Prof Dohan Spring 2014

Africa Assignment

Due on May 1, 2014

This assignment counts for 20% of your final grade.

Skills evaluated: analytical, critical thinking, seeing relationship between variables, clear expository writing, finding and evaluating data, and Excel presentation skills.

You must submit it in class. Late assignments will not be accepted. If you cannot attend class on May 1, 2014, you should leave a copy of your assignment in my mailbox in PH 300A by 5:00 pm of that day.

Learning how to select, analyze and compare time series:

  • When comparing the performance of different countries over time and understanding their economic and socio-economic trends is astounding as seen in “datatime series” such as those published by the World Bank database or United Nations.
  • First, you have to identify what hypothesis about an behavior or trends they observed in one or two related time series for a country not found in the other5 African economies. Then ask “Why do we see “X” in Liberia but not in the other 5 economies.” What “indicators” or other information may explain these differences. In our assignment,you have to ask a different question for each of the 6 African countries plus your own country.Here are a few examples. You are not allowed to use the following examples except for no. 2 on South Africa which you must answer for South Africa.
  • For example, what happens to GDP per capita over time? A more interesting question is what happens to income distribution over time. For example, how do you measure the middle class and their relative disappearance in the USA? You must start by looking at the Gini coefficient. A more complex question is then why the Gini coefficient is getting worse? Stable wages and rising prices? Fewer middle class jobs?
  • A second more complex analysis is the following. Even though the per capita income of South Africa has usually gone up, why has the lifespan of South Africans gone down until recently? There you will have to look at causes of premature death such as HIV, tuberculosis rate, smoking, malnutrition and occupational accidents etc.
  • Another example of complex interaction of time series is why does Egypt have such high cereal yield in terms of kilogram per hector compared to the other five countries? Here a good liberal arts education is useful to know something about the geography and the role of the river Nile in growing crops in Egypt and rainfall in Africa.
  • In terms of economic growth, you might want to look at a country’s politics and institutions (savings habits, FDI, exports, imports, education, property rights, ease of doing business, legal systems, infrastructure and of course, return on investment).
  • Next step is to select and put in a table significant time series of those indicators which are relevantto your question or claim. There could be 3 or 4 “positive indicators” supporting your claim and then 5-6 other indicators that could be the cause of the performance of the first set of indicators in the first part of the assignment. you may have to go back to the World Bank Database to look for indicator. Together they form a hypothesis.
  • For example, you might have dig out information for South Africa. What caused the shortened life expectancy of population for about 15 years, even though GDP per capita remained constant? In some cases you might find a few indicators that support your claim.
  • For Liberia and other countries you might have to do extensive reading to know more about the country’s policy, wars, politics, industries etc. To answer each of your questions, you have to use 3 or 4 very strong indicators or 5 or 6 weaker indicators.

Where to start:

  • Start with reading the Wikipedia article and their relevant sub articles often cited in the main article for each of the 6 countries and your assigned country. In the Wikipedia article make sure you note down the political, economic and social events that may have positively or adversely affected your question or indicators.
  • Next do some additional reading about your question. You may only use scholarly articles or journals, and articles from The Economist, New York Times or Wall Street Journal. You must use one additional article for each country including your country. Be sure to cite your sources using MLA format. Hand in these notes with your assignment
  • Before you start the writing part, be sure to put all the time series of indicators in a table together for each country. Be sure to put the time series in the proper order. On the left hand side put the indicators that ask the question. On the right hand side put those time series which answer your question. For example, in Zimbabwe your main indicator would be death rate per 100 people. In Zimbabwe, the death rate rose from 9.6 per 100 people in 1992 to 17.4 in 2002. Your columns on the right should identify the factors that caused the death rate to rise so sharply.
  • I believe most questions will require 2 pages for you to answer thoroughly. You must write 1 page minimum, single spaced for each of the 6 African countries. First sentence of your first paragraph for each country should state, “The purpose of this paper is to analyzewhy the…..: …” Next paragraph should describe the relevant characteristics of the economy, such as industrial and agricultural sectors, rural and urban population, infrastructure and state of the educational system. You should also brieflydiscuss natural and human resources, as well as the population age structure, political structure, crime rates, violence, corruption etc.
  • Your body paragraphs should focus first on the indicators that you are trying to explain and then what factors may influence them. Then explain in a series of paragraphs the relationship between the causal indicators that you have chosen and the main indicators.
  • Final country analysis: For your country you will pick out one (or more) significant economic or socio-economic indicator (such as a rapid fall in the population growth rate, rapid inflation, a sudden rise in unemployment) and then look for indicators from all the indicators available to you in the World Bank Database and select 4 or 5 of the most important ones explaining the trend or change. You will also write a page or two, single spaced for this part as well. That is, underlying your analysis should be a hypothesis and a theory.

Instructions for Excel spreadsheets for the assignment:

  • You will prepare 6 separate spreadsheets for these 6 African countries. You will only have to select indicators for these 6 African countries from the tables provided by me.
  • For your assigned country, you may choose any indicators from World Bank Database.
  • The format for all these spreadsheets will follow the general guideline that we have been following for previous assignments. For example, correct currency symbol, not having too many numbers, appropriate heading at the top etc.
  • See the attached Excel file on the website for an example.