11 Feb Go to the St. Louis Fed FRED economic data platform
Order Instructions
Go to the St. Louis Fed FRED economic data platform (fred.stlouisfed.org) and create
a new account if you do not have one already. Please watch my lecture video where I show
how to access data via the FRED website and create graphs with recession shading in Excel.
If you want to install the FRED Excel add-in (PC only) there is a pdf guide on CANVAS
as well.
Make sure you submit me the xls file/script you used.
1. Download the series for real GDP in Billions of Chained 2012 Dollars, Quarterly,
Seasonally Adjusted from Q1 1960 to the latest available.
2. Download the series for Total Nonfarm Payroll employment (Monthly) from Jan. 1960
to the latest available.
3. Download the series NBER based Recession Indicators for the United States.
4. Plot all three on the same graph, with time in the X-axis, real GDP on the left Y-axis,
and employment on the right Y-axis. For the recession indicator create a light gray
bar chart (this is called “recession shading”). Hint: the recession indicator takes the
value 0 or 1, so you will have to adjust the height according to one of the Y-axis to
make it visible.
5. What can you say about the relationship between the 3 series? How does the latest
dip in economic activity compare to previous recessions? (your answer should be no
longer than 5 lines).
Final instructions: create a single-page pdf with the graph you produced and the short
sentence describing the relationship between the series.
