General Instructions:
Make sure to type your answers. All scatter plots, graphs, and tables asked for must be included in the typed problem set. This problem set is due at the very beginning of lecture on October 6th, 2016. Please write succinctly. All resources are provided in the PS2 folder.
1. Solow Growth Model
Japan's savings rate is 16%. The depreciation rate (δ) is 5%, the population growth rate (n) is 1% and the growth rate of worker's productivity (g) is 2%. Consider the following production function:
yt = A.kαt and let A = 1000.
a. Find the level of capital-per-worker at the steady-state equilibrium.
b. Japan's population growth falls to 0.5%. If there are no other changes, what can you say about the level of Japan's capital in the next period? Explain your answer.
c. In what other was could declining population affect the Japanese economy? Support your answer with a least two additional sources.
2. Read the paper "The Great Depression, the New Deal and the Current Crisis" and answer the following questions:
i. What were the similarities and difference in the economic context that preceded the Great Recession, as compared to the reasons that preceded the Great Depression?
ii. Find two data-driven assertion in the paper (such as "unemployment was high in 1936", "Trade significantly declined" etc.), and find an actual data source to support that assertion - you must identify your data source and the actual data figure that is described by the assertion in the paper.
3. Read the paper "Last hired, first fired: black women workers during WWII" by Karen Tucker Anderson.
i. Pick 2 of the hypotheses the author makes in the paper. If you had access to whatever data you needed, what data would you use to support these hypotheses? What type of trends would support the author's claims? Be sure to indicate clearly which two hypotheses you chose and explain why you would choose the data that you did.
ii. Go to the website for the Bureau of Labor Statistics (http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/surveymost?ln is a good start). Collect monthly unemployment data by race and gender for 2005-2015. Create 2 graphs: one that has unemployment by gender and another that has unemployment by race.
iii. Looking at the BLS data, what can you say about the differences in unemployment across race and gender?
iv. How do your findings relate Anderson's paper?
Last Hired, First Fired: Black Women Workers during World War II
Source: The Journal of American History, Vol. 69, No. 1 (Jun., 1982), pp. 82-97
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1887753.
The Great Depression, the New Deal, and the Current Crisis
http://dx.doi.org/10.2753/0577-5132520406