property rights by passing off ideas of others as one’s own is a serious violation of the rules of scientific
duty of documentation. Such plagiarism will be graded 5.0. In addition, such plagiarism might infringe
copyright law, which will potentially be prosecuted. Please also read the document “Guidelines on
dealing with plagiarism” which is available on the chair’s website.
On a related note, please make sure to complete and sign the statutory declaration provided by the
chair and attach it to the seminar paper as the last page. This form is also available on the website of
the chair. Seminar papers lacking this declaration will not be accepted.
The use of existing literature
Quotations have to be made according to the Harvard Style of Referencing. According to this set of
referencing guidelines, the source of a direct or indirect quotation has to be inserted in brackets just
after the quotation. Footnotes shall not be used to indicate quotations but can be used to explain
independent statements that add more information to the main text.
The following examples illustrate the above quotation rules:
• Direct quotations
o „Life is hard“ (Meier, 1993, p. 32).
• Indirect quotations
o Meier (1993, p. 32) maintains that life is hard.
o Some authors take the view that life is hard (Meier, 1993, p. 32).
The bibliography (also called “list of references”) must contain all references of the seminar paper.
They must be ordered alphabetically. Please do not list references which are not quoted in the text.
The following examples might help to edit the bibliography:
- Carson, R. / Hanemann, M. (2005), Contingent valuation, in: Mäler, K.-G. / Vincent, J. (eds.) Hand-
book of Environmental Economics, 821 - 936.
- Endres, A. (2011), Environmental Economics: Theory and Policy, Cambridge.
- Graham, D. A. (1992), Public expenditure under uncertainty: The net-benefit criteria, American
Economic Review 82, 822 - 846.
- Samuelson, P. (1954), The pure theory of public expenditure, The Review of Economic Statistics
36, 387 - 389.
- Varian, H. (1992), Microeconomic analysis, 3rd edition, New York.
Quotations from the internet should only provide additional information in a seminar paper. The pri-
mary source of references should be the scientific literature relevant for the specific topic. As a conse-
quence, the share of internet sources in the bibliography must not exceed 25 per cent.
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