EC114 Class 1 (Week 3)

Introduction

Your first classes, on Tuesday of week 3 (January 27), will cover material from the first week of term; that is, Chapters 1–3 of Miles, Breedon and Scott. We will focus on national accounts, or measuring national output.

Tasks

1. • Go to the ONS website (http://goo.gl/JIJ0W5) and download the spreadsheet ‘Regional GVA NUTS3, 1997-2013’.
   • Find the local area that you are from¹ in the spreadsheet.
2. • Describe the economic performance of your area, making use of all the tabs in the spreadsheet, and comparing trends through the years.
   • How is your area performing relative to the English/Scottish/Welsh/Northern Irish levels, and to national levels?
3. • Comment on the extent of regional variation. Does this surprise you?
   • Is any of this reflected in the GDP growth figures released for the UK as a whole? Does this surprise you?
   • Do regional imbalances need to be addressed?
   • Have we learnt anything in lecture that might help us think about how regional imbalances might be addressed?

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1. If you are not from the UK, try Eurostat (http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/data/database) for other parts of the EU, or your local national statistical office if you are from outside the EU. If you cannot find information for your country, then instead find information for an area of the UK of interest to you.↩