see you as not having done your job as the analyst if you simply rely only on the thoughts, options, and ideas of others. Your conclusions your report in your paper and presentation assignments are expected to result from your analysis of a that situation you define. The strength of your conclusions will depend not on how many other so-called experts you line up who agree with you. No, it will depend instead on (1) how reasonably and thoughtfully you define the situation or problem, (2) how compelling the evidence is that you offer in support your individual claims, and (3) how logical your analysis is of those individual claims taken together, assuming each claim is true.     

Thus, I discourage you from choosing a topic just because you Google some key words and it looks like there is a lot of information and analysis that others have already done on the topic. That might (at best) give you some good background information, but it might (at worst) overwhelm you with such technical jargon and complications that you forget that the assignments are actually fairly simple ones that depend more on what you think rather than what others think.   

Plus, be aware that most analyses are actually conducted to satisfy a particular client and/or particular business need. In that context, analysts do not typically have choices about what situation or problem they must analyze. Most people reading this text, however, will be doing so as part of a course and thus will likely have some choice. Choose wisely. 

5.2 Trust the Process

Students should recall (and review, if needed) the three "strategies for success" presented above in Section 1.5.  The first of these suggested strategies is that students must trust their instructors and this text to guide them to success. Of course, success depends on students agreeing to the second suggestion, namely doing their best work and "pursuing excellence". The third suggestion is that students should expect results, again, provided they embrace the first two suggestion. 

This is important because students sometimes do not trust their instructors or their texts to lead them to success. Some students, for instance, trust themselves and their own plans for success. Some students try to achieve success in their own ways that don't align with the plan for success that their instructors have for them. Some students think that there must be short-cuts to learning that their instructors just don't want to share. That's not true. Your instructors want to make it as easy for you to learn as possible. Some students confuse the inherent hard work that is required to learn something new with poor teaching or poor assignment design; they blame their instructors, and trust is broken. Resist this kind of thinking. Trust that your instructor will help you be successful if you follow the instructor's plan. So, for example, do not choose your decision analysis problem based on, for example, easy access to a former students' work. The only work from past students that will help you be successful is already contained in this text. Do not make up your own plan for success. Do not plagiarize other students' work or cheat (e.g., by asking someone else to do your work).

I suggest that you actively avoid reviewing anything created by former students except what you find in this textbook. Work done by former students will distract you and, if you copy it, your work will not only be plagiarized; it will also be useless. Work done by others will have already been polished through that student's previous self and peer review efforts that included comments from that student's instructor. It is expected that you start with your own ideas and build on those with the trusted help of your instructor and this text. That is the path to success. That is the path to a useful analysis that will make you proud.

So, you have to decide that you are going to follow the guidance provided by this text and your instructor. For you to do your best, follow the path outlined in this text. That will be more likely than any other path to lead you to success (e.g., an A in the course). Other paths (e.g., plagiarism and cheating) will not lead to success. This is true even if you consider yourself a very poor writer. If you are a poor writer, that's okay. Trust this text. Trust your instructor. Study and follow the instructions carefully, step-by-step. Do your best. Ask your instructor questions when needed.

In short, do not look to anywhere else other than to yourself, your instructor, and this text for how to select a good decision problem to analyze. Do not try to adapt or modify any analysis from any former student or from the Internet.

5.3 Pursue Your Interests

You will likely be more motivated and pleased with the final product of your analysis  if you choose a question that has personal meaning to you. Think about your past experiences (e.g., summer jobs). Your personal experiences can provide you with useful details for your analysis.

Also, think about your personal interests and about the contacts that you would like to create. For this assignment, you will have to conduct interviews with a decision maker. You might want to use this course as a reason to make a new professional contact with an industry participants or leader. Your work on your analysis can be a great excuse to develop valuable professional contacts. These people might be interested in your analysis (when it's finished) or having you work on a project of current concern.

Consider too the kinds of decision tasks that you think will be interesting to employers who you would like to work with in the future. If you are interested in working for an international agribusiness, you might choose a decision task that involves a location decision (e.g., expanding into a new international market) or that looks at a problem related to cross-cultural communications. Ideally, you should look for markets that meet all three of these personal criteria (Figure 1).

5.4 Be Practical

Of course, practical considerations are important too. You are probably a busy person, and you may be wondering what market will be the easiest to analyze. The major objective of this market analysis assignment is to learn more about technical communication in economics. You can learn those lessons even if you choose a market that is not your favorite. 

