I enjoyed researching for this EE a lot since I am very passionate about finance, business, and economics and the research enabled me to dig into the companies’ financial statements and earnings call transcripts, helping me practise a similar process which is used in investment analysis. This was key to making me keen on going through reports for hours without getting bored or hating the research process, and helped build specific knowledge on the research question topic, as opposed to the general which I already had. To be honest, although I initially had an opinion on what the answer would be before I started research, I developed multiple ideas which led to antithetical conclusions so the process of research really was illuminating, as the path to the answer was ever-changing as I obtained more information. Doing it again, I would want to space out my research time more, and spend more time on analysing the information I found so I can come up with deeper questions which may implicate my arrival to a firm conclusion, and provide more insight/nuance. One thing which would make the analysis more applicable would be to research more companies, as more data on the largest corporations means more accurate any extrapolation of trends would be, however, keeping in mind the scope of the EE and the 4,000 word limit, I don’t think this would be that feasible, if I want to provide sufficient analysis.
