The document provides guidance for students writing a research paper on the effects of the Great Depression. It outlines choosing a topic, gathering research materials through databases and other sources, and developing an outline. One student chose to analyze how the Great Depression still affects America today. Their proposal and outline discusses the stock market crash of 1929, the devastation of the US economy, and lasting impacts such as income inequality. The deadline for submitting the topic proposal and final paper is also provided.

1. Summer 2019
Research Paper: Handout 1
Outline:
1) Choosing a Topic
2) Gathering Data
The research paper that you will write this term will be a
challenge. It will force you to come up with an original issue to
analyze, a daunting task for professional economists! It will
force you to truly understand an area of financial markets in
minute detail. You will have to scrounge the library and
Internet for any information, whether main or tangential, that
pertains to your topic. Chances are, however, that you will
enjoy it. Besides of choosing an issue that interests you, rather
than having me choose one at random, you will put more effort
(of your own choosing) into the project. You will also gain
valuable research and writing experience, skills that will aid in
college classes and in other areas of life. Finally, financial
knowledge never hurts anyone – only financial ignorance does.
Let me start with a few ground rules. Two weeks past the last
day of the program, no later than Friday, July 2nd at 5:00pm,
you will send me this project via email. It will be
approximately fifteen typed pages (about 4,000 words. Don’t
single-space the paper, with ¼ inch margins just so it fits on
fifteen pages!); this number can include graphs and tables,
though it is permissible to go over twenty pages if you have
included copious graph/tables. If you do not turn in the final
draft of your paper by the deadline stated above, you will
receive a zero, and will most definitely fail the program.
1) Choosing a topic

2. a) Choosing a topic can be daunting, just because the
choices in subject matter are overwhelming. Banking and
financial markets encompass so many aspects of our life and
culture, from the mundane and highly local to international in
scope. Keep in mind that I would like you to choose a topic
that interests you, not a topic that you may think interests me.
Some of the best projects that I have read have been on subjects
about which I previously knew nothing. Here is a small sample
of topics (actual student Wall Street semester papers):
● The end of the NYSE? Electronic Trading and the Future of
Financial Markets
● Dishonesty and Discrimination in Financial Markets
● Playing Close to the Hedge: An Overview of Hedge Funds,
Hedge Fund Failures, and Hedge Fund Regulation
● Risk Aversion in Financial Markets
● Capital Controls: The Development of the World’s Dominant
Financial Centers
● Predatory Lending and the Happy Homeowner
● Deconstructing the Asian Financial Crisis and Mexican Peso
Crisis
● LBOs and Private Equity Groups
● Over-regulation or Under-regulation in United States
Financial Markets?
● The Best of Both Worlds: NYSE’s Commitment to Ongoing
Success
● The Origins and Consequences of The Sarbanes-Oxley Act
● Private Equity: Angel or Barbarian?
● Bitcoin, Apple Pay, and Amazon Stores: Oh My! The
Evolution and Future of Money
● A Study of Insider Trading and Its Market Effects
● Detroit and Puerto Rico: What Caused the Debt Defaults?
● Market Globalization: Links between the stock markets of the
U.S., Britain, and Japan
● How do Hedge Funds Affect Financial Markets? Insight and
Analysis

3. ● International Lending and Its Effect on Sub-Saharan Africa
● The effect of financial markets on global economic
development (focus on India’s Grameen Bank)
● Flash Boys or Con Men? The efficiency and inequity of high-
speed trading
● The effect of financial markets on local economic
development (ie: Red Bulls stadium, new Yankees stadium,
etc.)
● A Parasitic or Symbiotic Relationship? The Federal
Reserve System and Wall Street
● How the Great Depression still affects America Today
● Are Big Corporate Wall Street Mergers good for
America?
● Does International Agency Lending Help or Hurt Developing
Countries? The World Bank under a Magnifying Glass
I will say this once: BE ORIGINAL!! (Do NOT limit yourself
to one of these topics!)
b) Bibliography
Once you have chosen a topic, you need to conduct a literature
search. You need to find out what other people have written on
the subject. There will ALWAYS be some papers that relate to
your topic, no matter how indirectly. Trust me on this one.
Come talk to me if you can find no hint of useful materials.
The first step to this process is to go into an electronic database
called EconLit. From an Internet browser such as Mozilla, go
to the Drew Library home page (available from Drew’s main
page – just choose Drew Community at the top of the page). Go
to Research >> Online Resources >> Economics (under ‘Social
Sciences’) >> EconLit. Then, follow the instructions in the

