Authors at Tutor2u - Conference Line Up is Finalised
Google has a remarkable programme called Authors at Google where top-rated authors are invited to the Googleplexes around the world to share and discuss their ideas with employees.
Tutor2u’s own national conference for Economics teachers scheduled for Thursday 17th June has the look and feel of one of the best Google events! We are delighted to have finalised the speaker programme for the event and all four of the main speaker sessions promises to deliver some fascinating insights on the economics and business of change.
Our four speakers are confirmed as Stephen King (Chief Global Economist at HSBC), Hamish McRae from the Independent, Professor Paul Collier (Oxford University) and Dr Linda Yueh (Oxford University) - all of whom have new books whose arrival on the bookshelves is imminent. We are organising book signings for each author so delegates will be able to take away with them some terrific new reading for the summer. And we are planning an informal lunchtime session for colleagues wanting to bring themselves up to speed with some ideas for great value items of software that can be used in teaching economics in the classroom.
Four great speakers, a wonderfully comfortable and spacious auditorium, a chance to visit the sensational British Library or perhaps do a bit of after-conference shopping! And our traditional end of conference drinks party for those who can stay a little while and look ahead to the summer!
Places at the conference can be booked here. There are superb value Departmental Deals for colleagues attending one or more of the three conferences at the British Library that week - for Economics, Business and Politics.
The Mutual Gains from Bartering
A Spring Hat Tip to Louise Gilbert for spotting this terrific example of local bartering - a pub is allowing customers to barter for beer and meals. And the Publican makes a strong case for the mutually beneficial gains from bartering if appropriate terms of trade can be agreed:
“I love bartering, it’s a lot more interesting than dealing with money. In these hard times everybody benefits, and it brings the locals together.”
More here: Two pints of beer? That will cost you a sack of potatoes if you barter
•AS Micro - •Market Equilibrium and Price - •Nature of Demand - •Price Mechanism in Action - •Teaching of Economics -
Tags: trade, barter, gains from trade, terms of trade
No comments yet, add one! Permalink
Cameron on TED
David Cameron speaks at the TED talks here. Whilst very little of it is his own ideas, he does cover issues of transparency, accountability, information gaps, and references to behavioural economics (including Thaler’s Nudges).
Erotic economics
We’ve seen various attempts at tax avoidance before, with the likes of the big debate about whether Jaffa cakes are truly biscuits or cakes , but today another “interesting” example appeared in the news here.
The Erotic Cinema in Belgium claimed it should benefit from the reduced 6% rate of VAT (instead of the normal 21%) paid by cinema owners, who get a discount under law to promote cultural activities. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it was rejected by the ECJ!
•Macroeconomic Policies - •Fiscal Policy - •Quirky Trivia -
No comments yet, add one! Permalink
Nissan turns over a new Leaf
This is a hugely important announcement and boost for the North east economy whose long term future must be built on competitive advantages in the emerging low-carbon industries of tomorrow. The decision to manufacture the lithium-iron batteries used in the Leaf electric cars is the key to the employment creation effects of the new investment by Nissan. Note too the role played by government financial support. The investment is backed by a £20.7m government grant and up to £220m from the European Investment Bank.
The Nissan car plant is the most productive in the European Union. The plant opened in 1984 and has so far built 5.6 million cars. It produced a third of all cars built in Britain in 2009. Digby Jones sings the praises of businesses such as Nissan in this super interview on the Politics programme a few days ago.
•AS Macro - •Business Economics - •Cycles and Shocks - •Aggregate Demand - •Capital Investment - •Economic Growth - •European Economy - •GCSE Economics - •Government Intervention - •Subsidies - •Manufacturing Industry - •OECD Economies - •Recession Watch! - •Teaching of Economics - •Transport Economics - •UK Economy - •Regional Economics - •Unemployment -
Tags: employment, euro, investment, multiplier effect, nissan, motor industry, fdi, electric car
No comments yet, add one! Permalink
CBI call for changes to work patterns to cut congestion
The Confederation of British Industry has a new report out on the costs of the congested road and motorway network in the UK. Road pricing is one of their favoured options and they emphasise too the importance of changes to work patterns including flexible hours and more home working as a way of reducing peak-time congestion.
“With vehicle traffic having grown by a quarter in just 20 years, road congestion now costs the economy an estimated £7-8bn a year, which is likely to more than double by 2025 unless more action is taken”
The CBI report can be downloaded from here
•Business Economics - •Cost Benefit Analysis - •Market Failure - •Transport Economics -
Tags: costs, congestion, cbi, road pricing
No comments yet, add one! Permalink
Is 70% of the world economy in a liquidity trap?
