Finding your Group  

Presentation Calendar  

Preparation 

Presentation Format 

Presentation Appraisals

Presentation Topics The presentation topics for this year are:  

1.  Globalization of national economies: the challenge. 
2.  Asian economic crisis 
3.  Human Develop. Report - The State of Human Development (1,2) 
4.  Human Develop. Report - Consumption & Human Development (3,4,5) 
5.  World Development Report  
  

Finding your Group Identify two topics of your interest and look for students with similar interests. Based on experience, I recommend to you to look for students from a different major than yours, and even with different points of view than yours. Working with persons who are different than you will expand your understanding and will give you a sense of how real work environments are. 

Once you make a choice, fill in the following form and submit it to me. 
After receiving the requests from all students I will assign you to a group trying to satisfy your preferences. 
 
 
 

Presentation Calendar (to be determined) Group 1:  October 27, 1998 
Group 2:  October 29, 1998 
Group 3:  November 5, 1998 
Group 4:  November 19, 1998 
Group 5:  December 3, 1998 
 
 

Preparation Group members will arrange working meetings outside the class hours. You are also encouraged to communicate via e-mail.One practice followed in the past was to assign a chapter or section to each student member. 
As you will have limited time try to communicate the most important idea. Support this idea with a statistical graph. Use presentation programs, like Power Point or other similar ones. 
Discuss the strategy of your presentation with the Instructor. I will feed you back regarding content and pedagogy. 
 
 

Presentation Format Stages: 

• During the first hour of class the group members make their presentations.
• During the brake, all students help themselves with food and refreshments prepared by the group members. At the same time, each student who is attending write in a card a question or comment regarding the presentation. The group members bring the cards. The group moderator collects the cards and together with the Instructor organize them into few major questions.
• During the second hour of class, the moderator read one question and one group member answer or comment about it. Attending students can interrupt for clarifications or further comments. Then the moderator proceeds with the next question, and so on.

Environment: 
We will imagine that the presenters are a group of professional economists making a presentation to the World Bank or the Asian Development Bank, or to the United Nations, or to the Russian Parlament, or to a Development Agency or Foundation, or to a meeting of NGOs.. 
The group members are invited to dress with the formality of professionals working for those type of organizations. 

Food and Refreshment: 
As it is frequent on those kind of forums, the group members will prepare food and refreshments for all class members. It is suggested to choose a theme, say Indian food if its about Asia, Ukrainian food if  it is about transition economies, Peasant foods if its about poverty or similar issues, and so for. Use your creativity and skills with the intention of making us sensitive to the culture of other people, at the same time that we have a pleasent moment. 
         

Presentation Appraisals On Globalization Michael Foster 
Alisha Jacobson 
Steve Mihaylov 
Brandon Mills 
Stephanie Meldgaard 
Thank you to Michael, Alisha, Steve, Brandon and Stephanie for going first and setting a good standard for Student Presentations this semester. 
These presentations have two major learning goals: learning to communicate economic and social issues in a professional way; getting acquainted with contemporaneous issues about development. 
On Process 
The following observations intend to provide all you with more communication skills. 
1. Make a distinction between lecturing students and presenting ideas or proposals to policy makers. In lecturing, it is fine to be informal and to get lost in the notes. In professional presentations, one is expected to be well organized and focused on the subject. 
2. As you have limited time to make your points, it is better not to quote bibliographic references, except than some one ask for them. 
3. If you will quote measurements it is more effective to present a graphic or table. In this way the audience can appreciate the trend, or the relative importance. 
4. Replace expressions such as "very important" with measurements or other facts that tell by themselves the "importance." 
5. Your style introduced a good flow to the presentation. It created an attitude of opening and a behavior of listening among us. 
On Content 
1. What globalization is, and how different it is from other processes like interdependence and internationalization, are issues that you tried to explore. It is not ease! I work with a simple idea: globalization is the result of a bottom-up approach, resulting from the microeconomics of firms; interdependence is the result of a top-down approach, resulting from government and corporation interventions. I reserve the word globalization for economic processes, say, the globalization of national economies. 
2. It is not clear that globalization is the result of multinational corporations. Indeed it has opened a space for multiple small and medium size businesses, many of them in low-income countries. Globalization implies that the production process of one good is spread across many nation states. Multinational corporations --at least in the beginning-- had production plants in different nations, say, Ford or Fiat produced the whole car in Argentina, and Egypt, or Spain. Their production processes were not spread, except that they "imported" some parts from other countries. 
3. As you said in your presentation, globalization is largely the result of technological changes in communications, electronics and transportation. 
4. It seems to me that together with the globalization of the national economies, we observe the weakness, or even disintegration, of some nation states. Could it be that once the world is one-production process, nation states are not as necessary? I mean that they are not necessary for the economy; they may still be necessary for society and culture. In this case, however, we may return to city or regional states, as it was before the invention of nations: a relatively modern phenomenon. Thoughts? 
5. As a consequence of the invention of nation states, market expanded from local areas or cities into larger areas, making possible large scale production. Could it be that now national markets are too small? 
5. Is the USA --or India or China-- a nation like Portugal or El Salvador?, or a "small" United Nations?