Exercise No. 3  -- Creating a Scenario

1. Read Chapter 4 ("Understanding and Using IFs") in Exploring and Shaping International Futures for background instructions on creating a scenario
2. In this scenario you will cut in half government military expenditure over a 10 period of ten years, and then keep it at that level for the next twenty years.  You will do this by shifting the government expenditure by destination multiplier (gdsm) from 1.0 to .5 for military expenditures by the year 2010.  The effect of this change would be to cut in half a government's expenditure on the military.   If they had been spending 16% of all government expenditures on the military, after the change was fully in effect they would be spending only 8% on the military.  Your task is the create this scenario and then examine some consequences.  Specifically, you will look at the impact such a change could have on your country's conventional power (CPOW),  your country's GDP per capita ppp (GDPPPC), and your country's life expectancy (LIFEXP).
3. Open up the IF program.
4. Open up "Scenario Analysis" and choose the "Guided Scenario Analysis" option and hit "Continue."  Since you have already explored the base case for your country in previous exercises, you can hit "Next" in Step One.  In Step 2 choose your country.  In Step 3 just hit "Next."
   
5. In Step 4 expand "Governments/Socio Political Systems" by clicking on the "+" next to it and choose "Fiscal Expenditures" and click on "gdsm" ("government expenditures by destination multiplier").  Your country's name should already be highlighted so just hit "enter" and choose military.  Click the "Fully Customize " button and in the" desired value" box change the "1" to a ".5".  In the "Years to Repeat" box put "10" and hit the interpolate button.  You have now gradually halved your government's expenditures on the military over the period from 2000 to 2010.
6. Now go back to the "Years to repeat or interpolate" box and replace the "10" with a "30."  Hit the "Change/Repeat" button  -- you have now kept that change in effect for the next 30 year.
7. Hit the "Exit to Scenario Tree" button and then hit the "Ok" button.  Back in the Step 4 screen hit the "Next" button.  You will be asked to "save your scenario" and you should give a name and save this scenario -- to your usb drive it possible.
8. In the "year to which the model will run" box replace "2025" with "2030."  Hit the "Start Run" button and wait until the model has finished calculating the changes that were introduced by your government's level of military expenditures.  This can take some time, have patience -- you have asked the model to recalculate values for all other variables in the model based on the changes you just made in military expenditures.  Hit the "click to continue" button when the "run successful box" comes up.
9. In the Step 6 screen you can see some of the changes the model predicts will happen if military expenditures are cut in half.  In the "select year" box you can select 2030, the last year for this scenario, and compare the figures for the "base file," with no military budget change, to those for the "run file," with a 50% cut in the military budget.  Now produce three particular bar charts documenting these changes. 
10. Click on "Display," and then the "Self-Managed Flexible Display."  In the "type name" box type "CPOW."  Click on CPOW (Conventional power) and choose your country.  This variable is labeled "CPOW(0)" and contains the data that flow from your changed military expenditures.
11. Find the "Files Available for Display" box and select "1 - IFsBase.run." Again hit CPOW and choose your country.  You have now brought up the "base model" and used it to calculate your country's conventional power under the old higher military expenditure rate.  This variable is labeled "CPOW(1)."
12. Hit the "Go to Display" button.  Hit the "Graph" button and choose "bar chart" to see the data on conventional power under your scenario [the CPOW(0) column] and under the base model [the CPOW(1)column].  Using the skills you acquired in doing Exercise No. 2 produce a correctly labeled  bar graph of these data.  If you go to "Display Format" in the Display Menu you can then go to "Format Legends" and customize the labels on your chart.  Click on the CPOW(working) and replace it with "50% cut in Military Budget" and hit enter.  Click on the CPOW(base) and replace it with "No Cut in Military Budget."  If labels appear in other columns just click on them and replace them with a blank "space" and hit enter.  Your can label the "y" axis label by hitting the "Set Title" option under the "Display Format" tab.  When your bar graph appears right click on it and hit the "Customization Dialog."   You can then enter a good title and subtitle, change the "numeric precision" to an appropriate number of decimal places and choose the "both" button under the "Display" option to have both a graph and a table.  Change the "Points" so that the bar graph only goes to the year 2030.  Change the "Axis" minimum and maximum values so that the differences between the two cases (50% military budget cut vs. no military budget cut) are highlighted.  Your bar graph should end up looking something like this:  
    
    
13. Save your bar graphs and analysis in a Word file.  Hit "Save" and "Export."  Open up a Word file and past the graph into it.  Go back to the IF "Graphical Display" window and "save" the graph again as a JPG file and "export" it to your USB drive for later use in your country study.  When saving these JPG files for later use you might want to change the "pixel" numbers from 1000 to 750 and from 732 to 549.  This will produce a bar graph that can more easily "fit" into a web page. You have to click the "file" button and hit the "browse" tab and find your USB drive to save it there. 
14. Hit the "continue" button and go back and repeat the process for GDP per capita ppp (GDPPCP) and then repeat it again for life expectancy (LIFEXP).    In total, you should have three bar graphs like these:
    
    
    

    ---