Unit 1 Micro: Denmark Drops the High Fat Food Tax
The Danish government has opted to bring to an end a policy intervention designed to curb consumption of high fat foods. The measure - introduced in the autumn of 2011 - added £1.50 per kilo of saturated fats in a product but the experiment will end because of fears over inflated food prices and domestic jobs being put at risk. Food manufacturers complained of increased compliance costs and there was some evidence of a rise in cross-border shopping to avoid the tax. A proposed new tax on sugar has also been cancelled.
Video: Fat tax introduced by Denmark
Unit 1 Micro: How Hot Dogs Are Made
For many industrial products the price elasticity of supply across different levels of demand is essentially perfectly elastic - i.e. a business can manufacture as much as is needed at a given unit cost for a given level of market demand. Processed food is a good example of this and I can find no better example of the idea than this stunningly clear five minute video on how hot dogs are made!
read more...»Chocolate Passion - Grown in St Lucia, Made in Cambridge
Angus Thirwell the co-founder and CEO of Hotel Chocolat is immensely grateful to Joanne Harris and Juliet Binoche. respectively the author and star of the hit film Hotel Chocolat. The movie educated a generation of aspirational chocolate lovers in how to pronounce Hotel Chocolat and has helped millions of consumers in Britain and around the world advocate the hit chocolate retail brand without committing a pronunication faux-pas! I wonder how many satisfied customers realise that Hotel Chocolat does not exist? Perhaps they have typed the name into Trip Advisor hoping for a review of a retreat flowing with rather wonderful chocolate made from a St Lucian plantation?
read more...»Unit 4 Macro: Micro Finance, Fair Trade and Development
Here is a streamed revision presentation on aspects of micro finance and fair trade as part of a course on development economics.
read more...»Economies of Scale at Google
Unit 1 Micro: Making the Bus Cool!
The conventional wisdom is that bus transport in many countries including the UK is an inferior good - demand declines as real incomes fall. Consumer perceptions of bus travel are hard to shift and default choices when it comes to transport are often deep-rooted and tough to change. The total annual number of bus journeys made in the UK experienced a long term decline from the 1950s for nearly forty years although a recent House of Common select Committee report found that, since the mid-1990s, there has been an upturn in total passenger numbers for Great Britain, largely as a result of the introduction of national concessionary travel schemes and passenger growth in London.
Perhaps this rather wonderful video from Denmark does more than most to make bus travel cool once again! What do you think?
read more...»Unit 3 Micro: The Rise of Dynamic Ticket Pricing in Sport
Here is the link to the article
Unit 1 Micro: Bargain Basements for Luxury Goods
This Financial Times new video looks at the rapid growth of outlet shopping where excess inventory (stocks) of designer brands are sold at heavily discounted prices. A useful video to watch when thinking about income elasticity of demand. The video looks at how premium brand retailers manage this section of the market.
read more...»Unit 4 Macro: Perspectives on Natural Resource Curses
My A2 students have been researching and writing about the economics of natural resource curses - some of their perspectives are provided below.
The Kindle and the e-book - the perfect complements
I am a Kindle user.
There, I’ve said it. As the founder member of the Kindle-owners self-help group (KOSH), I’m inviting all fellow addicts to come out and admit likewise – until you admit it to yourself no-one will be able to help you. Until we act collectively, no-one will be able to stop those Amazon dealers from peddling their wares.
read more...»Paul Ormerod: Ninja Turtles, Nick Clegg and Market Failure
Christmas is coming. Retailers are beginning to push their offers hard. The first page of a search on Google for ‘Christmas Toys 2012’ is full of sites announcing the ones which will be ‘hot’ or ‘top’. In total, there are over 75 million results available to be perused.
Last year it was Mishling Tree Monsters, Doggie Doo, and the like which proved the most popular. Readers of a certain age will recall such stupendous commercial triumphs as Teletubbies, Buzz Lightyear and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Fond though these memories might be, the runaway successes bring tears as well as joy. Every year, the cult toys of the year become hard, or even impossible, to acquire as the great day approaches.
read more...»Market Failure - Child Obesity
Unit 1 Micro: Smartphone Penetration and Creative Destruction
The speed with which new consumer product technologies are taken up is
of enormous interest for lots of reasons. Emerging products and services
challenge demand, revenues and profits for established products and
bring about - as Schumpeter pointed out - gales of creative
destruction.
