Choosing a Reference Organization

For the Session-Long projects, you will be asked to select an organizationto use as a focus for your application of economic ideas. You must use the same organization for all 5 SLP’s.

Just below is a link to a listing of 27 companies, all have common stock that has been issued to the public (called a public corporation), and all are on the most widely used index of how well or poorly the general stock market is doing, the S&P500 Index.

In the left column is the trading symbol of the company, if you have seen a stock ticker these are the symbols that crawl by. The next column is the company name, and the third is a brief identification of the industry the company is a part of. I have provided companies from several different industries so that you have a good variety from which to choose.

See company choices. EBAY IS COMPANY I CHOSE

Using google will be an excellent way of finding out more details of what the main business is of the chosen company, and other general information that will be useful for the assignment. If you know how to use a financial data base you can use the trading symbol to access information, but this will not be necessary so do not worry if you do not know how to do this, the use of google should be more than sufficient.

For the Module 1 component of the Project, please address the following questions in a 2 to 3-page MS Word document:

1. Identify and briefly describe the organization you are going to use. Why do you think it will be an interesting focus for your application of economic ideas?
2. Pick two of the Big Ideas referred to in Basic Terminology in Economics presentation. Discuss how they apply to your organization.
3. Think about your firm in terms of the circular flow diagram. Explain the two roles of the firm and how it applies to your franchise.

   Think about the financial situation for your reference organization. If you’re using an unconventional organization, you may have to get a little creative here.

4. Assess the overall financial health of your organization? What are good and bad signs, if any, in your assessment? Measures of financial health may include sales and/or profit increases or decreases, if employees are being hired or laid off, major new orders being placed or orders being cancelled. These are some but not all measures that could be looked at but if you are using an unconventional organization, you may have to get a little creative here.

SLP Assignment Expectations

Length: 2-3 typed and double-spaced pages.

In addition to the overall quality, depth, grammar, and organization of the paper, the following will, in particular, be assessed:

1. Your ability to apply economic concepts to a given single organization.