Week 15 — Trade, Poverty, and the Final Choose-the-Tool Test

Assignment 14 of the term, and the last one — work out who gives up less in a trade, read a fall in poverty for what it shows and does not, choose the right course tool for a new question, and explain a poverty headline to a cousin.

This adaptive assignment uses a coaching dialogue to help you turn a first attempt into a clear, well-labelled analysis. You remain the author. The coach asks questions, checks the reasoning you show, and waits for you to revise before it produces the required report. This week you learned that every real economy is a mixed economy, that comparative advantage runs on opportunity cost rather than speed, that trade brings both aggregate gains and distributional costs, that poverty and inequality are different measures, and that the World Bank's International Poverty Line is a definition with a price base. Week 12 kept a correlation apart from a cause, and Week 13 compared cases on a plan; this assignment puts both to work one last time. This week's lecture tutorial, quiz, discussion, and Political Analysis Workshop practise the same ideas from other angles.

The task

You will work two short problems, interpret each one, and choose a course tool for a new question. Every country, region, and household you meet here is illustrative: none is real, and no real person or current officeholder belongs in it.

Work these two problems, showing how you got each count:

1. In a made-up country, 1 crate of grain takes 12 hours of work and 1 bolt of cloth takes 4 hours. How many bolts of cloth does the country give up to make 1 crate of grain?
2. A made-up region of 40 households has 6 households below its poverty line in the first survey and 2 in the second. By how many percentage points did the share below the line fall?

Beside each count, add the interpretation that makes it political science:

• Problem 1, the trade. A second made-up country makes 1 crate of grain in 6 hours and 1 bolt of cloth in 3 hours. Work out what that second country gives up for 1 crate of grain, then say which country should lean toward grain and why opportunity cost, not speed, decides it. Then imagine the two countries trade, and the first country's grain farms shrink. Name the aggregate gain and the distributional cost in your scenario, state the free-trade case and the managed-trade case at full strength, each as its own defenders would put it, and label at least one of your premises empirical and one normative. Do not say which side is right; say what a person would have to value to choose each.
• Problem 2, the poverty read. Say whether your region's poverty and inequality must have moved together, and why not. Then read one real, pinned figure with the data scaffold: the World Bank counts around 831 million people in extreme poverty in 2025, down from around 2.3 billion in 1990, measured against the International Poverty Line of 3.00 dollars a day in 2021 international prices. Say what is measured, over whom and when, what the count shows, what it does not show, and whether it shows a correlation or a cause. Finish by explaining why a figure built on 2.15 dollars a day is not the current line.

Choose the tool

This is the last assignment of the course, so it ends with a synthesis step. A made-up city council asks: "Two neighboring towns in our region have the same size, the same main industry, and the same schools, but one has far fewer households below the poverty line. What explains the difference?" Choose the one course tool that fits this question best: a most-similar comparison, the data scaffold, or the collective-action logic. In 4–6 sentences, justify your choice from the details of the question, and explain why one plausible alternative fits less well. Say what your chosen tool could show and what it could not.

Explain it to a non-expert

Your cousin sees a headline that says the count of the world's extremely poor jumped when the World Bank updated its line, and says, "So the world got poorer." Write a 3–5 sentence message to your cousin that explains, in everyday words, what a poverty line is, why raising the line can raise a count without anyone's income falling, and names one limit of what a single count can tell you. Explain any technical term in everyday words. More than one good answer is possible.

For a different, ungraded example, imagine a coach explaining a new fitness standard to a team. Model answer: "The team made its fitness standard stricter, so more of you fall below the bar this season. Nobody got slower; the bar moved. The new number tells you who clears the new bar, not why some runners improved, so keep your own times from last season to compare."

Use that pattern for your message to your cousin, with your own wording and evidence.

Looking ahead to the final. The final exam comes in Week 16, finals week. To prepare, use the Final study guide, the Final Practice Exam, and the exam-prep tutorial in the finals-week module. The choose-the-tool step you practise here, matching a question to a course method and saying why another fits less well, is the skill those materials ask you to use across the whole course.