1. Data is Great. The practical key to an easy and successful historical market analysis is finding the data as soon as possible. For an historical market analysis, you need data for a market where you have an initial market quantity and price (e.g., Q1 and P1) plus a subsequent market quantity and price (e.g., Q2 and P2), and where you observe a change in one of these two (either Q or P) that is both significant (i.e., not just part of a constant, ever-increasing or decreasing upward trend) and non-obvious (i.e., the cause of the change in Q or P is not readily clear). Be aware that changes in inflation (e.g., in the late 1970s in the U.S.) will cause out-of-trend changes in market prices, but these price changes are not very interesting or useful to explain.   

There are many useful sources of historical data, including the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), the World Bank, and the US Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service (USDA ERS). The video link below shows how to gather market price and quantity data from the USDA ERS and how to find (using scatter plots in Excel) these out-of-trend movements in either market price or quantity.

HOW TO FIND DATA FOR INTERESTING HISTORICAL MARKET ANALYSES (36:58)

2. Products are Good. Product markets tend to be less complicated than service or labor markets. An example of a product market is the local retail market for locally-produced, organic, free-range whole fryers in Lexington, Kentucky. A service market example would be the local market for basic, high-end equine surgery in Lexington, Kentucky. Products tend to be easier to define characteristically than services. The marketing chains for products also tend to be simpler. Service markets tend to have inputs only, but those inputs can be more difficult to identify. A labor market example would be the regional market for rural farm appraisers in western Kentucky.

3. Competition is Good. Markets for competitively traded products and services tend to be easier to analyze than markets for branded or government financed / regulated products and services. This means you should generally avoid monopolized markets (e.g., markets for local utilities like water and electricity or markets that otherwise have one producer). Markets for branded products are typically defined as monopolistically competitive markets (e.g., markets for McDonald's-branded restaurant food). You should generally avoid these markets too, unless however you can define the market more generally to include similar products. For example, markets for McDonald's-branded restaurant food would be more challenging to analyze (branded product, too specific) than markets for convenient, low-cost restaurant food (unbranded, more general) in a given area. Similarly, markets for products and services supplied, controlled, or regulated by governments or non-profit entities are also more complicated to analyze, again due to a lack of market competition among multiple producers. For example, markets for public walking trails, large firework displays, and homeless shelters may not exist due to a lack of market competition. Where these and similar markets do exist, market-distorting public intervention usually makes them particularly difficult to analyze. For similar reasons, you should generally avoid markets for illegal products and services (i.e., "black markets") since they are relatively difficult to analyze (e.g., markets for illegal drugs). Historical markets that examines periods of time from high regulation to lower regulation (or vice versa) are exceptions to this general rule; those markets are relatively easy to analyze, all else being equal.

6.0 EXAMLE STUDENT PRESENTATIONS

Below are several examples of final presentations from former students. These examples are provided here merely to show you generally the overall form of the prescribed argument. Each presentation is about 10 minutes long. Avoid taking specific content from these former students. Instead, follow the specific suggestions outlined in this text and create your own useful analysis. Your analysis should be different and hopefully better than those shown here. 

Be sure to note the year when these analyses were published. A "current" niche analysis typically examines a period of five years into the future starting with whatever the current year is. For example, a "current" analysis that that examines the period "2015 to 2020" would only be appropriate if the report was prepared and published in 2015. If you are working on a "current" analysis in 2025, you will likely examine the period "2025 to 2030" (i.e., five years into the future from the current year). 

Also, note that this text is updated periodically, and as a result some analyses may differ in certain, sometimes significant, ways from the analysis that this text currently describes. The more recent examples will have the fewest differences.  All student work is used here with permission. 

• Shelby Wade.  Fall 2015. "The Impact of the PED Virus on Farm-Direct Swine Markets in North Eastern Kentucky: A Historical Analysis from 2010 to 2015."  

• Connor Caudill. Fall 2019. "An Historical Analysis of the National Market for Farm-Level Corn (Maize) in the United States: 2005 to 2012."

----------------------

[1] Evans, J. 2008. "Dual-Processing Accounts of Reasoning, Judgment, and Social Cognition". Annual Review of Psychology. 59: 255–278.

[2] Pennycook, G., J. Fugelsang, and D. Koehler. 2015. "Everyday Consequences of Analytic Thinking." Current Directions in Psychological Science. 4(26): 425-432.

[3] Frederick, S. 2005. "Cognitive Reflection and Decision Making." The Journal of Economic Perspectives. 19: 25-42.

[4] David McCullough is an American author, historian, and recipient of the Presidential Medial of Freedom, two Pulitzer prizes, and two National Book awards.  This quote is from his interview with NEH chairman Bruce Cole (Humanities, 2002, 23).

[5] Kahneman, Daniel. 2011. Thinking, Fast and Slow. Macmillan.

[6]  Parsons, Jay. 2016. "Seven Characteristics of a Good Decision." Nebraska: University of Nebraska-Lincoln.