lecture-python-intro

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This issue will collect comments from the Feb 2024 reading group meeting on https://intro.quantecon.org/business_cycle.html

A first point: The lecture needs to refer back to the long run growth lecture. See https://github.com/QuantEcon/lecture-python-intro/issues/343

"We write a function to generate plots for individual countries taking into account the recessions."

When we have a hidden cell, let's try to name the variables and functions it creates and roughly discuss their properties, so that later code cells can be understood without opening the hidden cell.

"These include expansions (also called booms) and contractions (also called recessions)."

Let's add the following after this line

Some of these fluctuations involve a great deal of human hardship, and some shape the course of history.

For example, the Great Depression caused massive unemployment worldwide.

In Germany, the Great Depression exacerbated a financial crises that led to hyperinflation and an unemployment rate of peaking at 25%, which in turn severly altered the political landscape and, in many historians view, fueled Adolf Hitler rise and eventual Nazi dictatorship.

In this lecture we will examine the data on business cycle fluctuations in a range of countries, focusing on GDP per capital and the unemployment rate.

Question: how can we make a quantitative statement showing that GDP fluctuations in Argentina have been larger than the US?

I propose that we cut from "3.5. Synchronization" to "We use the unemployment rate and the recovery of labor market conditions as another example." inclusive.

The topic of synchronization is very interesting but not really central to the main message of the lecture. This change would remove part of it. (The removed part could possibly be shifted to an exercise or a later lecture on international economics.) Another reason for this change is that Section 3.4, titled "Unemployment", is currently too short. This change would expand it.