Excel VBA: United States Business Cycle

One of the most popular techniques to identify the cycle of an economic time series is the filter of Baxter & King. This filter transforms the economic variable using a Fourier series methods. I created an Excel VBA program to replicate the results of this filter. With this macro we are going to be able to get the evolution of the cycle directly in excel without the necessity to use Rats or Eviews. The program is very similar to the method used in Rats. As an example, I used the US GDP to get what is the position in the cycle in 2015-Q5; it seems that until that date the GDP was still in a contractionary phase.

US GDP Business Cycle

Excel Maps: Unemployment Rate 2012 by States

Excel allows you to include and edit maps easily. Here is a map of United States by states including unemployment rate in 2012. You can download the excel file and edit this map using conditional formatting (thank you Wayne Winston for the classes). I did not know that Indiana has an unemployment rate higher than 8%.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/do1o0t02vwqzohx/Indicators%20United%20States%20Map.xlsm

You can download many more map templates to work here
http://www.clearlyandsimply.com/files/2009/06/choropleth_map_templates.zip

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Excel Maps: World Economic Indicators

Excel is like our brain, we have only exploit less than 10% of its capabilities. Using an small VBA program and shape maps we can generate beautiful maps and at our convenience change their colors using the power of conditional formatting. In this example I mapped the 2012 Public Debt in GDP percentage. For example, the red color indicates the countries that are highly indebted. In the link below you can find the excel file that help me create this map. Enjoy!    

 https://www.dropbox.com/s/lwlkqcngh61lill/Indicators%20World%20Map.xlsm

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Surfing Formulas in Excel

Tracking formulas is one of the most time consuming aspects of analyzing excel files, especially when you have to review these files created from other analysts. I developed a VBA program that helped me to reduce a lot of time understanding formulas and proactively detect potential mistakes. Enjoy!

Link to download the excel file

How do I create a Personal.XLS