Paul Krugman expands on the nature of the liquidity trap and why more of the world economy might be in this situation than is commonly supposed. His opening paragraph raises an interesting question for A2 economists - does a liquidity trap encourage protectionist policies and heighten the risks of a period of prolonged de-globalisation?
“Being in a liquidity trap reverses many of the usual rules of economic policy. Virtue becomes vice: attempts to save more actually make us poorer, in both the short and the long run. Prudence becomes folly: a stern determination to balance budgets and avoid any risk of inflation is the road to disaster. Mercantilism works: countries that subsidize exports and restrict imports actually do gain at their trading partners’ expense.”
•Credit Crunch - •Global Economy - •Macroeconomic Policies - •Monetary Policy - •Recession Watch! - •Teaching of Economics -
Tags: inflation, risk, globalisation, exports, protectionism, quantitative easing, liquidity trap, paul krugman
No comments yet, add one! Permalink
Economists do it with models - explaining trade theory
A different take on the gains from trade from a female perspective! And links to two excellent revision You Tube videos on trade theory - all part of the growing web site of economist Jodie Beggs.
•International Trade -
Tags: trade, comparative advantage
No comments yet, add one! Permalink
PIGS or BRICS - which is most important for UK exports this year?
The PIGS - Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain - are in economic turmoil and likely to experience weak growth in the near term. A contrast to the BRICs - Brazil, Russia, India and China - three of whom are already seeing a ramping up of their growth rates as the world economic cycle turns. But which group is more important for the UK export sector? Chris Giles from the Financial Times has the answer here and his blog provides a useful evaluation point for AS and A2 macroeconomics students.
•AS Macro - •Emerging Economies - •Brazil Economy - •China Economy - •Indian economy - •Russia Economy - •Cycles and Shocks - •Aggregate Demand - •European Economy - •Recession Watch! - •Teaching of Economics - •UK Economy -
Tags: economics, china, exports, bric economies, pigs
No comments yet, add one! Permalink
Death to the speculators!
There’s been lots of discussions in the news these last few months about the power of speculators against sovereign debt. My students have been asking about this so I thought I’d write a short note here about it:
- There has been a lot of naked short selling of sovereign debt recently, particularly Greece debt.
- A naked position (also known as an uncovered position) in derivatives speak is when the seller of an option does not have the corresponding position in the underlying security
- A short sell is a strategy to aimed at taking advantage of an expected fall in prices
•Business Economics - •Financial Markets - •Global Economy - •Government Intervention - •Regulation - •Macroeconomic Policies -
No comments yet, add one! Permalink
Millenium Development Goals
A very good resource for development economics, discussing the UN’s Millenium Goals.
It also has some cool interactive maps, resizing the world map according to various metrics such as population living on less than $1.25 a day; or amount of international aid received.
Another useful link is at the BBC here, with another cool interactive graphic which provides a neat insight into why the measure of relative poverty in the UK (<60% of median income) is flawed.
•Emerging Economies - •Economic Growth - •Poverty and Inequality -
No comments yet, add one! Permalink
China Economic Growth Forecast Revised Upwards
The Guardian (story here) has reported that China’s growth is forecast to be 9.5% this year, rather than the 8.7% predicted previously. This article presents IB students a nice snapshot of the links and trade-offs faced by economic policymakers.
read more...»Fed pledges to keep policy rates “exceptionally low”
Here is an interesting approach to interest-rate setting by the US Central Bank - the Federal Reserve. The Fed has pledged to maintain ultra-low interest rates for the time being in a bid to support and sustain a recovery in domestic demand and output and reduce the risk of a double-dip recession later on this year.
read more...» •AS Macro - •Macroeconomic Policies - •Monetary Policy - •OECD Economies - •US Economy - •Teaching of Economics -
Tags: recession, inflation, demand, risk, investment, expectations, federal reserve
No comments yet, add one! Permalink
Presentation on Fiscal Deficits (ATTACHED THIS TIME!)
(Presentation attached this time!)
Given the Budget 2010 scheduled for next week, and given the importance of the budget deficit to the election campaign, here are some useful resources on the current fiscal situation in the UK:
- Following on from the economists’ letter last month, today, the EU also called for a quicker tightening of the UK’s fiscal position
- A video discussion here between Stephen Timms and Ken Clarke on how Labour and Conservatives would tackle the UK’s deficit - and how there is no clear message from any party on how they would actually achieve it!!
- And finally a PDF document here (which has been compiled by us at Merchant Taylors’ - thanks to Andrew Ellams and Harriet Thompson for their assistance on this!) which may be of use: FISCAL_POLICY_09-10_MTS.pdf
•AS Micro - •Exchange Rates - •Financial Markets - •Government Intervention - •Keynesian Economics - •Macroeconomic Policies - •Fiscal Policy -
No comments yet, add one! Permalink
How do you shop?
