210102 SE M5: European Political Economy An Integrated, Hands-on Approach Using R (2024W)

Students are required to attend classes and come prepared. Three assignments will make up their final grade (there will be no student presentations). The first assignment needs to be done by every student themselves, whereas the second and third assignment can also be done in groups of two.

- The first assignment consists of two in-depth response papers on two of the three main substantive sessions (week 3, week 5, week 8). These reflection papers should be between 600 and 800 words and will make up *20%* of the overall grade. These response papers are not meant to be summaries of the texts. Instead, students should reflect on how the theories, arguments, or approaches discussed in the readings could inform their own final term paper.

- The second assignment consists of 3 short and basic coding tasks that requires students to import, transform, and visualize data related to the various substantive areas we cover. This, too, will make up *20%* of their overall grade. Assignments will be administered through Posit Cloud (formerly RStudio Cloud).

- The third assignment will be a final research paper that independently develops a EPE-related research questions and *starts* elaborating and answering it with data. Elaborating means that students use `R` to set up an empirical puzzle or potentially interesting question (e.g. by showing an interesting correlation or descriptive statistics). Answering means using visualization, descriptive analysis, or basic inferential statistics to sketch an answer or possible ways of going about answering the question more systematically. The emphasis here is less on having a fully-fledged, well-polished final paper than on demonstrating that you have understood how one would could, in principle, go about developing, theoretically grounding, and answering a EPE-related research question. Ideally, you can build on your reflection papers and coding experience from the first two assignments; and perhaps you can even build on your research paper in your M.A. thesis. This final research paper will make up *60%* of your overall grade. It is meant to be between 4000-5000 words long (if you decide to write the paper with a fellow student, it should be between 7500-9000 words long). The deadline for the paper will be **Wednesday, Feb 19, 2025**.