Online resources to play with

I have just found a wonderful resource on the EU’s Eurostat website. They call it the Business Cycle Clock, and you can use it to investigate changes in the economic data for the EU as a whole, each member state, the Euro area, and for contrast Japan, the US, Switzerland, Turkey - for any date from January 1990 to the most recent data. It places a range of key data, such as Labour Cost, Private Final Consumption and Industrial Production as well as the four main economic indicators, on a grid showing whether each is above or below trend and showing an increase or decrease. Hours of fun can be had with this! You might want to read through the link provided to ‘Explanation’ first in order to get an idea of the range of data and how to manipulate it - or you might just want to pitch in and try it for yourself.

While on the subject of economics resources you can play with, if you haven’t tried Worldmapper before you really should. Worldmapper is a collection of world maps, where territories are re-sized on each map according to the subject of interest. For instance you can contrast the map of those living on less than $1 per day with those living on $50-100 per day, or resize the map by the number of vehicles exported to compare with the value of financial services exports. Make sure you have plenty of time on your hands when you first try this, as you are likely to get fascinated by it and find that time has slipped by …… and you will find that it has all sorts of applications for economics lessons.