Economics 102 Assignment 1: FRED 2022
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Economics 102
Assignment 1: FRED
2022
FRED is a comprehensive up-to-date data source maintained by the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis in the US, which is part of the US central banking system. If you want real-time macroeconomic data on the German unemployment rate or China’s output growth, you do not need to learn German and Chinese, or struggle to get to grips with national archives, because FRED provides the information for you. FRED contains the main macroeconomic statistics for almost all developed countries going back to the 1960s. FRED also allows you to make your own graphs and export data into a spreadsheet.
The purpose of this assignment is for you to learn how to use FRED to find macroeconomic data.
1. The first part of this assignment is for you to work through the tutorial on FRED designed by the St. Louis Fed (see the pdf “10 FRED activities in 10 minutes”). Replicate each of the figures in the tutorial. Download the graphs you created for Figures 5 and 12.
2. Using data for Canada, what is the level of constant GDP per capita in 2019? In 2007? In 1995? What do these estimates imply about the rate of growth of per GDP between 1995-2007 vs 2007-2019?
3. Using data for Canada, what is constant GDP per capita in 2020? What was the rate of growth during the first year of the pandemic? How did this compare to the growth in the year before?
4. Plot for Canada “Constant Price GDP” measured in “Percentage Change from a Year Ago” on a Quarterly basis.
5. FRED shows recessions in shaded areas for the US economy using the NBER definition, but not for other economies. For Canada, assume that a recession is defined by two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth. Since 1980, how many recessions has the Canadian economy undergone? It may be helpful to download the data into a spreadsheet to check. What are the two biggest recessions in terms of length and magnitude?
Now add to the graph the quarterly unemployment rate for your chosen economy. The variable is “Unemployment Rate: Aged 15 and Over: All Persons for Canada”. You will need to change the reporting of this data series from monthly to quarterly.
6. How does the unemployment rate behave during the two main recessions you have identified?
7. Excluding the most recent economic downtown, what was the level of the unemployment rate during the first and the last quarter of negative growth for the two most severe previous recessions?
8. What do you conclude about the link between recession and the variation in unemployment?
For the submission: The assignment should be written in one document and submitted in two ways: through the Crowdmark link that was sent to the student AND through
Quercus assignments for the plagiarism check. The document has to be in a .pdf or .jpeg format to be submitted; thus if it is written in Word, please convert it into one of these two formats.
In the final submission, you should have four graphs, two for question 1, one for question 4 and one for 5 that shows both series. Graphs can be downloaded directly from the FRED website. Your graphs should be clearly labeled. In writing up your assignment, please also clearly label answers to questions 1 through 8.
2022-01-25