Instructions. The data project for Economics for Business is designed to encourage you, the student, to apply the economic theory and quantitative methods you'll see in this module to applied topics. The objective of this project is to give you the ability to communicate effectively and clearly in written and oral formats using a quantitative approach. To get a good grade, you'll need to demonstrate a basic competency in the analysis, interpretation and presentation of economic data.
All printed submissions are due Monday December 6th, to the box near KB 3-22a, and by email to stephen.kinsella@ul.ie, with the file called yourstudentnumber_yourname_datanalysisprojectec4004.doc. Your work will be checked for plagiarism using Turnitin.com. Please be assured that if you do plagiarise and I catch you, I'll throw the book and a bookshelf at you. For guidance on plagiarism, please refer to UL's handbook. The project is to be a minimum of 4 pages and a maximum of 5 pages, including graphs. Submit your project in Times New Roman, 1.5 spacing, 1 inch margins, with a title, your name, and your student number on a cover page. Staple the pages, please don't use any other covers. This project is worth 25% of your final grade for this module. You must submit your work on your own, lateness will carry a penalty of 10% lost per day.
Students should consult the following works:
- Gary Klass, Just Plain Data Analysis: Finding, Presenting, and Interpreting Social Science Data (New York: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2008), and its companion website.
- Gary Koop, Analysis of Economic Data (Wiley and Sons, 2009)
- Prasenjit Saha, Principles of Data Analysis, (Cappella Archive, 2003). (This is quite advanced material)
- Deirdre McCloskey, Economical Writing, (Waveland Pr Inc; 2 edition, May 1999), or as a poor substitute my notes for the book. This book is required reading for all of my students in all courses.
There are four datasets to analyse, pick one below. Each is in .xls format.
Data Sets
Right click and choose 'save as' to download the file.
Data set 1: Costs of Doing Business
Data set 2: Historical prices and economic growth
Data set 3: Productivity in the EU
Data set 4: Employment and Growth in the OECD.
Use your report to ask the following questions of your data. You'll get help from the TAs in answering these questions. Here are excellent notes on using Excel for economics. You should consult them when making your report.
- What are the range and domain of the data? What is this data about?
- What is the context for this data? How big is the sample size? Is it microeconomic, macroeconomic, time series, or panel data?
- Compute correlations, bar charts, scatter plots, histograms. Visualise the data. Try to understand the relationship between the data series you're looking at. Compute descriptive statistics. Are the data positively related? Negatively? What does that suggest to you? Does any of what you're seeing make sense to you? If not, why not?
- Ask yourself: how does the data relate to Ireland's current economic experience? Can you see the relevance of this data analysis for the present crisis? If so, why? If not, why not?
- Ask what lessons you've learned from trying to understand this data. Do your findings match the theory you've been learning? Do your findings contradict them? Explain why, in either case.