Analytical description

Our research often starts with a descriptive inquiry that may identify some interesting patterns for further research.

Your (GROUP) task will be to prepare a short report on the COVID-impact on the EU (+UK) economies.

Tasks/structure:

1) Introduce briefly the state of the EU members economies just before the COVID (end of 2019/early2020. Support your argument with a table and a chart (might containg more than one data serie).

2) Describe briefly the COVID-induced GDP loss over 2020 for EU economies (UK included). DOnt describe all the countries, rather focus on the general trend (within-EU variance might be interesting here) + the extreme (or otherwise interesting) cases. Support your description with a table and a chart.

3) This leads us to ask a logical question - what is behind the differences in COVID induced GDP loss. SO in the third section look at the possible relationship among the GDP-loss (dependent variable) and (i) the Debt (Gross govern. debt), (ii) GDP per capita, Covid-Deaths for 2020 (see WHO for the data), (iv) Democracy. Given the nature of this task, your inquiry here should be centered on charts (simply plot and compare the putative relationships). Provide a brief evaluation of the visual inspection - which factors seems to be most promissing for further research.

(iv) provide a brief conclusion

Dont forget the formal requirements.

Hand in as a word/pdf (text + the tables and charts), and an excel (data from which you will prepare your report)