Lip gloss is the new lipstick according to the ever-changing basket of goods and services that make up the CPI basket, discussed here.
read more...»Tax revenue goes up in smoke
One of the disadvantages of indirect taxes, particularly the so-called ‘sin taxes’ levied on tobacco and alcohol, is that they can give rise to a black market in the goods in order to avoid the tax, and this is a source of government failure. An article in The Times highlights this in the market for cigarettes. To quote the article “According to estimates by HM Revenue & Customs, up to 54 per cent of handrolling tobacco and 17 per cent of cigarettes consumed in the UK are smuggled, costing the Treasury £3 billion in lost tax revenue in 2007-08 alone.” With the current fiscal deficit, the treasury needs that revenue!
•Government Intervention - •Government Failure - •Indirect Taxes - •Macroeconomic Policies - •Fiscal Policy - •Market Failure - •De-Merit Goods -
Tags: law of unintended consequences, black market, smuggling, tobacco tax
No comments yet, add one! Permalink
Sterling and Exports - The Importance of Time Lags
Roger Bootle has an excellent article on the lagged effects of a competitive exchange rate in today’s Telegraph. One of his arguments is that the default behaviour of exporters is to take higher profit margins from their overseas sales rather than cutting prices to boost export volumes. Crucially the impact of a lower currency takes time to show through in the trade data and this is because switching production to countries where the exchange rate is favourable cannot happen overnight .... read this paragraph:
“Yet where export prices are not cut, this does not necessarily mean that the weaker currency will do no good. It is rather that the benefit will take longer to come through. In response to higher profit margins, firms will have more incentive to sell abroad. In the economic textbooks, selling abroad, or switching from European to Asia markets, is simply a matter of pressing a button. In reality it isn’t like this; sales networks have to be established, modifications to the products or services made; foreign relationships built up. These things do not happen overnight.”
More here: The competitive pound is one of the few things we have got going for us
•AS Macro - •Balance of Payments - •Cycles and Shocks - •Exchange Rates - •Macroeconomic Policies - •Recession Watch! - •UK Economy -
Tags: price, euro, trade, profit, depreciation, sterling, balance of trade
No comments yet, add one! Permalink
Wen turns the tables
Following on from last month’s article in EconoMAX that I wrote, China has insisted again today that the yuan is not undervalued - The Chinese premier turned the tables on the U.S and Europe today when it said that putting pressure on China to appreciate its currency was tantamount to protectionism!! Genius!
“What I don’t understand is depreciating one’s own currency, and attempting to pressure others to appreciate, for the purpose of increasing exports. In my view, that is protectionism,” Mr Wen said.
read more...» •Emerging Economies - •China Economy - •Cycles and Shocks - •Aggregate Demand - •Economic Growth - •Exchange Rates - •Macroeconomic Policies - •Trade Policies - •Teaching of Economics -
Tags: euro, china, trade, exports, debt, protectionism, exchange rates, yuan, renembi
No comments yet, add one! Permalink
Economics of Happiness v.2010
The economics of happiness does the rounds every year or so and here is v.2010. The latest edition of Economic Journal revisits the “economics of happiness” literature this week.
read more...» •A2 Micro - •AS Macro - •AS Micro - •Behavioural Economics - •Poverty and Inequality -
Tags: gdp, economics
No comments yet, add one! Permalink
Revision Download - European Economy 2010
Here is a free revision download for teachers and students who wish to update their understanding of key topics and issues in the European Union…
read more...» •European Economy - •EU Enlargement - •EU Farming and Fishing - •Single Market - •The Euro - •Teaching of Economics - •UK Economy -
Tags: eu, single market, enlargement, single currency, living standards, monetary union, fishing in the european union, eu competition policy, environmental policies in the eu, eu farm reform
No comments yet, add one! Permalink
Revision Presentation - Supply-Side Indicators for the UK Economy
This updated revision presentation should be really useful for colleagues and students addressing the crucial supply-side issues during revision for AS and A2 Economics…
•AS Macro - •Cycles and Shocks - •Aggregate Supply - •Government Intervention - •Labour Economics - •Macroeconomic Policies - •Supply-side policies - •Manufacturing Industry - •Teaching of Economics - •UK Economy - •Unemployment -
Tags: unemployment, investment, manufacturing, productivity, competitiveness, output gap, nairu, supply-side, trend growth, profitability
No comments yet, add one! Permalink
India ramps up infrastructure spending to sustain growth
Rapid growth has put India’s creaking infrastructure under tremendous pressure. The Indian government has sharply increased investment spending on infrastructure with ambitious projects such as adding 20km of new roads each day! Can the spending projects deliver? This BBC India Business Report looks at the rise in investment spending.
