Tamson Russell, an economist working for the government, was trying to determine the demand function for passenger car motor fuel in the United States. Tamson developed a model that used the actual price of a gallon of regular gasoline to predict motor fuel consumed per year. After adding a variable representing the population of the United States to the model, she was able to explain 76.6% of the variation in fuel consumption. Did Tamson have a problem with serial correlation? The data are shown in Table P-9.

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TABLE P-9 U.S Population Motor Fuel Price of Consumed by Cars (billions of gallons) Gase (S/gallon) (milions) Year 211.9 213.9 216.0 218.0 220.2 222.6 225.1 227.7 230.1 232.5 234.8 236.3 238.5 240.7 242.8 245.1 -39 53 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 78.8 75.1 76.4 79.7 80.4 81.7 77.1 71.9 71.0 70.1 69.9 68.7 69.3 714 70.6 71.7 .59 1.19 1.33 1.26 1.21 1.16 .95 95