James Penstone

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As we begin to explore macroeconomics, it is worth thinking about some of the key things that we will be looking at and how they apply to a real life country.

Economists agree that there are four main macroeconomic goals which most governments consider when managing their economy (and some governments, as we know, manage their economies more directly than others). The four macroeconomic goals are:

1) Growth (an increase in the country’s total output)

2) Low Unemployment (or put another way, high employment)

3) Stable General Price Level (while it is accepted that a small amount inflation is manageable, both high inflation and deflation are seen to be undesirable).

4) A Healthy Balance of Payments (for example, importing more goods and services than those that a country exports can be seen to be undesirable in the long run).

Sometimes, a fifth macroeconomic goal is added, although we should recognise that it clearly appears to be of variable importance to the different governments of the world:

5) Equity (an even distribution of wealth within the country)

There are other macroeconomic goals that are sometimes considered which you may come across in your research.

A good research task is to consider these macroeconomic goals for a country and gather data on a number of economic indicators for your country. Examples of such indicators include:

• GDP and / or GNP
• GDP per capita / and or GNP per capita
• Rates of Inflation
• Interest Rates
• Unemployment Levels
• Balance of Trade (Imports versus Exports)
• Distribution of Wealth

You could choose a country that has signed up to the OECD. What does that stand for, and why would a country want to belong to this organisation?

Look at the economic health for your chosen country over the past ten years. Gather text, images and even video links to support your findings. If you can, try to see why they changes but don’t worry about this too much – this can be complicated and we haven’t even studied the theory yet.

http://www.oecd.org

A great way to present your findings would be to produce a ‘glog’ or online poster. You can host your glogs at http://www.glogster.com/ and teachers can even set up accounts for their class here: http://edu.glogster.com/

Make your glog as informative as possible. Try to mix up text, images, graphs and tables and possible short video clips (from youtube for example). Remember to give a title and explain your chosen country’s membership of the OECD.