4. database to conduct a search (keywords, etc.) One useful
property of EconLit is that you can email the results of your
search to your account. Even better, most of the journal articles
that you find will be downloadable in .pdf format. It may turn
out, depending on your topic, that you will not have to visit the
library at all! (unless you are focusing on an issue that is more
historical in nature)
Other online resources include online journal and news articles.
To get to these links from the Drew Library home page, go to
Research >> Online Resources >> Economics (under ‘Social
Sciences’ >>
Proquest – though it contains fewer ‘real’ economics articles,
there are many online business articles here, dating back to
the mid-1980s. These would be good to motivate your topic,
especially in the introduction.
Business Source Premier – roughly similar to Proquest, but a) it
includes business journal articles, and b) it goes back to the
1960s
Lexis-Nexis Academic – contains full-text versions of articles
from almost every U.S. newspaper.
One very important note: make sure that a portion of your
bibliography (at least three, and preferably five or more
citations) consists of articles from books and professional
journals, such as the Journal of Monetary Economics or
American Economic Review. I won’t accept a bibliography
consisting solely of articles from Time, Newsweek and Yahoo.
This is economics and business! You need some semblance of
models, not gossip from a chat room!
You must turn in your topic proposal (which should begin with
a sentence stating the facet of banking and/or financial markets

5. you have chosen to analyze, and a one-paragraph, more detailed
explanation below) by the evening of Wednesday, June 12.
c) Outline: Suffice to say, everyone’s paper will be quite
different. Therefore, a generic outline will hardly help many
of you. But I offer one anyway, so that you may get a handle
on how to study your issue.
1. Introduction (state issue and why it is of importance)
2. Background (here you will want to go into the history of the
subject. For example, if you are looking at how the equity
market structures of the U.S. and Canada differ, you would want
to talk about the creation of these institutions in the ei ghteenth
and nineteenth centuries, as well as how the two sets of systems
have withstood financial turmoil)
3. The Issue at Hand – an explanation of the current issue
4. Policy Recommendations (or how you see the issue changing
in the future, ie: the future of the U.S. equities markets)
5. Conclusion (just a wrap-up of what you have talked about in
the past ten pages)
2) Data
You WILL be required to analyze and discuss financial data in
your project! More about this, including data sources, will be
forthcoming.
Deadline (once again):
Wednesday, June 12 Paper Proposal Due (title and brief
description)
Tuesday, July 2 Final Version of Paper Due, by
5:00pm! No exceptions!!
Summer 2019

6. Research Paper: Handout 1
Outline:
1) Choosing a Topic
2) Gathering Data
The research paper that you will write this term will be a
challenge. It will force you to come up with an original issue to
analyze, a daunting task for professional economists! It will
force you to truly understand an area of financial markets in
minute detail. You will have to scrounge the library and
Internet for any information, whether main or tangential, that
pertains to your topic. Chances are, however, that you will
enjoy it. Besides of choosing an issue that interests you, rather
than having me choose one at random, you will put more effort
(of your own choosing) into the project. You will also gain
valuable research and writing experience, skills that will aid in
college classes and in other areas of life. Finally, financial
knowledge never hurts anyone – only financial ignorance does.
Let me start with a few ground rules. Two weeks past the last
day of the program, no later than Friday, July 2nd at 5:00pm,
you will send me this project via email. It will be
approximately fifteen typed pages (about 4,000 words. Don’t
single-space the paper, with ¼ inch margins just so it fits on
fifteen pages!); this number can include graphs and tables,
though it is permissible to go over twenty pages if you have
included copious graph/tables. If you do not turn in the final
draft of your paper by the deadline stated above, you will
receive a zero, and will most definitely fail the program.
1) Choosing a topic
a) Choosing a topic can be daunting, just because the
choices in subject matter are overwhelming. Banking and
financial markets encompass so many aspects of our life and

7. culture, from the mundane and highly local to international in
scope. Keep in mind that I would like you to choose a topic
that interests you, not a topic that you may think interests me.
Some of the best projects that I have read have been on subjects
about which I previously knew nothing. Here is a small sample
of topics (actual student Wall Street semester papers):
● The end of the NYSE? Electronic Trading and the Future of
Financial Markets
● Dishonesty and Discrimination in Financial Markets
● Playing Close to the Hedge: An Overview of Hedge Funds,
Hedge Fund Failures, and Hedge Fund Regulation
● Risk Aversion in Financial Markets
● Capital Controls: The Development of the World’s Dominant
Financial Centers
● Predatory Lending and the Happy Homeowner
● Deconstructing the Asian Financial Crisis and Mexican Peso
Crisis
● LBOs and Private Equity Groups
● Over-regulation or Under-regulation in United States
Financial Markets?
● The Best of Both Worlds: NYSE’s Commitment to Ongoing
Success
● The Origins and Consequences of The Sarbanes-Oxley Act
● Private Equity: Angel or Barbarian?
● Bitcoin, Apple Pay, and Amazon Stores: Oh My! The
Evolution and Future of Money
● A Study of Insider Trading and Its Market Effects
● Detroit and Puerto Rico: What Caused the Debt Defaults?
● Market Globalization: Links between the stock markets of the
U.S., Britain, and Japan
● How do Hedge Funds Affect Financial Markets? Insight and
Analysis
● International Lending and Its Effect on Sub-Saharan Africa
● The effect of financial markets on global economic
development (focus on India’s Grameen Bank)

