Review an article - Assignment Example

1.3 Aim/ Objectives The article has two objectives: a) to show ‘the economic links between UK and the rest of EU’ (Oxford Economics 2009, p.10). Identifying these ties could help to understand the criteria under which the economic integration in EU could be effectively supported (Oxford Economics 2009, p.6); b) ‘to quantify these ties’ (Oxford Economics 2009, p.10). 1.4 Theory Discussed in Literature The main body of the article has been divided into eight parts. In the first of these parts, the key aspects and the potential benefits of EU membership and economic integration are presented.

The rest six sections refer to six economic links between UK and EU. It is only in the first section of the study’s main body, i.e. in the part presenting the elements and benefits of EU membership and economic integration where relevant theory is used. Still, in the above section no reference is made to literature, on which the theory presented is based. From this point of view, the actual value of the theory incorporated in this section could be considered as limited, in regard to its contribution in the study.

All other sections are based on statistics and relevant data for showing the aspects of the relationship between UK and EU in terms of economics. This strategy of the authors can be considered as rather justified if taking into consideration the nature of the study, which is an economic report. It should be noted that in each section a description of the key aspects of the theme discussed is provided; then, the theme is analyzed using appropriate statistics and figure, as explained in section 1.5 below. In regard to the article’s introductory section, the following issue should be highlighted: the specific section does not include theory, a practice often used in scholarly articles; it just refers to the historical development of EU, aiming to show the steps through which EU has reached its current size. 1.5 Methodology The economic links between UK and EU have been categorized using the following parameters: ‘trade, labour force, tourism, FDI, portfolio investments and banking linkages’ (Oxford Economics 2009, p.6). At the next level, the article has been divided into eight sections, based on the following strategy: after presenting the article’s key issues and findings, in the Executive Summary part of the paper (p.6-9), the Introduction is used for explaining clearly the article’s objectives, for showing the article’s structure and for presenting a brief overview of EU’s history (p.10-11). Then, the main body of the paper is divided into seven sections, each of which shows the figures and statistics related to a particular economic link between UK and EU, as these links were presented above.

The first of these sections refers to EU membership and economic integration, as part of EU membership. In this section, theory is used for supporting empirical evidence, in opposition with the other chapters that are based only on statistics and figures; the limitations of the theory used in this section have been analyzed in section 1.4. The rest six sections of the study have been structured as follows: in the beginning of each section an overview of the section’s key findings, something like a conclusion of the