ECO10250 Research Report On Economics for Decision Making - Assessment 2

Assignment 2

For Assignment 2 you are required to prepare a report on the current (i.e., August/September 2020) state of the Australian economy and compare its performance with the state of the economy over the period from 2015 to 2020. In completing your report it will be necessary to examine the latest available figures and the comparable figures commencing in 2015 to develop an annualised (2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020) trend analysis. You should provide a table or graph of these trends. A discussion of the possible causes of the trends you develop is expected.

The following four economic indicators - economic growth (GDP), unemployment, inflation and trade are to be examined in your report. Trade generally includes the terms of trade, the current account, net foreign debt and the value of the Australian dollar however for your report you will just be focussing on the current account for the trade category. In examining the performance of the Australian economy it will also be useful to outline any expected target values that may exist for the economic indicators.

Finally, given your analysis, you are asked to highlight three major issues facing the Australian economy over the next 12 months and why these are of concern and how they may affect the four indicators above.

Presentation of report
The report should be between 1500 and 2000 words. This word limit does not include the abstract, tables, graphs and reference list.

The report should be word processed using Times New Roman font size 12 with 1.5 line spacing.