1) a. What is the topic of the article?

Studying the predicators of GDP of India from the years 1997 to 2012

b. According to the authors why is this topic important?

According to the authors of this article, in any economy, its financial architecture plays a crucial
role in sustaining, expanding and handling the economic crisis by focusing on ways to increase
the Gross domestic product (GDP). However, the financial crises can disrupt the financial
architecture of the economy by negatively affecting the GDP growth of the economy. Such
negative effects can be reduced by identifying and tracking the factors that determine the GDP.
Hence this topic is important in quantifying the level of impact of such factors on GDP so that the
early signals on the performance of such factors on GDP can be observed

c. What is the contribution to existing research that this study makes?

This study contributes to existing research by analyzing the impact of factors such as inflation,
exchange rate, foreign exchange reserves, sensex, balance of payments and fiscal deficit on GDP
with special reference to India

d. What is the research question or purpose of the study?

Following are the hypothesis that comprise of the questions that the author trying to answer or
test:
Hypothesis of the Study:

1. H0: Null Hypothesis-There is no significant relationship between GDP and selected economic
variables of Indian Economy.
Ha: Alternate Hypothesis-There is a significant relationship between GDP and selected economic
variables of Indian Economy.
2. H0: Null Hypothesis: GDP is independent of economic variables of Indian economy.
Ha: Alternate Hypothesis: GDP is dependent on economic variables.

e. Based on what we learned about research design in class, describe the data that the authors
used to address their research question or purpose. Where applicable, consider commenting on
things like whether the authors used primary or secondary data, the method through which the
data was collected (e.g. survey, interview, etc.), what the “individuals” were in the dataset (e.g.
417 Hmong parents), response rate, sample size, panel data or cross-sectional data, sampling
strategy, etc.

Author used the secondary data published annually by Reserve Bank of India (RBI) for the period
of 15 years i.e. from 1997 to 2012 on inflation, exchange rate, foreign exchange reserves, sensex,
balance of payments, fiscal deficit and GDP. RBI collects this data through various surveys such
as industrial outlook survey, survey of inventories, survey of order books & capacity utilization,
inflation expectations survey of households and survey of professional forecasters.
 f. What types of limitations in the research design or data do the authors acknowledge?

The limitation of the study as acknowledged by authors is that this study is confined only to
selected economic variables as independent variables and “Gross Domestic Product (GDP)” as
dependent variable. Seven independent variables are selected to determine how they affect GDP
of Indian Economy for period of only 15 years i.e. from 1997 to 2012

g. In a sentence or two, what are the main findings?

The present study revealed that only three factors such as exchange rate, sensex and balance of
payments are better predictors of growth of an economy

h. Look at the table of regression results in the article you chose. What are some things that you
notice about the table? (e.g. the independent variables are on the left margin, dependent
variable(s) across the top, the sample size is reported in a footnote, there are asterisks next to
some of the numbers, etc.). You do not necessarily have to understand what everything you
notice means, I just want you to start observing what a publication-ready regression results table
looks like

Table 2 in the article talks about the Regression analysis results. It says with a note that the
predictors or independent variables are inflation, exchange rate, foreign exchange reserves,
sensex, balance of payments and fiscal deficit. The dependent variable is GDP. Table gives the
analysis results on the model with R, R Square. From table 2, it is observed that R Square is 0.96,
which indicates that if there is 100 percent change in given variables, there will be 96% in the
GDP of the Economy

2) Access a secondary dataset from one of the sources mentioned about in class or a dataset that you
already know about and are interested in. Identify the dataset you accessed and where you
accessed it. Spend a short bit of time exploring the dataset and any relevant documentation that
goes with it (you don’t need to do any analysis). Describe (generally, not in extreme detail) how
the data was collected, what organization is responsible for the data, when the data was collected,
the types of information in the data set. Also note some of the challenges you noticed in finding,
accessing, and using secondary data. (I don’t expect you to “know” the dataset from this exercise.
I just want you to have a sense of the challenges that come with accessing secondary data, for
example, there is no documentation provided on how the data was collected.)

I know about the Indian National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO) Employment and
Unemployment survey dataset which I accessed from the Government of India website. This data
was collected by a socio economic sample survey with a detailed questionnaire in July 2011.
National Sample Survey Organization is responsible for collecting data and publishing the survey
report. It’s a household related data with information on size of household, number of people
employed, unemployed, incomes, industry occupation, age of the members, social security
availability etc. Challenges are in understanding the questionnaire, the codes, and how the
questionnaire data is transformed into the tables, graphs and charts in the final published reports