Assignment 1 Graphing GDP Read through the entire assignment before you begin. There are two objectives for this assignment. The first is to demonstrate that you can find economic data for the US economy. The second is to demonstrate that you can graph the data in such a manner that we can tell something from the graph. The US government collects massive amounts of data on the economy. For the purpose of this assignment utilize the sites below to collect your data: Bureau of Economic Analysis: http://www.bea.gov/ Federal Reserve Economic Data - FRED II: http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/ Bureau of Labor Statistics: http://www.bls.gov/ US Census Bureau: http://www.census.gov/ 1. Find quarterly data* for Real Gross Domestic Product in chained 2009 dollars for the years 2007 through 2011. List the data for Real GDP (Y), Real Personal consumption expenditures (C), Real Gross private domestic investment (I), Real Net exports of goods and services (NX), and Real Government consumption expenditures and gross investment (G). 2. Graph the data. 3. Identify the last recession on the graph. (Note that a recession has both a starting date and an ending date. If you can't annotate it on the graph, give me the dates in your submission text) 4. Go look around at the data available at the sites listed above. Graph any other government collected economic data for the last 5 years that is of interest to you. Include your data source. (If it is annual data, include at least 10 years. For quarterly or monthly data, 5 years is fine.) ***You may want to use Excel for this assignment. Some of the data sites will graph the data for you if you can figure out how - they are all different. ****I generally am unable to open certain spreadsheet files from Apple software. Please use something else. Another resource is the National Burea of Economic Research: http://www.nber.org/ It is the organization that dates the business cycle for the US. * Note: we typically use quarterly data that is seasonally adjusted and reported at annual rates. These are often designated SAAR. All of the sites listed report the data in that manner. Also note that the base year was recently changed from 2005 to 2009.