Essay Data Analysis – Imports of Goods and Services – Economics Assignment Help

Assignment Task :

I. INTRODUCTION 

Assume that you are an economic consultant hired by an international organization/government to provide your expert advice on conditions pertaining to international trade in Argentina and El Salvador. Your analysis will consist of two separate reports (one for Assignment 1 and the other for Assignment 2). As an expert, your job is two-fold: 

1. You are required to analyse any relevant issue using your technical skills. This involves utilizing your knowledge in international trade models as well as inspecting and interpreting data.

2. You need to communicate your results in an effective way. The purpose of this exercise is to assess your aptitudes in each domain. You will evaluate the trading conditions in these countries (Argentina and El Salvador) based on the scenarios detailed in each question in this Assignment. Your analysis will form the basis for a short report to the international organization/government body— summarising your recommendations and the associated rationale. 

II. DATA SOURCE 

For your data analysis, you first need to obtain data from the World Bank (see the link below) and follow the steps described below. Notice that World Bank regularly updates its database; therefore it is crucial to obtain all data as soon as possible. The data range is from 1998 to 2014. You need to obtain the country-level data for Argentina and El Salvador on: 

i. Imports of goods and services (in current US$)

ii. Exports of goods and services (in current US$)

iii. GDP (in current US$)

iv. GDP per capita (in current US$) 

v. GINI Index (World Bank estimate) from the World Bank’s World 

III. REQUIRED TASKS 

Your tasks involve two dimensions. First, you need to analyse the data (see Steps 1, 2 and 3 in the next section). Second, you also need to perform a technical analysis by considering a hypothetical trading environment based on Ricardian model (see Step 4 in the next section). 

Accordingly, you are required to: 

• Provide a visual representation of the relationship between openness and inequality by plotting a graph (use scatter plot) that shows the change in openness with respect to GINI index for these countries over the period between 1998 and 2014 (including all years, i.e., 1998, 1999, …, 2014). 

• Establish how being integrated with the rest of the world affected inequality in these two countries by looking at the correlation between their openness and GINI index. 

• State and explain whether your data findings are in line with theory (Assume both Argentina and El Salvador are unskilled-labour abundant countries). 

• Continue your technical analysis from your first report and state what would have happened to these countries once they are allowed to trade with each other based on our hypothetical scenario of Ricardian model.