In the United States, fresh data suggests that more
than half of US consumers have smartphones and if the information is
accurate, this means that smartphones have become one of the most
rapidly adopted consumer technologies of all time.
Unit 1 Micro: Capacity problems following Olympic surge in demand
A hat tip to Ed Marsh from Glyn School for spotting this excellent short news video from BBC Midlands. Demand for swimming lessons in Corby and Northampton is running well ahead of the capacity of the pools to offer them - the problem is not a lack of pool capacity, more a shortage of qualified swimming coaches - what are they doing to rectify this?
Living Diagrams - Supply and Demand in Action!
This is a fantastic teaching idea! This week economics students at Ipswich School have been having a go at living supply and demand diagrams in AS economics. Here are a couple of examples of students getting home and finding wonderful ways of illustrating the price mechanism in action! Can anyone surpass the two examples shown below? If so please send them in or post on a twitter feed using the hash tag #ecbusteach
Unit 4 Macro: Chile - Development Growing Pains
This new video from the Financial Times is superb on some of the growing pains for the Chilean economy, a country widely praised for good economic management in recent years. Her economy is heavily dependent on copper exports, and a target of developed country status by 2018 looks ambitious. The Chilean government believes that it can be met a year early! But there will be many obstacles to overcome not least in meeting growing demand for reform in a country where income and wealth inequality has widened.
Paul Ormerod: We are all better off than we think
Apple’s iPhone5 has already smashed sales records. The first day on which consumers could make purchases over the web, more than 2 million online orders were placed. Little wonder that JP Morgan has estimated that sales of the iPhone5 could add as much as 0.5 per cent to American GDP. These numbers have attracted criticism. If consumers simply buy iPhones instead of other products, it is hard to see how output could be boosted by such an amount.
read more...»Unit 1 Micro: Prices in Action - Ticket Pricing at Derby County
A warm hat tip to Ed Marsh, Head of Economics at Glyn School for spotting this superb example of a sports club using dynamic pricing technology to determine the prices of tickets for their home games.
The BBC news site reports that Derby County are introducing "demand-based" ticketing for the coming season with prices fluctuating according to the opposition, the team's form, kick-off times and even the weather. The system is known as Sports and Entertainment Analytical Ticketing System (SEATS)
Buy in advance and fans will get cheaper prices - but what if a sizeable group decides to start a game of chicken with the club and hold back from buying? As match day gets closer, ticket prices should move higher, but if demand for a game is well below the stadium's capacity will prices drop back?
Hardened cynics might also point out that the Derby County ground has a fundamental design flaw .... the seats face the pitch!
Unit 4 Macro: What Is a Natural Resource Curse?
Unit 4 Macro: Primary Export Dependence
Many lower-income developing nations still relying on specializing in and exporting low value added primary commodities. The prices of these goods can be volatile on world markets. When prices fall, an economy will see a sharp reduction in export incomes, an adverse movement in their terms of trade, risks of a higher trade deficit and a danger that a nation will not be able to finance investment in education, healthcare and core infrastructure.
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Unit 3 Micro: OFT Investigates the UK Retail Fuel Market
The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has announced that it is launching an investigation into prices at the pumps amidst fears that the retail market for petrol and diesel is not operating properly and causing damage to the welfare of fuel buyers including millions of motorists and businesses.
For a long time motorists have complained that the prices they pay are quick to rise when the world price of crude increases, but the cost of filling up the tank falls much less quickly when crude oil is available on international markets at lower prices. This BBC news video report provides some background.
Our chart below tracks the weekly average price of petrol and diesel against a benchmark international price for crude oil - is there any evidence here for the wrath of customers?
Unit 1 Micro: Difficult Times for UK Farmers
Unit 1 Micro: What future for the skateboard industry?
