Oxmedica Economics Exercise: Macroeconomics
The goal of this supervision is to learn to use R to analyse the relationship between economic growth and various factors.
Using the data set called ‘USMacroG’, prepare plots to analyse the relationship between macroeconomic variables.
An example code is displayed below.
# Set CRAN mirror
options(repos = "https://cloud.r-project.org")
# Install and load the AER and tidyverse packages without displaying the output
install.packages(c("AER", "tidyverse"))
library(AER)
library(tidyverse)
# Load the USMacroG data
data("USMacroG")
# Convert data to a data frame and calculate economic growth using the data
data <- as.data.frame(USMacroG) %>% mutate(growth = gdp / lag(gdp) - 1)
data = data %>% dplyr::select(growth, inflation, interest, unemp)
# Code to make a plot
plot(data$inflation, data$growth, xlab = "Inflation", ylab = "Growth", main = "Relationship between Inflation and Growth")
# Add a line of best fit
fit <- lm(growth ~ inflation, data = data)
abline(fit, col = "red")
Adapt the code above to analyse the empirical relationship between interest rates, unemployment, inflation and GDP growth.
Save your plots and export them into a text document. Write down an analysis of each graph.
Bonus question: use the ‘GrowthSW’ data set to analyse the relationship between economic growth and the other variables in the data set. As well as using plots, use a regression incorporating all of the variables. This will allow you to see what variables are associated with growth after accounting for the other variables. (Hint: use the lm() function)