The Federal Reserve Economic Database (FRED) at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

• The Federal Reserve Economic Database (FRED) at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

• The NBER’s business cycle dating methodology

• The Survey of Professional Forecasters at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia

 • The Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Situation Release

• The BEAs GDP Report You may consult other sources, but make sure you cite your sources appropriately.

 Part 1: The first part of the assignment is to consult the various online resources listed above and to provide an analysis of the following questions:

1) What was the state of the US economy as of mid-February 2020? And, around the same time frame, what was the prognosis of the US economy for the remainder of the year?

2) As of the early April 2020, what can you say about the actual state of the US economy? To what extent can you gauge the impact of COVID-19? Provide a timeline over which more impacts will be able to be evaluated over the course of 2020.

3) How have forecasts of the US economy changed, since mid-February? Provide specific examples from credible sources.

 4) Identify key economic variables that have shown significant movements between January and March/early April. Illustrate these movements graphically and provide an economic analysis.

 Part 2: In this part, you will consider the previous three US recessions. You will look at several aspects of them:

 1) Gather data on the recessions and the subsequent recoveries to illustrate the magnitude and length of the recessions across different dimension. Develop graphs to support your analysis.

2) Consider the policy responses to the recessions. Compare and contrast these responses across recessions. Use data and illustrate with graphs as appropriate.

 3) Choose at least one other country and compare and contrast it with the US for the Great Recession. You may choose the Eurozone rather than a specific European country if you would like. Identify your data sources carefully