Freedom, Economic Growth, and International Transparency

Econ 180: Excel Project Three
Prof. Lemke
Due: Monday, November 9

Directions: This project concerns the relationship between civil freedoms, economics growth, and international transparency for the world's nations. The data are in an excel file, and can be downloaded here: Project Three: Transparency Data. Right click on the link, and save the data to your laptop or LFC computer account.

You must work this individual project by yourself. Your answers are due at the start of class on Monday, November 9th. Answers must be typed as a single Word document. I would suggest doing much of the work in Excel, then copy and paste your tables into Word, then edit your tables and add thorough explanations in Word. Each question except #1 requires you to explain something using words. Be sure to intertwine your written explanations with your tables of data in a clear and readable way. Be sure to also label each table with the table number given in the question, but also give a title for the table. In question 1, for example, at the top of the table I would write, "Table 1. The Number and Percentage of Countries by Region."

Much of what you are asked to do concerns cross-tabulations, which is the PivotTable idea in Excel and was one of the key tools you were to learn while completing Excel Project #1. In addition to looking back at Excel Project #1, an excellent web resource for learning how to create pivot tables is:

http://www.jic.bbsrc.ac.uk/services/statistics/readingadvice/booklets/topXFS.html#appendixexcelforpivottables.

Of course, as you learned while completing Excel Project #1, Excel's Pivot Tables are rarely presented in the clearest manor. Pivot Tables is a useful tool as they allow you to avoid a lot of tedious counting, grouping, etc. But once the table is created, you may (and will) find it useful to reorganize the table to make it clear for your reader.

Codebook: When you open up the data set, you will see that it contains 8 variables (the columns) and 179 observations (the rows). The variables are:

country: The name of the country.
region: One of six global regions that the country is located in.
free99: Freedom House's label of the country's overall level of freedom in 1999. Categories include Free, Partially Free, and Not Free.
gdppc99: The per capita gross domestic product (GDP) of the country in 1999 measured in 2000 U.S. dollars.
open99: The United Nation's label of the country's overall international transparency as measured by the country's reporting (or lack of reporting) of its production and trade of military arms in 1999. Categories include Open and Closed.
free02: Freedom House's label of the country's overall level of freedom in 2002. Categories include Free, Partially Free, and Not Free.
gdppc02: The per capita gross domestic product (GDP) of the country in 2002 measured in 2000 U.S. dollars.
open02: The United Nation's label of the country's overall international transparency as measured by the country's reporting (or lack of reporting) of its production and trade of military arms in 2002. Categories include Open and Closed.

Questions and Tasks: Using these data, answer the following questions and complete the following tasks.

  1. Create Table 1 to report the number and percent of countries in each region.

  2. Create Table 2 to report the average and standard deviation of 2002 per capita GDP for each of the six regions. Which region is the wealthiest? Which is the poorest? Which region appears to have the most equal income distribution? Which appears to have the least equal income distribution?

  3. Create Table 3 to demonstrate how many countries were free, partially free, and not free in 1999 vs. 2002. What information do you take away from this table?

  4. Create Table 4 to demonstrate how many countries were transparent or not (open or closed) in 1999 vs. 2002. What information do you take away from this table? Do you have an explanation for why we might see this behavior? (Hint: Did anything happen on the world stage in 2000 or 2001 that might explain this pattern?)

  5. Create Table 5 to demonstrate freedom vs. transparency in 1999. Repeat this for 2002 in the same table. (Make sure the distinction between the two years of data is clear in the table.) Describe how freedom and openess seem to be changing.

  6. Create Table 6 to report average 2002 per capita GDP by transparency status (open vs. closed) for each of the six regions. Is it a global phenomenon that countries that the wealthiest countries are also the most transparent?