ECON 202 Economics II – Fundamental Macro Measures
ECON 202 Economics II – Fundamental Macro Measures
Subject: Economics / General Economics
Question
ECON 202: Economics II
School of Economics
Drexel University Data Assignment with Excel Part I: “Fundamental Macro Measures in the United States”
1) Go to The FRED Database published by the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis at
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/
2) Download monthly data on the CPI for the United States. Use this data to calculate averages
across each 3-month period to calculate the quarterly CPI. Start your series in 1980.
3) Calculate the inflation rate for each quarter using the formula for the inflation rate that we
learned in section 2 of the course.
4) What was the minimum, maximum and mean value of the inflation rate during this period?
Don’t look for the minimum and the maximum manually. Use an excel function to do so. Part II: “Bilateral Trade for the United States”
1) Go to The FRED Database published by the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis at
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/
2) Download data for the following series from 2005 until the last year available:
a. US exports of goods to Mexico
b. Value of exports to Mexico from each of the 50 states in the US.
c. US imports of goods from Mexico
3) For each series calculate the average annual growth rate between 2005 and the last year
available.
4) Plot the value of exports for each state (as a percentage of the country total) for the last
year available in the data.
5) Comment on which US states would you expect to be more affected by a potential “trade
war” with Mexico. Part III: “the Banking Sector Around the World”
1) Go to http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/global-financial-development and download
the Global Financial Development Database of the World Bank.
2) Write a 1-paragraph summary of what this dataset contains. Include type of information,
a few examples of variables provided there, countries, time-period, etc.
3) Collect the following variables that will allow you to get an idea of how important the
banking sector is in several different areas of the world:
a. Firms using banks to finance investments (%)
b. Firms using banks to finance working capital (%)
c. Bank credit to bank deposits (%)
d. Bank deposits to GDP (%)
Collect the data for the following areas:
a. East and Asia Pacific (developing only)
b. Euro Area
c. Europe and Central Asia
d. Latin America and Caribbean (developing only)
e. Middle East and North Africa
f. South Asia
g. United States
h. Upper Middle Income
i. Middle Income
j. Lower Middle Income
k. Low Income
l. High Income
4) For each area calculate the percentage of firms using banks to finance either investment
or working capital.
5) Plot the evolution of this series over time. You should have a graph with years on the
horizontal axis and one series for each country. Do one graph for high income, low
income, middle income, etc. group. Do another graph for the regions. Do a separate graph
for the United States.
6) Describe (in a couple of sentences) what you observe.
7) For each area calculate the ratio of bank credit to GDP (in %).
8) Plot this % for the last year available in each country. You should have a bar graph where
each bar contains the data for each country for the last year available.
9) Describe (in a couple of sentences) what you observe.