•AS Macro - •Emerging Economies - •Indian economy - •Cycles and Shocks - •Aggregate Demand - •Capital Investment - •Economic Growth - •Global Economy - •Macroeconomic Policies - •Fiscal Policy - •Teaching of Economics -
Tags: investment, india, india, multiplier effect, infrastructure, cluster effects
No comments yet, add one! Permalink
Rethinking the size of the state
Hamish McRae is on superb form in his piece in the Independent on Sunday today. His article centres on the idea that the British government has never managed to raise the tax burden to anything over 38 per cent of GDP. This in effect provides a ceiling for the pot of tax revenue available for a government to spend but with state spending commitments perennially over 42 per cent of national income (or much higher as at present), hard choices will have to be made about the range and funding of public services in the future.
“you have to question the whole structure of the public sector. Goods and services that could be supplied by the marketplace have already been shed in the great wave of privatisations, starting in the late 1970s: oil companies, airlines, telecoms, motor manufacturers, power utilities and, more controversially, railways. But these were goods and services that people pay for. They are not funded in the main by the tax system. People expect to have free schools, but they never expected free flights or free phone calls. The core problem now is that we as a society want to spend a greater proportion of our income on services that are, to a greater or lesser extent, provided by the state: health care, welfare for the elderly and education. But we are not prepared to provide the finances in the form of taxation to fund this. That leads to two conclusions. One is that we have to improve the efficiency of the public sector; the other is that we have to get people in some way or other to pay more of their own (ie, taxed) income to buy these other services, either from the state or elsewhere”
•AS Macro - •Government Intervention - •Macroeconomic Policies - •Fiscal Policy - •Market Failure - •Public Goods - •Teaching of Economics - •UK Economy -
Tags: gdp, pay, government spending, public services
No comments yet, add one! Permalink
Great UK economic data resource from the FT
A well deserved hat-tip to Duncan Taylor from Queens’ College, Taunton for flagging up this resource from the FT.
Duncan will be using it in the final week of term to bring my AS students up to date and to remind them of some of the ground they have covered over the past two terms.
Paris punishes the purse strings
Paris comes out on top of the world’s most expensive cities according to the new survey from the Economist - available here - The survey assesses the cost of living by comparing housing, food, clothing, transport and utility bills and the like in 132 cities around the world. This is a super chart to use when teaching about purchasing power parity adjustments when comparing and contrasting living standards between countries!
•AS Macro - •Emerging Economies - •European Economy - •OECD Economies - •French Economy - •Standard of Living - •Teaching of Economics -
Tags: housing, food, purchasing power parity, living costs
No comments yet, add one! Permalink
Newspaper turnarounds - the importance of design
This TED talk is from the spring of 2009 but hugely relevant today in the ongoing discussion about the economic futures of newspapers - a superb 6 minute talk from a young Polish designer and his successes in revamping a range of titles in eastern Europe and the Baltic States. It is not just about design but design matters - a lot!
•AS Micro - •Business Economics - •European Economy - •Teaching of Economics -
Tags: newspapers, design
No comments yet, add one! Permalink
Aftershock - Philippe Legrain’s new book
Philippe Legrain has a new book coming out in early May - a new take on the challenges facing the globalisation process in the aftermath of the financial crisis. Here are the details. Aftershock: Reshaping the World Economy After the Crisis
Tags: aftershock, philippe legrain
No comments yet, add one! Permalink
Economist - Special Report on Germany
Some of the feature articles in the special report on Germany available in this week’s Economist can be found here
•AS Macro - •OECD Economies - •German Economy -
Tags: germany
No comments yet, add one! Permalink
Carlos Slim - Monopoly and a Licence to Print Money
The latest Forbes rankings of the world’s wealthiest people is the cue for a slew of articles and short features. Rory Cellan-Jones has this BBC news video piece on the wealth attributed to Carlos Slim the Mexican telecoms monopolist who controls 90 per cent of landlines and 80 per cent of mobile connections in that country. A super piece to show to illuminate the chasm in income and wealth in Mexico.
•AS Micro - •Emerging Economies - •Business Economics - •Monopoly - •Economic Growth - •Poverty and Inequality - •Teaching of Economics -
Tags: wealth, inequality, monopoly, mexico, carlos slim
No comments yet, add one! Permalink
98 airports and counting
Government failure in Japan?
•Government Failure - •OECD Economies - •Japan Economy - •Teaching of Economics -
No comments yet, add one! Permalink