8. ● Flash Boys or Con Men? The efficiency and inequity of high-
speed trading
● The effect of financial markets on local economic
development (ie: Red Bulls stadium, new Yankees stadium,
etc.)
● A Parasitic or Symbiotic Relationship? The Federal
Reserve System and Wall Street
● How the Great Depression still affects America Today
● Are Big Corporate Wall Street Mergers good for
America?
● Does International Agency Lending Help or Hurt Developing
Countries? The World Bank under a Magnifying Glass
I will say this once: BE ORIGINAL!! (Do NOT limit yourself
to one of these topics!)
b) Bibliography
Once you have chosen a topic, you need to conduct a literature
search. You need to find out what other people have written on
the subject. There will ALWAYS be some papers that relate to
your topic, no matter how indirectly. Trust me on this one.
Come talk to me if you can find no hint of useful materials.
The first step to this process is to go into an electronic database
called EconLit. From an Internet browser such as Mozilla, go
to the Drew Library home page (available from Drew ’s main
page – just choose Drew Community at the top of the page). Go
to Research >> Online Resources >> Economics (under ‘Social
Sciences’) >> EconLit. Then, follow the instructions in the
database to conduct a search (keywords, etc.) One useful
property of EconLit is that you can email the results of your
search to your account. Even better, most of the journal articles

9. that you find will be downloadable in .pdf format. It may turn
out, depending on your topic, that you will not have to visit the
library at all! (unless you are focusing on an issue that is more
historical in nature)
Other online resources include online journal and news articles.
To get to these links from the Drew Library home page, go to
Research >> Online Resources >> Economics (under ‘Social
Sciences’ >>
Proquest – though it contains fewer ‘real’ economics articles,
there are many online business articles here, dating back to
the mid-1980s. These would be good to motivate your topic,
especially in the introduction.
Business Source Premier – roughly similar to Proquest, but a) it
includes business journal articles, and b) it goes back to the
1960s
Lexis-Nexis Academic – contains full-text versions of articles
from almost every U.S. newspaper.
One very important note: make sure that a portion of your
bibliography (at least three, and preferably five or more
citations) consists of articles from books and professional
journals, such as the Journal of Monetary Economics or
American Economic Review. I won’t accept a bibliography
consisting solely of articles from Time, Newsweek and Yahoo.
This is economics and business! You need some semblance of
models, not gossip from a chat room!
You must turn in your topic proposal (which should begin with
a sentence stating the facet of banking and/or financial markets
you have chosen to analyze, and a one-paragraph, more detailed
explanation below) by the evening of Wednesday, June 12.

10. c) Outline: Suffice to say, everyone’s paper will be quite
different. Therefore, a generic outline will hardly help many
of you. But I offer one anyway, so that you may get a handle
on how to study your issue.
1. Introduction (state issue and why it is of importance)
2. Background (here you will want to go into the history of the
subject. For example, if you are looking at how the equity
market structures of the U.S. and Canada differ, you would want
to talk about the creation of these institutions in the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries, as well as how the two sets of systems
have withstood financial turmoil)
3. The Issue at Hand – an explanation of the current issue
4. Policy Recommendations (or how you see the issue changing
in the future, ie: the future of the U.S. equities markets)
5. Conclusion (just a wrap-up of what you have talked about in
the past ten pages)
2) Data
You WILL be required to analyze and discuss financial data in
your project! More about this, including data sources, will be
forthcoming.
Deadline (once again):
Wednesday, June 12 Paper Proposal Due (title and brief
description)
Tuesday, July 2 Final Version of Paper Due, by
5:00pm! No exceptions!!
EFFECTS OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION 1
EFFECTS OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION 2

11. Effects of The Great Depression
(Student Name)
(Institutional Affiliation)
Proposal
How the Great Depression still affects America Today? I intend
to analyze how the issue The Great Depression of 1929
devastates the United States economy.
Outline
Introduction
The topic of great depression helps us to understand the face of
the United States in the significant turmoil following the
economic collapse in the country. The Great Depression is the
greatest catastrophe in the United States, and it is crucial in
understanding how several factors in a nation can blend into
economic misery.
Background
The Great Depression was caused by the stock market crash of
1929 due to a drop in the Dow James industrial average by
eleven percent (Elder, 2018). As a result, the investors
panicked, and they began selling their shares in large volumes,
making Dow decline. Besides, there was another panic in the
New York Stock Exchange, which made the investors sell their
shares in unpreceded numbers (Adams, 2017). Indeed, the

