What growth rate are the professional forecasters predicting for the US economy? Do
you agree? What issues will you draw special attention to in the sections that follow?
II) Labor Market Developments: What has been happening to the growth of jobs and wages? What are forecasters expecting? What about unemployment anemployment rates?
III) Fiscal Policy and Demand: Is fiscal policy going to be important to Real GDP
growth? What is the forecast for the growth of output? Which of its components (C,I, G, X-M) seem to be particularly important just now?
IV) Monetary Policy and Financial Markets. What has FRB monetary policy been and
what is it expected to be in the near future? What is the forecast for inflation and
interest rates?
V) Supply Side and International Linkages. Does the economy appear to be near or
away from its potential output? Does it look like US exports and imports (and the US
dollar) will significantly speed or slow US growth?
VI) Conclusion. Which of the aspect of the economy you discussed above seem to be
most important or interesting to you and why?
Sources to think about using
You can mention a professional outlook (or forecast) in any section.
I) Introduction: Mention your forecast table and one or two of your forecast numbers in
the table.
II) Labor Market Developments: you could mentions the Employment Situation Report
from the BLS, its numbers are in FRED and the Atlanta FRB Labor Market
Distributions Spider Chart (their jobs calculator is also cool). The professional
outlooks will have forecasts.
III) Fiscal Policy and Demand: The GDP report tells you how fast GDP growth has been.
Atlanta FRB’s GDPNow and the NYFRB give you nowcasts. Professional outlooks
give forecasts.
IV) Monetary Policy and Financial Markets. Quote the FOMC Statement. FRED will
graph inflation expectations for you and the professional outlooks will discuss and
forecast inflation and interest rates.
V) Supply Side and International Linkages. The professional outlooks will tell you how
far we are from potential output. You can graph real GDP and potential output in
FRED. Take a few points on the expectations for US imports and exports from the
Outlooks.
VI) Conclusion. (This is all you, just wrap it up.)
The Outlook should be one document (word or pdf) with these four parts
1) Three to five pages of words with references to sources.
2) A page with the sources —with URL if appropriate.
3) A page with a forecast table.
4) Some numbered graphs that you mention in the paper. You can put the sources right next to
the graph or in the bibliography
Do not be worried about making the document look nice. There are no points for that. Imagine
that a graphic designer will do that for you.
