Capstone Project — Part 3: Synthesis and Policy Recommendation

Instructions

Apply Parts VIII–IX and synthesize everything. This section should be 5–8 pages.

1. Contemporary Issues (3–5 pages)

Address at least TWO of the following contemporary issues as they affect your city:

• Housing affordability (Chapter 36): Is housing affordable in your city? What are the supply constraints? What policies have been tried? What would you recommend?
• Technology and the labor market (Chapter 35): Is your city gaining or losing tech jobs? Is the gig economy a significant employer? How is AI likely to affect local industries?
• Inequality (Chapter 13): What does inequality look like in your city? Income gaps? Racial disparities? Geographic segregation? What policies address it?
• Climate and environment (Chapter 15): What are your city's environmental challenges? Flooding? Air quality? Heat? What climate policies are in place?
• Healthcare access (Chapter 14): What does healthcare access look like? Is there a hospital desert? Are there uninsured populations?
• Education and student debt (Chapter 36): How does your city's educational infrastructure affect economic opportunity?

For each issue, apply the relevant framework from the textbook and use local data where possible.

2. Policy Recommendation (2–3 pages)

This is the synthesis. Based on everything you've analyzed:

• What is the most important economic challenge your city faces?
• What policy would you recommend to address it?
• Be specific: what would the policy cost? Who would benefit? Who would bear costs? What are the tradeoffs?
• Apply the efficiency-equity tradeoff (Chapter 8, 13): is your recommendation efficient, equitable, or a compromise?
• Be honest about what you don't know and what additional data would help.

What a strong recommendation looks like

A strong recommendation: 1. Is grounded in data — not "I think housing is too expensive" but "median rent has risen 25% since 2019 while median income rose 8%" 2. Uses the right economic framework — supply-and-demand for housing, externalities for pollution, behavioral insights for savings 3. Acknowledges tradeoffs — every policy has costs; a good recommendation identifies them honestly 4. Is specific — not "the city should do something about housing" but "the city should rezone the area within 2 miles of downtown to allow duplexes and small apartment buildings, which would add approximately 500 units over 5 years and moderate rent growth by an estimated 3–5 percentage points" 5. Addresses who pays — tax increases? Federal grants? User fees? Developer impact fees?

Grading criteria

• Depth and relevance of contemporary-issues analysis
• Quality of the policy recommendation (specific, data-grounded, tradeoff-aware)
• Synthesis across the micro, macro, and contemporary sections
• Clear, well-organized writing with proper citations

Final deliverable

Your complete capstone project should be 20–30 pages (single-spaced) combining Parts 1, 2, and 3. Include: - A title page with your city's name and your name - A table of contents - References/data sources for every factual claim - At least 3 charts or tables using real data

Submit as a single PDF or document. The rubric is in capstone-rubric.md.