| Monitoring the Economy | |
The activity outlines deal in the main with current affairs and give some examples of how web resources may be used in the classroom. The focus is on analysing current issues.
These resources provide current daily commentary on the economic issues of the day. Newspapers are obvious sources of such information, however westpac economics section usually contains comment on current issue of the day, the National comments on recent statistical releases and the Commonwealth publishes a daily market update. Information from the National is in the Business section>News and Information.The ABS also provides a current table of key economic indicators that is useful for current round ups and their media releases and summaries of recent statistical releases are extremely useful for the economy today style activities. The economic comment from banks is usually accesible via their home page if the URL's on the left do not work. The ABC's Behind the News occaisonally contains economic reports in simpler language than the other places.
Westpac See media centre for economic reports
National See Business > News and Information
All the major banks usually make their weekly, monthly and longer term economic surveys available to the public. The ANZ, National and Westpac publish a great deal of material relevant to economics teachers (industry surveys for example). Many of these reports are useful for students if only for statistics. The RBA, Treasury and the Parliamentary library offer current economic statistics and comment, Economic Round Up is now available online and frequently contains material on current economic issues. ABL and the Australian Industry Group make their reports publicly available as well. The ACTU usually carries articles on the economy although from a different perspective.The resources here are not suitable for all students and need to be used with discretion.
The Economy at a glance and the economic overview offer short snapshots of the US economy that students may find useful. The other links in the section are well known places to find articles on the US and world economy for that matter. The New York Times College section is specifically designed for students while strategic forecasting is a commercial business that offers some comment for free.
Census Economic Briefing Rooms
The web sites of political parties and organisations usually contain details of their economic policies and criticism of the economic policies of other parties. Generally political parties put up web sites for elections and this is a very good time to compare and evaluate economic policies. Students could be asked to compare and contrast policies or draw up a for and against table. Students could then justify their choice of the best policy. Often it is more informative to use the policies of non mainstream political entities. This may stimulate much deeper discusion in some classes. Details of current monetary policy are explained in RBA media releases, Economic RoundUp is available from the Treasury site while budgetary policy information is available from the Governments budget site. Usually Treasury publishes "The Budget at a glance" which is a student friendly presentation of the budget, many students however find the more detailed "Budget Overview" helpful as well. These resources are useful for activities dealing with current economic policy.
The Liberal Party of Australia
The online resources on the left all provide information on the Australian Labour market. The ABS in its year book in the Australian Now section of its website offers a thorough summary of last years labour market conditions. Labour Force statistics may be downloaded from the RBA web site and used in spreadsheets to create graphs. The links to Yahoo and Google will for a time give you a selection of current news articles on labour market developments in Australia. Various online employment databases have been included so students may investigate how current economic conditions might affect their career choices. Students can search these by occupation and industry and use the data to create charts and indexes. The workplace portal from DEWRB offers unsurpassed material on the Australian labour market. It publishes its data on skilled labour shortages and the employment outlook. Its job search portal allows users to locate jobs by regions and industry. Students can ascertain whether or not their chosen career is in demand or not. The ANZ job Ad survey is available online and social welfare agencies such as the Brotherhood St Lawrence and other regularly publish information on unemployment and its impact in Australia.
The resources on the left deal with trade and the achievement of external stability. Briefings on current statistics are provided in ABS press releases while detailed statistics are available in the Australia Now section of their web site. Students who want time series data will find this at the RBA. The Parliamentary Library in Canberra also provides good coverage of this topic. Foreign Affairs have material on nearly every aspect of Australia's trade with the rest of the world. Details of Australia's trade with other countries, the impact of trade round negotiations and free trade agreements are well documented at the DFAT site and Austrade.
Monthly Economic and Social Indicators
(1) Divide the class into pairs. Using the
Internet prepare a daily economic briefing for your class. How is the
Australian economy performing today? How will the Australian economy perform
tomorrow? Is Australian economic happiness rising or falling?
(2) Visit one or two major papers and note down the major headlines for
the day. You may wish to jot down a couple of notes on how these will
affect economic performance.
(3) Check out a couple of Bank sites, which provide daily economic briefings.
Note important stats, events and graphs shown on these sites and note
how they might affect our economic performance.
(4) Check out the Bank's economic calendar. Note any major economic indicators
that are going to be released in the next 7 days. Predict the trend in
these indicators with reasons.
(5) Report your findings to the class. Forecast our economic happiness
over the forthcoming week. On the class chart of the Australian economic
happiness line, mark in today’s level of happiness and with a dashed
line mark in your forecasts of future happiness. Please jot down the main
reasons for your conclusions on the chart.
(6) The next pair undertakes all the steps above and the following. Revise
the forecasts of economic happiness of the previous group if necessary.
The class may need to reach a consensus over this if disputes arise. If
any of the economic indicators have been released then past predictions
should be evaluated and new ones made. All this should be summarised on
the class economic happiness chart.
This activity can be easily adapted for specific economic indicators and
quarterly indicators.
( 1) Pick a recent newspaper article on the
Australian Economy. A suitable article would be one that reports the latest
GDP figures, inflation figures or unemployment figures. Other more ambitious
reports you may wish to evaluate would be the OECD Economic Outlook or
the ANZ job survey, even the ACCI survey of Business confidence is available
online.
(2) Read the article and summarise the main idea and the author's point
of view.
(3) Using the Internet locate the original material on which this report
is based. A good place to look for this is in the media release section
of the organization that has published the data. Examine this material
carefully. You only need to look at the statistical data if the language
is too complex.
(4) Give the newspaper reporter a mark. Is the report accurate? Is it
biased? Does it cover all the relevant material released? Does the author
interpret the data fairly?
(5) You may either briefly present your findings to the class or write
up your findings for assessment.
Create a scrapbook of economic comments and use these to make a concept map.
Prepare at regular intervals an economic briefing. You are the economist.
Collect sensational quotes and counter evidence showing why they are wrong.
Use a diagram to show the forces acting on the economy today.
Use transcripts from the 7-30 report or Business Sunday to role play an interview on current economic developments.
Use materials to create an economic diary or blogg.