12. market fell by another twelve percent since more than sixteen
million shares were traded on that particular day. Many people
in the United States choose to buy gold rather than putting their
money in socks since the American economy was shattered and
people lost their confidence in the banks and Wall Street.
The Issue at Hand
The current issue at hand is the impacts of the Great Depression
in the United States today. One of the effects of the Great
Depression in the United States presently is income inequality.
For instance, many Americans in the top one percent of the
income in 2012 have held the same income position since 1928
(Veblen, 2017). Since the Great Depression occurred, the
employment increased significantly with the rapid increase in
the industries, but the salaries of the workers failed to rise. As a
result, the spending decreased, which caused a decline in the
stock price since people could no longer afford most of the
products. Additionally, there was a market crash which affected
the belief in the United States financial system. Indeed, many
banks were greatly affected as Americans began pulling their
money from these banks, which made many backs across the
country to close.
Policy Recommendations
Several policies can be embrace to assist the economy when
stuck in any recessions. Moreover, the government should
improve the overall functioning of the country’s economy if the
markets fail to allocate adequate resources. One of the policy
remedies is the government’s monetary policy. Along with the
monetary policy is the fiscal policy and the stabilization policy.
Indeed, these remedies can help in increasing the overall
aggregate spending in a nation and increase the GDP as well.
Conclusion
People can embrace several policies in the future to avoid such
catastrophe from retaking the place. The Federal Reserve failed
to provide the necessary aid to many banks across the country
during the Great Depression, making them collapse. Thus, the
Federal Reserve should be more aggressive and active in

13. creating cash and financing banks. Increasing the money supply
to banks can aid in reducing income inequality and shortages in
case people choose to withdraw large sums of money.
Additionally, the government can increase its expenditure by
building more infrastructure and employing more people.
Decreasing the tax cuts as well can assist in stimulating the
economy, which indeed increases the deficit.
Bibliography
Adams, J. T., (2017). The epic of America. Routledge.
Elder, G. H., (2018). Children of the great depression.
Routledge.
Veblen, T., (2017). Absentee Ownership: Business Enterprise in
Recent Times-The Case of America. Routledge.
Proposal:
How will Russia’s market turmoil in 2008, and subsequent
reform, affect global and regional financial markets? Is
democracy in Russia doomed, by the very forces it has tried to
emulate?
I intend to analyze how the sweeping democratization in
the former heart of the Soviet Union has changed the country,
as well as how it has coped with the developmental and
financial problems that have emerged in the past few years.
Government inefficiency and financial speculation have at times
brought Russia to the brink of economic ruin. Can Russia
survive more of these crises? Can stable investment
opportunities be sustained?
Outline:
Introduction
More in-depth statement of proposal. Include
very recent events (say, over the past few days or
weeks). Also, include motivation – why is this
topic of interest to people?
Democracy

14. History of the past twenty years. Include
discussion of the former Soviet Union and its
collapse. Also include various financial crises that
occurred soon after. Structure of financial markets in
Russia.
Market Events and Discussion of Issue
Discuss 1998’s turmoil (near default on government bonds,
subsequent collapse of ruble and their effects on global
financial markets). Also mention the situation in 2008, which
involves utter collapse of Russian stock markets (70% drop in
index in one week alone!)
Suggestions for financial market stability
Responsible government regulation is key to financial survival!
Also, a stable market is necessary to get rid of as much risk as
possible – need confident investors!
Conclusion
Bibliography:
1. Buch, Claudia M.; Heinrich, Ralph P.; and Christian
Pierdzioch, 1999, The Value of Waiting: Russia's Integration
into the International Capital Markets. Journal of Comparative
Economics, Vol 27, no. 2, pp. 209 – 230.
2. Kirkow, Peter, 1999, Foreign Trade Arrangements in Russia
and Its Regions: Relying on Foreign Capital to Generate
Growth? Post-Communist Economies, Vol 11, No. 1, pp. 79-98.
3. Kochetkova, O., 1998, The Economic Consequences of the
Government Crisis in Russia. (The Situation in the Financial
Market), Problems of Economic Transition, v41 n6, pp. 80-88.
4. Slay, Ben, 1999, An Interpretation of the Russian Financial
Crisis, Post-Soviet Geography and Economics, v40 n3, pp. 206-
14.

15. 5. Hedlund, Stefan, 1999, Russia's market economy : a bad case
of predatory capitalism, London : UCL Publishers.