Economics at the Movies - Foods that Make Billions
Here is a link to a you tube video from the BBC looking at the modern food business and the huge profits to be made from the breakfast cereal industry. Part of the series The Foods that Make Billions (cereals, bottled water and yoghurt)
The Foods That Make Billions - Cereals
Unit 1 Micro: Biomass Subsidies and Timber Prices
If you are a fan of laminate flooring, wood panelled walls or neat wood-based fencing for the garden, the chances are that you will be paying higher prices in the years ahead. Despite the Britain offering a temperate climate for a plentiful supply of wood and a well organised system of land registry and plantation management, the UK market price of different types of timber has shot up over the last two years.
read more...»Unit 1 Micro: Supply Shortages Drive Peanut Prices Higher
Supply shortages in key growing regions have caused the price of peanuts to surge to record highs. Peanut prices in Europe are 60% higher than a year ago and the cost of peanuts in the USA has more than doubled in the last twelve months. The price spike is the result of lower production from India, Argentina and the United States.
read more...»European Economics: Resources on the CAP
This blog entry will provide a regularly updated set of links to resources to the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy and attempts to reform this contentious and complex system of farm support.
Check below for suggested links
read more...»Unit 4 Macro: Prospects for the African Economy
In recent times there have been several new reports focusing on growth and development prospects for the African continent. Contained within them is plenty of useful background analysis and comment for students and teachers who spend time looking at developments and issues affecting Africa as part of their economics studies. Follow the links below for more details:
read more...»Economics of Deforestation
The Human Development Report 2011 reported that deforestation is a severe problem. In the last two decades, Latin American and Sub-Saharan Africa have experienced severe forest losses, especially when compared to the rest of the world.
For economists the economic and social costs of rapid deforestation represent a telling example of the tragedy of the commons where the pursuit of individual self-interest can risk a permanent destruction of natural resources that undermines the sustainability of communities and societies for current and future generations. The United Nations calculates that deforestation and degradation is responsible for nearly 20 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions.
Will the REDD programme make a difference?
REDD stands for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries and is designed to provide financial incentives funded by advanced nations for developing countries to preserve their forests and instead invest in low-carbon paths to sustainable development.
The UN estimates financial flows of up to $30bn could come from REDD and related initiatives - the scheme effectively allows rich countries to offset their carbon emissions from domestic industries and consumers by funding clean low-carbon development projects in developing countries. But it is highly controversial and opposed by many organisations such as Friends of the Earth and the World Rainforest Movement.
In this blog we have put together some web resources on the issue of deforestation - focusing on causation, consequences and also on some of the policy approaches that might work to bring about behavioural change.
Futures trading explained in 1 minute
This is an excellent, very short video that gets across the key point about futures contracts
read more...»Unit 1 Micro: Economists attack food price speculation
Food prices are now rising by up to 10% a year in Britain and Europe and a new forecast from the United Nations predicts that prices can be expected to rise at least 40% in the next decade. Whilst conventional theories of changes in supply and demand conditions can be used to explain some of the increase in food prices, many economists are concerned that speculation by hedge funds and other investors has amplified the natural volatility of prices driving food prices away from fair values and contributing to a huge rise in global food poverty and hunger. These days, cocoa, fruit juices, sugar, staples, meat and coffee are all now global commodities, along with oil, gold and metals.
Is this the moment to legislate to limit the scope for speculative activity in food markets? The video below provides an excellent introduction to speculation in food markets - it features Neil Kellard, Professor in Finance at the University of Essex
read more...»Unit 4 Macro: World Food Day
Here is one of the short information videos launched by the World Bank on the occasion of World Food Day - excellent as an introduction to the economics of high and volatile world food prices. Every night, 1 billion people go to bed hungry because food is too expensive.
read more...»Can the “invisible hand” solve Africa’s poverty?
At last night’s Senior Economics Society at Oundle we had a riveting talk by Hywel Rees-Jones, Managing Director of CDC, which covered so many areas of the issues of development economics. The talk was entitled “Can the invisible hand solve poverty in Africa?” Whilst conceding that some of the statements were broad generalisations across a variegated continent, Hywel discussed some of the key issues facing Africa.
read more...»Some more ‘creative’ economics props…
Geoff’s post about being ‘dangerously creative’ got me thinking about exactly what props I’ve got lying around my classroom, so I thought I’d share them with the rest of you…
read more...»Zondle Game: 10 Question Quiz about OPEC
OPEC continues to be in the news in an age of high and volatile crude oil prices. Here is a ten question quiz on OPEC created using Zondle designed to test student knowledge of this important international group.
AS Micro: Fears over a century of hunger
Nigel Cassidy reports in this video from BBC news on fears that the world faces “a century of hunger” if the international community cannot agree on new rules regarding food prices. Food security is a hugely important global economic, political and social issue and one of the best resources for keeping up to speed on this is the Guardian’s dedicated page of articles. Here is the link. Check the links at the bottom of the blog for past articles on this topic.
Evan Davis ‘Made in Britain’ - and a new trade data tool to play with
The first episode of a 3-part series, Made in Britain, was shown on BBC 2 last night, and was a really useful hour for economics (or business) students. It examined how and why Britain has lost thousands of manufacturing jobs over the last two or three decades in the low-value part of the sector, with some film of outsourcing shot in China as well as plenty of archive material from this country, but argued that the move to high-end, low scale manufacturing has become Britain’s area of comparative advantage in industrial manufacturing. This included Evan being taken for a test drive in the new McLaren sports car, which was clearly an amazing experience - watch the clip to see his reaction! And this surely emphasises the Economic Importance of Manufacturing to the UK economy - see below! Sadly this episode is not to be broadcast again, but is available on i-player for another 22 days and is thoroughly worth watching. I will certainly be setting the recording machine for the next two programmes, on Mondays at 9.00 on BBC2 - episode 2 is to focus on how innovation can help keep Britain ahead in the global economy.
read more...»AQA ECON4 Context
Geoff’s blog about ECON4 (see below) is fantastic advice, and I hope that my A2 students will spend much of the next 2 days working their way through it, checking they are secure in their knowledge of the topics he has identified, and can apply them to the context areas suggested there. If they have finished all that, and want yet more up-to-date evidence there is plenty in the news in the last few days.
read more...»UK economy - as seen by the Bank of England
Students who want to be able to quote current data and trends in the UK economy could do worse than spending some of their revision time picking out the highlights from the Bank of England’s Agents Summary of Business Conditions, published today.
