Economics Extended Essay- Occupy Central

[Rahul Daswani]

Sorry for the repost everyone, I'm just really stressed and would love to get a range of different opinions

 

Hey All,

 

This is my first post here so sorry If I'm doing it wrong. Basically my extended essay (for economics) title is 'To what extent has the Occupy Central movement negatively affected the luxury jewellery and watch firms in the central district?'. So my supervisor said the topic was fine to do, and it is now summer and I am writing it up. However, I'm genuinely scared that I wont have enough 'economics' as such. I have conducted primary research, talking to a range of different luxury jewellers in the area, and many said that they did lose sales due to the movement, and many said they were forced to close down. I have gotten other data too but I don't want to digress. 

 

Anyways, I am about 1200 words in (I've done my intro, objective, methodology etc) and because I felt like I didnt have enough economics I wrote quite a bit on the market structure of jewellery in the central district. Do you guys think that writing about the market structure would be too off topic, as I feel like I really don't have much economics other than demand and supply? I was thinking about talking, and researching about the elasticities (PED particularly) for luxury jewellery, but once again it doesn't really relate to the topic.

 

I feel like I can simply answer my question by just saying "yes it has negatively affected them, stores closed etc etc". Am I missing anything out that can be more directly related to my topic and economics?

 

Thanks so much   

 

P.S. I'm 99% sure it's too late to change topic and my supervisor sucks and won't reply to any of my emails or anything (we are now on summer break, so I don't have school to see her) 

[Youss]

Hey Rahul,

 

I feel you. From my opinion, my RQ could be easily answered as well. That doesn't mean that you can't write a 4000 words economics paper on it . Here are some things to consider while writing your EE.

First of all, the major thing you should keep in mind is that throughout your EE you should try to answer the question HOW. So if you hypothesize that "it has negatively affected them" try to show how. You did by saying that the stores were closed, now ask yourself how again. How did the Occupy Central movement make the jewelry and watch companies close their doors? Just keep asking how.

Secondly, if you haven't yet, try to define what you mean by "negatively affected". It seems like it's the "command term" of your RQ. 6 people could read it and have 6 different interpretations of it. So I would suggest you to explicitly state how you think the Occupy Central movement has negatively affected the markets that you are studying because it will constitute the backbone of your EE and will help you formulate a strong thesis.

Thirdly, don't forget to use diagrams. I have no idea what is the Occupy Central movement but let's say that they sell cheap jewels and watches. So due to the increase of competition in the market, the demand for jewels and watches of the firms of the central district decreased. You would show that on a diagram that displays the shift of D to the left. Then you would analyze the impacts that are visible on the diagram like decrease of profits, etc. In order to relevantly use the diagrams you would maybe have to determine the market structure of the jewels and watches industry in the central district. Given that your RQ is not directly about the market structure, you should not spend too much time one that. 
Last but not least don't forget to effectively collect relevant data. For example you would make survey that would help you illustrate the decrease of the number of firms in the central district, etc.

Hope it helped. I am so stressed out that I'm not even sure if it makes sense to you

 

Best,

Youss

[Rahul Daswani]

Hey Rahul,

 

I feel you. From my opinion, my RQ could be easily answered as well. That doesn't mean that you can't write a 4000 words economics paper on it . Here are some things to consider while writing your EE.

First of all, the major thing you should keep in mind is that throughout your EE you should try to answer the question HOW. So if you hypothesize that "it has negatively affected them" try to show how. You did by saying that the stores were closed, now ask yourself how again. How did the Occupy Central movement make the jewelry and watch companies close their doors? Just keep asking how.

Secondly, if you haven't yet, try to define what you mean by "negatively affected". It seems like it's the "command term" of your RQ. 6 people could read it and have 6 different interpretations of it. So I would suggest you to explicitly state how you think the Occupy Central movement has negatively affected the markets that you are studying because it will constitute the backbone of your EE and will help you formulate a strong thesis.

Thirdly, don't forget to use diagrams. I have no idea what is the Occupy Central movement but let's say that they sell cheap jewels and watches. So due to the increase of competition in the market, the demand for jewels and watches of the firms of the central district decreased. You would show that on a diagram that displays the shift of D to the left. Then you would analyze the impacts that are visible on the diagram like decrease of profits, etc. In order to relevantly use the diagrams you would maybe have to determine the market structure of the jewels and watches industry in the central district. Given that your RQ is not directly about the market structure, you should not spend too much time one that. 

Last but not least don't forget to effectively collect relevant data. For example you would make survey that would help you illustrate the decrease of the number of firms in the central district, etc.

Hope it helped. I am so stressed out that I'm not even sure if it makes sense to you

 

Best,

Youss

 

 

Aahaha thanks. You haven't heard of Occupy Central? It was that whole civil disobedience movement in Hong Kong for universal suffrage (basically to be free from China). Thing is I'm not 100% sure how to apply economics to that other than supply and demand, and a bit of the market structure (most closely resembles monopolistic competition). I'm just wondering whether anyone can spot any other economics in there, as even PED and stuff don't TRULY relate as prices never changed

[IBeer]

Sorry for the repost everyone, I'm just really stressed and would love to get a range of different opinions

 

Hey All,

 

This is my first post here so sorry If I'm doing it wrong. Basically my extended essay (for economics) title is 'To what extent has the Occupy Central movement negatively affected the luxury jewellery and watch firms in the central district?'. So my supervisor said the topic was fine to do, and it is now summer and I am writing it up. However, I'm genuinely scared that I wont have enough 'economics' as such. I have conducted primary research, talking to a range of different luxury jewellers in the area, and many said that they did lose sales due to the movement, and many said they were forced to close down. I have gotten other data too but I don't want to digress. 

