Paper details:

Your economic forecast paper will be evaluated on the basis of your effort. If you would like to earn a base grade of 90, you will need to write 8-10 pages. If you would like to earn a base grade of 80, you will need to write 5-6 pages. If you would like to earn a base grade of 70, you will need to write 3-4 pages. Deductions from these base scores will be deducted for weak economic logic, insufficient research, poor organization, and poor writing. Points may also be added for displaying excellences in these categories. Your paper should be double-spaced, times roman 12 point font, and should include a bibliography to not be counted in the basic number pages of your analysis.

1 Introduction: Explain the usefulness of forecasting the state of the economy one year down the road and the difficulties of being able to do so.
2 Identify the economic history of the past ten years to situate your forecast. Identify important variables such as GDP, interest rates, unemployment rates, price levels, major government spending and taxing programs, private investment, consumption, exports and imports, and the condition of the stock market, etc.
3 Identify the present condition of the above mentioned variables.
4 Create three possible scenarios for the future and approximate how likely each scenario would be. Use the Conference Boards index of leading economic indicators to get a sense of how likely a recession is.
5 Weight each scenario and add them up to create your forecast for what the future will bring.
6 Conclusion
The topics we are studying over the next couple weeks will touch upon these issues so pay attention when reading so you will know where to look for information.

Hints for forecasting paper
As you research your future forecast for the next year, it may help if you use different theoretical lenses to look at the data to determine if a problem is going to emerge and what the nature of that problem might be. Keynesians believe inadequate demand may cause an economic slump and have suggested that deficit spending can prevent an economic slump. Austrian economists believe credit bubbles from loose monetary policy can lead to bad investments that eventually crash and cause a crises and only believe letting the market do its work without government interference is the best way to avoid economic crises. Marxists believe that the capitalist system is inherently unstable and prone to crises because of concentration of capital and the inability to continue to make rates of return necessary to facilitate growth and argue this unstable system needs to be modified to avoid substantial misery. The raw facts of the economy may look different depending on what theory you are using. Feel free to google these theories to learn more about them

Hints for forecasting paper
Statistics for inflation and unemployment can be found at the Bureau of Labor Statistics. There are different measures of inflation including the consumer price index and the chained consumer price index for example. Whatever measure of inflation you use, you should make it clear about what measure you used and why you chose it. You can statistics on GDP from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Information about interest rates can be found at the various Federal Reserve websites. If you are looking an index of leading indicators that will help you forecast the future, the conference board is a place where you can find that information. Hope this helps you.