Please read the instructions for Part II – especially pages 2 and 3, before beginning Part I
PART I: Please answer the following four questions (Section A) and complete the Data table (Section B). The document you submit for Part I of the Foreign Country Macroeconomic Analysis should contain all of the above and should include a link to the news or magazine article referenced in Question 4 below.
Students who submit Part I by the due date in the class schedule, will receive extra credit points of up to 4% of their final course grade (added at the end of the semester).
For Part I, I suggest you save this file on your computer and type your answers directly into this Word document. You can then upload your saved document into Blackboard as your assignment submission.
STUDENT NAME:___________________________________________________
PART I Section A (Please answer the following five questions)
1) The name of the country* I will be studying is ___bangladesh_____________________
* I reserve the right to ask you to choose a different country to study.
2) I confirm that the macroeconomic data I have provided in my data table (Part II Section B) is from a reputable data source such as the CIA Factbook, World Bank, IMF, OECD, UN etc.
YES or NO
3) I have identified the following major macroeconomic issue facing this country.
(100 – 150 words worth 2 points)
(Here I would like you to briefly describe the issue you will be discussing in your final paper. I suggest you use the Data Table and/or the articles to guide your choice of paper topic. )
Very important: your paper topic does not have to be directly related to the two articles you are describing in the next two questions)
4) Please include a citation and a link to the news or magazine article (The Economist/Wall Street Journal/Financial Times etc.) you will be using as part of your research for this paper AND provide a brief summary of the article. (100 – 150 words worth 1 point)
5) Please include a citation and a link to the World Bank or OECD article you will be using as part of your research for this paper AND provide a brief summary of the article. (100 – 150 words worth 1 point)
ECON 201 Macroeconomic Policy Paper PART I Section B
Student Name: Country: ________________________
Please cite your data sources in your bibliography.
MACROECONOMIC DATA ORGANIZER/TABLE
Indicator
Prior Year 1
Enter the year
_____________
Prior Year 2 (optional)
Enter the year
_____________
2016/2017/2018
Enter the year
____________
2017/2018/2019
Enter the year
____________
GDP
GDP per capita
Economic Growth
Poverty Rate (!)
Unemployment
Inflation
*Additional Indicator #1
*Additional Indicator #2
*Additional Indicator #3
(optional)
*Enter the title of the additional indicators you are providing in the first column.
! Include a footnote with the brief description of the poverty data (see over for instructions)
Guidance for the Macroeconomic Data Organizer/Table:
· You must have data for the most recent year (typically 2017 or 2018 or 2019 for all eight of your indicators
· In order to establish trends you will also need to try to find three years of data for at least four of your indicators. They do not need to be consecutive years.
· The Additional Indicators you provide should be relevant to your paper topic
· A good place to start is the CIA Factbook which generally has 2-3 years of data on the six required indicators
· Other sources to consider include the World Bank, the IMF (World Economic Outlook database), the OECD and the United Nations. The World Bank has good data on poverty.
· You might need to find data using multiple data sets. I strongly encourage you to be consistent. If for instance, you are citing several years of unemployment data, it is best to use the same data source for all years. Poverty data can be difficult to interpret because some organizations use a global definition of poverty (for example percentage of population living on less than $2 per day) while others base their definition of poverty on the overall standard of living in the country they are studying. I generally prefer the latter approach. Whichever data set you use. I would like to see an explanatory footnote for your poverty data so I know the data source as well as their definition of poverty.
X——————————————-X
Note on Poverty Data:
I especially like the World Bank’s Poverty Headcount Ratio at National Poverty Lines. The National poverty headcount ratio is the percentage of the population living below that country’s specific national poverty line(s).
To access this data,
1) Go to https://data.worldbank.org/country
2) Click on the country you are studying and a series of graphs should appear. These graphs present historical data on various indicators such as GDP. One of these is the Poverty Headcount Ratio graph which should contain several years of data on poverty.
3) If this data Is unavailable for your country, let me know, so we can try to identify an acceptable data substitute.
