Question 1

The purpose of this question is to examine the rising importance of international trade for a selected country.

Choose any ONE of the following five countries: Brazil, India, Greece, Zimbabwe and Saudi Arabia; and then find the value of merchandise trade for that selected country as a percentage of its GDP for the period from 1970 to 2020. Then,plot the data as a time series diagram and explain how the role of international trade has evolved for this country in the given time period.

Data:Go to the World Bank site athttp://data.worldbank.org/indicator/TG.VAL.TOTL.GD.ZS/countries?display=default

Note:The following 1:22min YouTube video shows how to plot time series data in Excel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CRRWnkbyfA

Question 2

The gravity model of trade predicts that the volume of trade between two countries is positively related to the size of the two economies. To examine this relationship, find the top 20 trading partners for any ONE of the following five countries: Japan, Australia, Denmark, Mexico, India; and then find the value of export (for the country of your choice) to each trading partner as well their GDPs for any year between 2016 and 2020.

Use Microsoft Excel or any other spreadsheet program to make a scatter plot that focuses on size (GDP) as a determinant of trade. The figure should have GDP (as a percent of the GDP of all top 20 export destinations) on the horizontal axis, and exports (as a percent of the exports to all top 20 export destinations) on the vertical axis.

Explain whether your scatter plot shows any correlation between bilateral trade volume and the size of an economy as predicted by the gravity model of trade.

Note:As data on exports are in millions, convert the GDPs into millions as well.

Data:Go to the International Monetary Fund site at (https://data.imf.org/?sk=9D6028D4-F14A-464C-A2F2-59B2CD424B85&sId=1514498277103) to find the volume of export to each of the top 20 trading partners of your selected country. If you click on the name of the first country for which export data is shown on this link, you will see a drop down menu for list of countries on which data is available. Select the country of your choice from this list and the appropriate year (2013) shown at the bottom of the data table.

To find data on GDP, go to the World Bank Web site athttp://data.worldbank.org/. Select GDP in current $US in the navigation field "Find an Indicator". This will lead you to the page with GDP data for all countries. Collect GDP data for the trading partners of your selected country and make sure you are choosing the appropriate year (2013).