Economic Data Analysis and Visualization

Please ensure you have read and complied with the School e-submission policy (available from the module folder) prior to submitting your work.

Assessment I

1. The Assessment I Data  le (available from the module folder) reports OECD Real GDP growth rates between 2000 and 2019. Download these data and focus your analysis on following the countries: United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Lithuania, Greece and the United States

This should result in a  nal sample of 6 countries. (hint: you will need to format the data to as to make it easier to work with)

(a) Use a suitable graph to display the time series between 2002 and 2014 data for each of the 6 countries in the dataset

(b) Discuss the main features of the data and comment on observable di erences

(i) Between countries

(ii) Over time

(c) Report descriptive statistics for the data for 2006 and 2009 separately and comment on any signicant diferences between them.

(d) Using U.K. over the full time series, generate a histogram using bins (class intervals) of 1 percentage

point. Repeat the exercise for the time series pertaining to the German data

(i) Report the frequency tables and histograms, and comment on the shape of the distributions

(ii) Compare the two economies using the resultant histograms

(e) Distinguish between a bar graph and histogram and explain the relative merits of each for visualising data

2. The table below reports annual sales data for four major retailers operating in the U.K. across a ve-year period ending 2019. The measurement unit is $m.

Year Tesco Sainsbury M&S ASDA

2015 49,853 27,938 10,391 21,700

2016 47,859 28,220 10,555 21,666

2017 49,867 31,220 10,622 22,200

2018 50,993 31,735 10,698 22,311

2019 56,883 32,314 10,377 22,920

(a) Use the annual average measure of the All Items Consumer Price Index including owner occupiers' housing costs (CPIH) to de ate sales for each major retailer across the entire period using 2015 as the referencenperiod. (The series you are expected to use is entitled CPIH data in the data le

(i) Report the CPIH and de ated sales of that data in a table and briey explain the purpose of de ating these data

(ii) Use a bar chart to view the de ated sales across this ve year period and comment on your findings.

(b) Convert the level data into indices for each of the deated data series above. Include an aggregate index for the combined data.

(i) Chart these indices and discuss the performance of each index individually and comparatively over the entire period.

(ii) Distinguish brief between Laspeyres and Paasche indices and explain the respective merits of each