Part 1 — Student instructions

1. Draft both counts, your interpretations, your tool choice, and your message to your cousin before opening a chatbot.
2. Open any course-approved chatbot. Copy the entire Coach Prompt box, including its first and last marker lines, and paste it as one message. The coach will ask for your draft and then work one question at a time.
3. Answer in your own words. Show how you got each count when asked. Use the coach's feedback to revise at least one choice, label, data read, or explanation, even if your first attempt was correct.
4. Continue until the prompt's exit condition is met.
5. Save the chat's share link and copy the final report exactly as the coach gives it.

The chatbot is a coach, not a ghostwriter. It must draw out your reasoning rather than write the work for you, and it will not tell you whether free trade or managed trade is better.

Coach Prompt

COPY EVERYTHING BELOW THIS LINE
ROLE: You are a careful learning coach for an introductory political science course. Draw out and challenge MY thinking about this week's political economy: the mixed economy, comparative advantage and opportunity cost, aggregate gains and distributional costs, free trade and managed trade, poverty versus inequality, the World Bank's International Poverty Line and count, and choosing the right course tool for a question. Do not write my assignment for me, do not invent work I did not show, never invent a statistic, a study, a poverty figure, or a quotation, never tell me whether free trade or managed trade is better, and never bring in a living politician, a current officeholder, a party, a current government, or any current tariff, treaty, or migration bill.

ASSIGNMENT: Work through these two problems in order, one at a time. Do not invent, replace, or reorder a problem. My countries, region, and households are illustrative.
PROBLEM P1: In a made-up country, 1 crate of grain takes 12 hours of work and 1 bolt of cloth takes 4 hours. How many bolts of cloth does the country give up to make 1 crate of grain?
PROBLEM P2: A made-up region of 40 households has 6 households below its poverty line in the first survey and 2 in the second. By how many percentage points did the share below the line fall?
After each count, I must interpret it: for P1, what a second made-up country (grain 6 hours, cloth 3 hours) gives up for 1 crate of grain, which country should lean toward grain and why opportunity cost rather than speed decides it, the aggregate gain and the distributional cost in my scenario, the free-trade and managed-trade cases each stated at full strength, and at least one empirical and one normative premise labelled by kind; for P2, why poverty and inequality need not move together, a data-scaffold read of the World Bank's pinned count ending on correlation or cause, and why a figure built on 2.15 dollars a day is not the current line. I must then choose one course tool (a most-similar comparison, the data scaffold, or the collective-action logic) for a city council's question about two similar towns with different poverty, justify it in 4-6 sentences, and say why one alternative fits less well. Finally I must write a 3-5 sentence message to a cousin who thinks the world got poorer when the line was updated, explaining in everyday words what a poverty line is, why raising it can raise a count, and one limit of a single count. I must explain technical terms in everyday words.
Course facts to hold me to: opportunity cost is what you give up to make or do one thing instead of another; comparative advantage (Ricardo, 1817) is the descriptive claim that countries gain in total when each specializes in what it gives up less to make, even if one is faster at everything. Trade brings aggregate gains (the total gain to an economy as a whole) and distributional costs (losses on particular workers, firms, and towns, often concentrated and slow to heal); both are documented findings, and trade policy is where they are weighed, which is normative. Poverty is the share below a stated threshold; inequality is the spread of a whole distribution; they can move in opposite directions. The International Poverty Line is 3.00 dollars a day in 2021 international prices, set in June 2025 in place of 2.15 dollars a day in 2017 prices; the World Bank counts around 831 million people below it in 2025, down from around 2.3 billion in 1990; the count shows a decline, not its cause. A most-similar design compares cases alike in most respects that differ in the outcome and narrows explanations without proving a cause.

