The Essay Word Count: 1,000 words +/- 10%
The essay must be on one of five topics:
1. Banking failures and the precipitation of financial crises
2. The structure of financial intermediaries and their role in credit market
3. The need for capital adequacy: Basle I versus Basle II accords
4. Board compensation and corporate governance implications from risk-taking in banking
5. Risks faced by banks and regulatory countermeasures

The essay will be graded as a piece of independent academic research and as such should have the following formal structure:
Abstract
This is approximately 100 words and can be roughly viewed of as being in two parts. The first introduces the problem (s) or issue (s) to be tackled in the essay. The second briefly outlines the key findings from your piece of research (the essay).
Introduction
This is where you should introduce the reader (marker) to the problem you are researching and justifying why the reader should be interested i.e. making clear the importance of this problem/ issue. At the end of the first paragraph you should clearly place a research question along the lines of…….. “….and as such I am interested to study the impact of currency and monetary unions on the repatriation of operating profits of MNE firms” for example. The very last part of the introduction should outline how you intend to proceed i.e. “In the next section I outline the literature behind this problem. In section 3 I analyse and discuss key findings while the final section concludes.”
Background Literature
This is where you must outline the background literature to your topic. As such you must access the electronic library, JSTOR, and specifically academic journals and look for material that is highly relevant to the specific issue you have chosen to research. More details will be provided below about potential sources for reference materials.
Analysis
This section is your opportunity to analyse what you have found in the literature on your chosen research topic. As such you should make your analysis real and pertinent to the literature and critically appraise the literature i.e. the arguments that have been presented in literature. Very often any subject in the literature will have many researchers/ authors researching it. These researchers will commonly have various viewpoints or arguments/ perspectives on that particular subject or issue. As such this section is your opportunity to demonstrate how well you have read the subject – how good your understanding is and to what depth you have understood the issues.
Conclusions
Summarise your key findings
References
ALL references WITHOUT FAIL must adhere to Harvard referencing style (see detailed notes and examples of how to reference below). Marks will be deducted if this is not achieved. 3

When you take notes from a text you are reading, you should ‘translate’ what the author has written into your own words. This will help you check your understanding of the message in the text and make it easier for you to paraphrase the ideas later. If you copy out large amounts of other people’s work, this may result in poor paraphrasing and plagiarism which often leads to failure. It is better to think about what is written from your own point of view and decide if you agree or disagree with the points that the author is making.
5

Advice on writing
Content It is important to make sure you understand what the assignment question means and that you know how to answer it. No assignment will ask you to write down everything you know about a subject area. All assignments will ask you to consider specific issues in relation to a particular topic. You need to make sure that it is clear in your assignment which are facts and which are opinions. You should also check that you have looked at the issue from every angle. When you evaluate different viewpoints, it is necessary to explore each one to an equal depth. You can't produce a valid conclusion unless you have