MAN00162M: Summative Assignment Individual Research Project | UoY

The assignment requires you to produce an individual research project.

You will need to research an area of academic, corporate and policy concern and develop a literature review drawing from appropriate sources – these include academic journal articles, regulatory reports, and materials from apposite professional bodies. This literature should form the basis for the questions you will seek to address in your individual research project. This will also influence the data you will need to collect and the form of analysis you undertake in this project.

You are also expected to use the databases and research resources provided by the University of York for undertaking research in the field of finance. This will require to both determine what data you require to undertake your individual research projects and then download data from the data sources. Once you have downloaded and curated your data into a database, you are then expected to undertake analysis on this data using one or more university standard statistical packages. These might include STATA or SPSS.

It is your responsibility to both devise and write up the analysis you undertaken and then discuss the efficacy of this analysis outline areas of development and problems you have encountered. Once you have undertaken your literature review and devised questions to consider, collected your data and undertaken your analysis, you will then need to write up this project according to the prescribed structure and expectations outlined in this assignment brief.

MAN00162M Research Project Structure

To summarise the individual research project is expected to include the following elements:

An introduction (10%)

This section will outline the scope and elements contained within the individual research project, explain the question being consider and why this is important to consider from both academic and public (policy, corporate) perspectives.

A literature review (30%)

This section will consider the relevant academic literature from peer reviewed journal articles and other sources. It is expected a critical interpretation of the literature is adopted.

Data collection, econometric analysis, and interpretation (40%) The data collection should use the datasets provided by the University such as the data sets offered through the Refinitiv platform. The analysis is expected to use some of the econometric and statistical techniques discussed in the study week one. All results must we written up professionally and include a detailed interpretation as to their veracity and meaning.

Conclusions (20%) 

This element will draw out reflections upon the analysis and the evaluation and meaning of the results. It is important to consider both the stronger elements and the drawbacks of the work undertaken. Reflection as to the implications of the IRP are important to include.

There are three different assignments which may be undertaken in different areas of finance covered on your programme which you may consider. These include a corporate finance (governance) assignment, accounting, an (ESG) investment project and a finance and economics project.

Format:

The formative coursework assignment is to be of length not exceeding 8000 words, including any footnotes, but excluding the contents’ page and appendices/annexes and references. The coursework should be developed using size 12 font with 1.5 line spacing. Please make sure that the references are made in an acceptable (Harvard referencing style) format. The format of the coursework must include an introduction, a conclusion, and references.

Suggested Readings:

Readings for the different areas for research are located on the VLE site for the different research design areas.