SCORING CRITERIA: Score only evidence I supply: correct counts (20 points), political-science reasoning (40 points), clarity for a non-expert reader (20 points), and showing work so it can be checked (20 points). For each of P1 and P2, give 2, 1, or 0 evidence units per criterion; one unit is worth 5 count points, 10 reasoning points, 5 clarity points, or 5 showing-work points. Sum both problems within each criterion. Count my tool choice and my message to the cousin only with P2.
COUNT UNITS: A correct count = 2; the right values and operation with only an arithmetic slip = 1; a missing count or the wrong values or operation = 0. Do not penalize an alternative valid method or equivalent correct notation.
REASONING UNITS: For P1, all parts accurate (the second country's opportunity cost, the grain choice explained by opportunity cost, the aggregate gain and distributional cost named, both policy cases at full strength, and premises labelled by kind) = 2; at least one accurate substantive part = 1; none = 0. For P2, all parts accurate (why poverty and inequality need not move together, the data-scaffold read ending on correlation or cause, why 2.15 dollars is not the current line, the tool choice with a reason and a weaker alternative, and the message to the cousin with one limit) = 2; at least one accurate substantive part = 1; none = 0. Choosing by speed instead of opportunity cost, treating a distributional cost as proof against aggregate gains, reading the poverty decline as proof of a cause, or citing 2.15 dollars as the current line earns no unit for that part. Naming a term alone does not earn a unit.
CLARITY UNITS: For each problem, labelled evidence understandable to someone new to political science, with technical terms explained = 2; intelligible evidence that needs rereading because of ambiguity or jargon = 1; absent or unintelligible evidence = 0. Missing reasoning alone does not lower clarity for otherwise clear submitted work.
SHOWING-WORK UNITS: For each problem, the starting values and the operation behind the count are visible = 2; a relevant but incomplete value or step = 1; a count alone or no method = 0. A visible method stays checkable despite an arithmetic slip.

Do NOT invent grading rules.

DIALOGUE RULES: Ask exactly one question per message and wait for my answer. Start by asking for my complete first attempt. Build each next question from my exact words. Probe an unsupported claim and ask me to examine its evidence. Keep the conversation focused on questions rather than completed work.

ENGAGEMENT GUARDS: A greeting, copied prompt, yes/no reply, or one-word answer is not a substantive exchange. Do not flatter or accept agreement as evidence. Praise only a concrete move I made. If evidence is missing, say what is missing and ask for it. Require a real revision plus a short reflection on why the revision is better. Do not issue the report early.

EXIT CONDITION: Continue until at least five substantive exchanges have occurred AND I have supplied both counts with their interpretations AND made my tool choice AND written my message to the cousin AND revised at least one choice, label, data read, or explanation AND reflected on the revision. Stop only after whichever requirement happens last.

REPORT: After the exit condition is satisfied, output exactly these labelled lines in this order. Replace X with the exact earned score; never round it. Base every line only on evidence in this chat; write "Not supplied" for missing evidence and never raise the score for polished chatbot prose.
STUDENT'S SCORE: X/100
EVIDENCE FOR THE SCORE: [specific evidence from my counts and reasoning]
REVISION MADE: [what I changed and why]
STRENGTH: [one earned strength]
NEXT STEP: [one concrete improvement]
Then tell me to submit this report, my revised work, and the share link.
COPY EVERYTHING ABOVE THIS LINE

Deliverables

Submit these three items in the assignment entry:

• your revised work with both counts, your interpretations, your tool choice, and your message to your cousin — written, or recorded as audio or video with a transcript, or as a labelled sketch of the two countries' trade with a short note; every form is graded by the same scoring criteria;
• the coach's five-line report; and
• the conversation share link.

Submit in any accessible file type or as a link; a recorded response may be submitted as audio or video with a transcript, or as text.

Equivalent route (no AI required)

This route assesses the same Week 15 skills — working out opportunity cost and who should specialize, naming aggregate gains and distributional costs and stating both trade-policy cases at full strength, telling poverty from inequality, reading the World Bank's count with its line, price base, and year, and choosing the right course tool for a new question — for comparable time and effort, about 60 to 90 minutes, the same as the coached route. Complete the same two problems, your interpretations, your tool choice, and the message to your cousin. Then audit your own first draft against the attached scoring criteria, criterion by criterion, and write a second draft. Add a 150–200 word revision memo that answers one of two reflection options of equal weight, your choice: (a) which choice, label, or data read you changed, what prompted the change, and one question you still have; or (b) where your first draft read a correlation as a cause or treated trade's losers as proof against its gains, why that was easy to do, and how you checked it. Submit the revised work, your completed criteria checklist, and the revision memo in the assignment entry; together they replace the share link and the coach's report. This route uses the same scoring criteria and the same points, with no penalty for choosing it.

How you'll be graded

The full analytic rubric is attached to this assignment in Canvas.

Academic integrity and AI use

The counts, the interpretations, the tool choice, the revision, and the final report must be your own. Do not ask the chatbot to create the assignment, write your defense, invent a poverty figure, or add evidence you did not produce, and cite the World Bank's figures only as this week's materials pin them. Submit an honest share link from your own dialogue. The equivalent route keeps the same workload and evidence and requires no AI account.

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