 

Anyways, I am about 1200 words in (I've done my intro, objective, methodology etc) and because I felt like I didnt have enough economics I wrote quite a bit on the market structure of jewellery in the central district. Do you guys think that writing about the market structure would be too off topic, as I feel like I really don't have much economics other than demand and supply? I was thinking about talking, and researching about the elasticities (PED particularly) for luxury jewellery, but once again it doesn't really relate to the topic.

 

I feel like I can simply answer my question by just saying "yes it has negatively affected them, stores closed etc etc". Am I missing anything out that can be more directly related to my topic and economics?

 

Thanks so much   

 

P.S. I'm 99% sure it's too late to change topic and my supervisor sucks and won't reply to any of my emails or anything (we are now on summer break, so I don't have school to see her) 

That is certainly an interesting topic for an EE. My question would be how are you going to show that it's Occupy Central that caused them to shut down -  you have lots of qualitative data from the people you've spoken to, can you also get some quantitative data? sales before and after perhaps? Just qualitative data won't be strong enough to prove the causation

 

Market structures is not the most relevant thing to discuss in detail but you could look at the Occupy Movement as an external shock and bring in theories of demand and supply there. 

[Rahul Daswani]

 

Sorry for the repost everyone, I'm just really stressed and would love to get a range of different opinions

 

Hey All,

 

This is my first post here so sorry If I'm doing it wrong. Basically my extended essay (for economics) title is 'To what extent has the Occupy Central movement negatively affected the luxury jewellery and watch firms in the central district?'. So my supervisor said the topic was fine to do, and it is now summer and I am writing it up. However, I'm genuinely scared that I wont have enough 'economics' as such. I have conducted primary research, talking to a range of different luxury jewellers in the area, and many said that they did lose sales due to the movement, and many said they were forced to close down. I have gotten other data too but I don't want to digress. 

 

Anyways, I am about 1200 words in (I've done my intro, objective, methodology etc) and because I felt like I didnt have enough economics I wrote quite a bit on the market structure of jewellery in the central district. Do you guys think that writing about the market structure would be too off topic, as I feel like I really don't have much economics other than demand and supply? I was thinking about talking, and researching about the elasticities (PED particularly) for luxury jewellery, but once again it doesn't really relate to the topic.

 

I feel like I can simply answer my question by just saying "yes it has negatively affected them, stores closed etc etc". Am I missing anything out that can be more directly related to my topic and economics?

 

Thanks so much   

 

P.S. I'm 99% sure it's too late to change topic and my supervisor sucks and won't reply to any of my emails or anything (we are now on summer break, so I don't have school to see her) 

That is certainly an interesting topic for an EE. My question would be how are you going to show that it's Occupy Central that caused them to shut down -  you have lots of qualitative data from the people you've spoken to, can you also get some quantitative data? sales before and after perhaps? Just qualitative data won't be strong enough to prove the causation

 

Market structures is not the most relevant thing to discuss in detail but you could look at the Occupy Movement as an external shock and bring in theories of demand and supply there. 

 

 

 

Thanks for the response! I don't think I can classify the OC movement as an external shock as it didn't have HUGE impacts on the market. A few stores may have closed down for a few days, but nothing was absolutely permanent. I've gotten figures from different retailers, some saying they had a 30% drop in sales due to the movement and there is a lot of secondary data online, so in the respect of quantitative data I think I should be okay.

 

The people from mainland China are the main buyers of luxury jewellery and watches in Hong Kong and many of the retailers I interviewed said that, while they were open, the number of mainlanders in their stores truly did decrease and that is why some of their sales were lowered. I'm going to look for the correlation between tourism and the sales/ demand for jewellery/ watches in the area. To gain a better understanding of why the Mainlanders stopped buying at that time (e.g. loads of traffic, closer stores etc etc), I will attempt to interview a few of them, and then I can go on to explain why there is a correlation between Occupy central and loss of sales (looking at the demand-side stimulants here). 

 

What is interesting to me is that, when I asked many of the firms, even though the movement went on for a good two months, and sales did decrease, none of them I interviewed changed prices (linking in with the idea of monopolistic competition [the market structure for the watch/ jewellery market]). So I can basically draw the demand supply diagram with demand shifting left, without the market clearing as such to show an excess supply. That describes an individual firm, but do you think it would be relevant to draw the monopolistic competition diagram showing the effects of reduced demand? I've thought over this a lot in the past few days and I have a much clearer idea on what I want to do, but do you think all of it seems fine (I'm about 2000ish words in now)?

 

Lastly, I also found that the sales of the luxury jewellery and watch stores even decreased before the movement, so I want to find the reason for this and explore how much of an effect the Occupy Central movement truly did have on the sales, considering it was lower before. In my evaluation I can put stuff like the jewellers may have given slightly fast data (bias) considering many of them were against the movement, making it seem worse than it actually was.

 

Anyways thanks for the reply and sorry for the essay, but, thoughts anyone?  

[thirdcultureteenSH->UK]

Sorry if you mentioned this already above, because I was kind of skimming through, but have you gathered any data on how sales were after the movement died down? Or when the protestors finally moved away? 

 

Maybe not right after they moved away, because I doubt people would have been that into buying jewelry to risk being swarmed when they went, but maybe a few months afterwards?