There is a required paper that must be completed as a part of the course. In the paper you are required to develop a short history of a segment of the air transportation industry (note industry, NOT company) of your choosing in the U.S. economy. See NAICS 4811 and 4812 or 4881. The major focus is how profitable (ECONOMIC PROFIT) the industry has been, currently is, and is expected to be using Michael Porter’s Competitive Analysis and other information about the industry you selected. The due date and information about how the paper contributes toward your grade are provided in the syllabus. Please note that students from prior courses have submitted final papers electronically and those papers are stored in database against which all current submissions are checked. If your submission closely matches that of one in the database you (and the person who submitted the original work) will be held responsible via university cheating policy.
General Paper Information
Your paper should be 20 pages or less of double spaced text in a 12 point font with a ragged right margin. Only text counts toward the page limit.
Your paper should be a Microsoft Word Document and should have a title page that, in addition to the title, includes your name and email address.
Your paper should have a set of references that you used to find information for your content. If you use the material of others acknowledge that use with a reference in your text, for example, (Huth, 2007) or (BEA, 2003).
You should not use wikepedia, investopedia, cliff notes, etc., etc. as references for your paper. The report should not be copied text from other sources; it should be in your own words. Your report will be run through a plagiarism checker (http://turnitin.com/static/plagiarism.html (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.).
You should use tables or charts from economic web sites in your paper to illustrate your discussion.
The style guide to use for your paper is the APA style guide (http://apastyle.apa.org (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.).
If you would like to choose another industry in place of air transportation feel free to do so but be sure to define your industry carefully.
Develop a paper that describes historical, current, and expected future profit conditions for an industry of your choosing in the U.S. economy. In your report you should discuss the industry definition using NAICS and address how the industry has been changing (growth, concentration, etc.) over the last few (four) years or so. Information on growth and concentration can be taken from the federal trade commission web site (see links). The specific concentration measure these days is the Herfindahl Hirschman index which is based on market shares although concentration ratios can be used as well. Discuss some of the financial statement characteristics associated with a major firm in your industry. Also develop a financial (stock) market perspective where you examine how the major firms in your industry have performed. Be sure to examine your industry using the perspective from Michael Porter’s Competitive Forces Model (see page 446 in your text).
Your paper should include tables and charts supporting your discussion of your selected industry. Sources for that data can be found in the “Links” segment of the eLearning course environment. After reading your report I should have a good picture of recent and current trends and profits in your selected industry along with its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats and be able to decide if I should invest in it by adding a firm’s stock in that industry to my investment portfolio.
