Project description
An important graduate quality that is stressed in this course is the ability to conform to acceptable community and business standards. Such standards include most notably the completion of professional-quality work on time. Excuses such as last-minute printer or file storage problems will not be accepted, as they would not be by a client in the real world. Students with extreme medical or personal emergencies may seek an extension on an assignment through your tutor. Students who wish to seek an extension on the basis of an ongoing medical or learning disability must present their Disability Access Plan to the course coordinator at least two weeks before the assignment is due, and preferably as soon as possible after the start of the study period. This will enable us to best tailor an assessment plan to fit your circumstances.

FORECASTING AND BUSINESS ANALYSIS (ECON 2007)
Study Period 2, 2014
DUE AT 5.00 PM, FRIDAY, 13 June, 2014
•
The main body of your report, including an executiv
e summary of 100 words, should not
exceed 1100 words. The appendix of your report does
not count for this limit.
•
Your report should be supported by tables and/or gr
aphs where appropriate.
•
An electronic copy of your assignment is to be subm
itted online using the Learnonline
facility by the due date, while a hard copy of the
identical version of your assignment is to be
dropped into the pigeon hole marked as “Assignment
Box” located outside the office of the
School of Commerce (WL2-57) by the due date.
•
There is a penalty of 10% of the total mark for lat
e submission of each day. The only
exception to this is if your tutor approves an exte
nsion prior to the due date, for legitimate
reasons
based on documented evidence
. So you should collect your documented evidence
before you contact your tutor for an extension.
•
Plagiarism is a specific form of academic misconduc
t. If found, both parties will be
penalised regardless of who copies from whom. The e
lectronic version of your submitted
assignment will be used for a plagiarism check.
•
The data file needed for this assignment is availab
le on the course web site under the
Assignment Information
folder, where this document is located.
Your Task
In December, 2013, an international retail company,
Tribeco, considered to expand its
business into the Adelaide market. They approached
you, a local renowned business
consultant for a feasibility study. They are intere
sted in your forecast of Recreational Good
Retail Turnover (RGRT) in 2014 as a reference for t
heir forecasted sale if they start their
business operation in Adelaide.
You are presented with the Australian Bureau of Sta
tistics (ABS) information on Adelaide’s
RGRT from June 1994 through December 2013. The info
rmation on the unemployment rate
(UR) and the average weekly earnings (AWE) per pers
on in Adelaide are also available to
you.
Some Hints
1. As AWE is a quarterly series, while UR and RGRT
are monthly, we need to make the
frequency of all the time series consistent.
2. Following the protocol shown on pages 162-164 of
Koop, test for a unit root for each of
the variables.
3. Carry out econometric analysis and write down yo
ur findings before you start writing your
report.
4. A good report should be unfolded consistently an
d logically around a main theme which
covers your findings.
5. Create your business report, in which you will d
ocument and discuss the results of your
analysis. Your report should include the following
items:
• An executive summary
• Introduction to the problem
• Justifications and discussions of methodologies
• Evaluation of results and discussions of limitati
ons
• Conclusions
The following are some guidelines that we will use
to mark your assignments. This may help
you in preparing your assignment.
Main article
Superb (80%) – include all main results; accompanyi
ng well-presented and meaningful
graphs and tables; accurate, consistent and logical
arguments; well-written.
Good, solid report (60-70%) – it is not superb in a
ll aspects above, but an overall impression
of the report suggests that it is a very good and s
olid report.
Acceptable, but with several weaknesses (40-50%) –
it clearly contains some mistakes, but
overall it covers most important findings.
Quite inadequate (0-30%) – the report contains many
mistakes. An overall impression
suggests that assignments were done with little eff
ort and students do not understand most of
the concepts introduced in the course.
Appendix
Include all necessary Excel outputs. Your appendix
may include some technical materials.
The appendix should be well sorted out and with bri
ef descriptions, so that they are easy to
follow.