Admit it, when was the last time you dusted off your skateboard and strolled over to the local skate park? The estimated number of global skateboard participants has fallen by a third in the last ten years and the industry faces big challenges in preventing decline and reinvigorating what once was a craze but now a market with a firmly downward sloping trajectory for sales. Should skateboard manufacturers stick to their core demographic or look for new alliances to change perceptions and - ultimately - sales and profits. This Financial Times video provides some interesting analysis and comment.
read more...»Unit 1 Micro: Falling demand prompts Lexmark to exit inkjet market
I have always thought that ink jet printers were an expensive and inefficient luxury - the high cost of consumables has always been a source of frustration and annoyance.
It seems now that the demand for ink jets is on a steep downward path as cheaper and frankly better substitutes are chosen. Far fewer people are printing out their photos and choose instead to post onto social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. For those who prefer a hard copy of a photo, laser printers have become a much more cost effective and affordable alternative to ink jet printers.
read more...»Unit 1 Micro: Helium Shortage might be a Party Pooper
How might recession in the natural gas mining industry cause tears for toddlers at birthday parties and pain for organisers of big events? The answer lies in the link between production of gas and the world price for a byproduct - helium. The recession has caused a fall in production in the natural gas industry in the United States and as a result, the supply of helium has fallen too. Fears of a global supply shortage of helium have driven prices sharply higher, the situation has been exaggerated by the possibke closure of the Federal Helium Reserve in Texas - a plant that supplies a third of the world’s crude helium.
read more...»Unit 1 Micro: Rising Wages and Demand for Robotics
In many production processes, human labour and machines are substitutes. Wages are rising quickly in countries such as China. For some years now the annual increase in wages in manufacturing in China has been above ten cent and this rise in labour costs is causing many businesses to consider investment in robotics to fast-forward the process of automatic in factories.
read more...»Unit 1 Micro: Drought and US Corn Prices
This news video from the Economist looks at the impact of the severe drought affecting commercial corn farmers in the United States this year, the drought that plagues most of America has left acres of little more than dry, burnt stalks. July 2012 was hottest US month since records began and the latest forecast is the smallest corn yields for over six years. How will this affect market supply and corn prices in the United States? Which industries rely on corn as a key raw material? How will consumers in the UK be affected?
Remember that the United States is the world’s largest exporter of corn, soybeans and wheat. Ethanol production accounts for about 40 percent of the U.S. corn crop.
More reading here: CNN news: The global impact of the U.S. drought
read more...»Unit 1 Micro: The Price of a Pizza in Brazil
Have a guess at the price tag (measured in US dollars) of a large margarita pizza in the comfortable middle-class environment of San Paulo in Brazil? Would you expect it to be less or more expensive than say a home delivered pizza to your house from leading UK business Dominos?
Environmental Economics: Water Scarcity
By 2050, the world’s growing population will use 55% more water in their homes, to grow food, and to produce electricity and manufactured goods. To ensure enough water to meet this demand, we will need to stop wasting it and find new ways to make sure there’s enough to go around.
The world’s demand for water will continue to grow in the years ahead because of a rising global population and changing lifetsyles and wealth. More people using more and increasingly polluted water represents one of the most severe environmental, economic and humanitarian challenges facing the world. Here are some video resources on the issue of water scarcity.
read more...»Unit 4 Macro: Micro-insurance for Kenyan Farmers
This six minute news video report from CNN is superb, it focuses on pilot programmes to extend micro-insurance schemes for some of Kenya’s smallest and poorest farmers in a country where the agricultural sector is at high risk from the effects of drought. Kenya is the largest economy in east Africa but less than 4% of Kenyans have access to insurance. Many do not understand the concept of insurance, others cannot afford it or choose not to take it out when there are school fees to pay (opportunity cost writ large).
These pilot schemes offer hope for the future but insurance on its own is no panecea. Savings and access to credit are of equal significance in reducing vulnerability to extreme weather events.
The micro-insurance programmes embed mobile technology - for example the Kilimo Salama programme — Swahili for ‘safe farming’ — launched in 2011 provides small-scale farmers in Kenya with crop insurance by combining mobile phone payment with the data from automated weather stations.Kilimo Salama uses data from these stations to calculate the severity of droughts — or excessive rainfall. Eligible farmers then receive payouts via their mobile phones.
More here: Kenya pastoralists get insured for losses
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