ECO Project

Overview

Requirements of submission: Written mechanism of projects must follow these formatting guidelines when applicable: 12-point Times New Roman font, double spacing, discipline-appropriate citations and one-inch margins. The paper should be 6-8 pages in length.

Instructor Feedback: Students can find their feedback in the grade book as an attachment.

The project for this course is to identify forecasts of three key macroeconomic variables from publically available sources and write a report in which you describe the range of forecasts for each variable for whatever time horizons you find. You will have to find organizations that produce macroeconomic forecasts. This is a link for the organization that produces the economic and revenue forecast for the State of Washington: http://www.erfc.wa.gov/forecast/economicForecast.shtml. You should be able to find others. Finally, you need to decide on a single forecast for each of the variables. You may decide to accept one of the forecasts you find or to use some averaging process. The report should explain the conclusions you reached and contain a graph of the historical values of each variable and the forecast you propose.

Main Elements

The paper should include graphs and a separate section dedicated to each of the following three variables:

1. The annual percentage rate of change of real GDP.

2. The annual percentage rate of change in the CPI (the rate of inflation).

3. The unemployment rate.