FRED is a big database hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis that pulls together economic data from a huge variety of sources.Almost any sort of US macro data (and quite a bit of international data) you could want is there. (It's the main place I go to produce graphs for the lecture slides in this class.)

This question will walk you through producing a graph to examine how the various components of US expenditure and income GDP changed during the 2007-8 financial crisis.

Step 1: On the FRED website track down the four main expenditure components of real GDP: real C, real I, real G, and real NX. (Hints: If you look back at the lecture slides, you'll see what these things are officially called in the BEA data. Make sure you're always finding "real" not "nominal" data. Make sure it's all quarterly so that everything lines up.)

Step 2: Produce a single graph plotting each of the four expenditure components (C, I, G, NX) as the percent change from the previous period (not percent change from the previous year). Period related to 2007Q1 to 2010Q4. (You can produce this graph on the FRED website using their graphing tool. Or you can download the data and do it separately. Totally up to you.)

Show your graph in the assignment. Examine your graph: Which component was the fell the most going into the recession? Which recovered the quickest?

Step 3: Now let's do the same for the income side of GDP. This one is hard to find in real terms, so we'll do it in nominal terms. (Fortunately, inflation over this period is minor, so it won't make a huge difference.). Find the four main components of gross domestic income. In particular they are "compensation of employees", "net operating surplus", "taxes on production and imports net subsidies", and "consumption of fixed capital".(Make sure everything is nominal and quarterly. And also, since we're using nominal data here, you can double check that you have all the right series since everything should add up to gross domestic income.)

Step 4: Produce a single graph plotting each of the four income components as the percent change from the previous period (not percent change from the previous year). Period related to 2007Q1 to 2010Q4.

Show your graph in the assignment. Examine your graph. Any trends you notice here?

See the related website https://fred.stlouisfed.org/

No more information is available.