Economics EE ideas

[Lynxarin]

Hi,

 

I have decided to do my EE in economics and have some ideas/RQs that I would like your feedback on. 

 

 

1. "Rise in property prices in my area". How could I investigate this, and is it at all a good idea?

 

2. "To what extent is Wärtsilä's exports affected by the euros exchange rate?" Wärtsilä is a international company where i have a lot of relatives working. It produces huge diesel engines for ships or as power plants that are exported around the world. My cousins mother works there as an economist and could probably supply me with data. I could choose a emerging market or LDC, such as Myanmar or Indonesia because my father is project manager for South East Asia and the Middle East. Also, I could choose country or region if I find a currency that has increased or decreased a lot relative to the euro in the past 3 years. 

 

3. "To what extent are airline alliances decreasing the level of competition from the actual level of competition?" This idea is not too developed, but I could choose a specific route, for example Helsinki - Singapore, since then I could compare Finnair (OneWorld) and Singapore Airlines (Star Alliance) and look for differences and changes over time. 

 

4. "Has the Finnish governments' tax incentive lead to a rise in new car sales in Vaasa"?  The government has decided to give 1500 € to everyone who buys a brand new car from the store, with the hope that it will "modernize" the Finnish car park, since we have the oldest cars in the whole EU, on an average measured. I am not sure though, if this incentive is used already, or if it will come later this year. 

 

5. "To what extent has the governments imposition of a 2€ tax increase on cigarette packages affected demand for *insert for example Marlboro Red in my area"? - This is similar to the first one, I am not sure when it will be seen in the stores though. 

 

Thanks for any help, you do not have to comment on all of them, but alternatives 2, 4, and 5 are the most realistic, for now. 

[Masoomali fatehkia]

You seem to have a variety of ideas which is good since you can narrow down from there and it is also wise of you to be considering as to whether you can get enough data for a given topic as nothing is worse than frustration over not having enough data to research on a topic. One suggestion I can give is to try and look how you could tie your topics to specific areas of the IB economics course (eg: topic 4 could be microeconomics: elasticity of demand, taxes etc.). One thing that this will help you with is understanding which topic areas of economics you are dealing with, what kind of knowledge and tools you need and how much beyond the IB syllabus you might need to go for that. If something requires you to go too far beyond what you learn in your economics course it might be quite unpractical to pursue. 

As for your topics they seem plausible topics to follow although you would have to work on a more precise research question. For example for number 2, are you going to be looking for exports of a particular set of products by the company? what period of time are you looking at? exports to what regions?. I think number 2 could be promising if you have access to the needed data. As for tying it to the course, you need to see what economic concepts would be relevant (is it international economics: exchange rates etc., microeconomics: theory of the firm etc.).

Topics 4 and 5 also look plausible if you know any means of gathering data that you might need either through government publications or other ways.