There is plenty of opportunity to find evidence which can be used to back up evaluative arguments in macroeconomics papers here.
Key points
1/ Growth in domestic markets is sluggish at best, but investment in the export sector looks better, probably driven by the rise in exports to emerging markets, Germany and the US.
2/ The service sector looks far from buoyant, with so much spare capacity that investment intentions are low and recruitment in consumer services is down.
3/ Unsurprisingly, import and raw material prices are driving a need to pass on cost push inflation to buyers, although many found that their power to pass on price increases to consumers was very limited, in spite of widespread awareness of the increase in costs - reflecting fears that price elasticity is very high at the moment.
AS Micro: What´s really behind the oil price rise?
The price of oil continues to rise ($114.61 per barrel) and there a number of reasons put forward why this is so, none perhaps more pertinent than the reason explained in this WSJ article.
read more...»AS Micro: Rising Global Food Prices
This Euro News video report (8 mins) looks at the background to the rise in global food prices and the economic impact. I have linked below to related blog posts on the issue of the economics of food price inflation (also known as agflation)
read more...»
AS Micro: The volatile price of crude oil
Few commodity prices are watched as closely as the international price of crude oil. Brent crude is currently trading at over $122 a barrel - the highest price for over two years. Our Timetric chart is constantly updated and will always show the latest price. We have included below links to many of our recent blogs on the economics of oil prices and some of their micro and macro economic effects.
read more...»International Economic Indicators
I am encouraging my A2 pupils to make better use of macroeconomic data to support their points. I have found the TradingEconomics website very useful for providing an up-to-date selection of indicators for a wide range of countries.
read more...»AS Macro Key Term: Bubble
A bubble is said to happen when the prices of securities or other assets rise so sharply and at such a sustained rate that they exceed valuations justified by fundamentals, making a sudden collapse likely (at which point the bubble “bursts”). Typically this is seen in property markets where housing valuations can rise to unsustainable levels relative to income or long-run average prices. Speculative demand driven by positive price expectations has the effect of amplifying market demand and driving prices higher - especially when supply is restricted and unresponsive to short-term price movements.
Bubbles are common in other asset markets such as for stocks and bonds. And increasingly we find that world commodity prices exhibit bubble tendencies with high levels of volatility in the prices of foodstuffs, oil and natural gas and metals.
The bursting of a bubble - such as a collapse in property prices - can have important demand-side effects on wealth, confidence and aggregate demand
read more...»AS Micro Revision: Banana Prices
This revision note covers supply and demand factors that help to determine the world and domestic retail price of bananas. Despite rising world prices, the UK retail price of bananas has actually fallen in recent years. Can students explain why? What effect does intense competition within the UK food retail sector have on the prices we pay?
read more...»OPEC oil revenues set to surge above $1 trillion in 2011
A combination of higher prices and higher oil production means that Opec’s oil revenues may exceed $1 trillion in 2011 for the first time. The International Energy Agency has published some new data on Opec production - the revenue forecast includes exports of natural gas liquids and is not adjusted for the effects of inflation. But if you are a Finance Minister of an oil exporting country the price of crude trading at $115 is welcome news especially given the stimulus spending that some countries have introduced as a response to social and political unrest. On some estimates, Saudi Arabia (the world’s largest oil producer and exporter) needs oil to be priced at $83 for its national budget to balance.
read more...»Chinese slowdown planned
China’s five-year plan, the economic blueprint that will dictate future demand is being hammered out this week in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. At the heart of the plan, which will cover 2011-2015, is a shift towards cleaner, slower growth.
The question being asked globally is whether this will impact commodity prices?
read more...»Economics Q&A: What factors help to explain rising food prices?
Global food prices have risen on average by more than 135% over the last 5 years. While the price of food has been highly volatile, with a spike during 2008, there is clearly a trend pattern of a long term rise. This can be attributed to various root causes, both demand and supply side in nature.
read more...»Tuesday Talks! African development
My theme for the Tuesday Talk this week centres on the scope and scale of African development. I touched on this briefly at yesterday’s Global Economy conference in my presentation, and have included a link to my slides in this post. One of the economists that I referred to, Professor Thandike Mkandawire spoke at the LSE in April last year - you find his talk here: just scroll down the list load his talk in the viewer.
After listening to his talk, have a go at identifying the main challenges facing African economies in their quest for development. You may also want to take a look at the work of Paul Collier (who is a speaker at many of the LSE public lectures, which you can find in the same place as Thandika Mkandawire’s talk), and Amartya Sen.
In addition, on BBC2 this evening at 9pm, there looks to be an interesting documentary ‘The Chinese are coming’, which focuses on the role of Chinese investment in Africa.
Trade_gaps_of_LDCs_and_development.pptx
5 Fresh Links: Reforming the EU Common Agricultural Policy
The economic, environmental and social issues arising from farm support in developed and developing countries often figure in final year teaching for A2 economics. We are looking at this at the moment as part of our teaching of the economics of the EU. Here are five fresh links on the vexed question of how best to reform the Common Agricultural Policy of the EU - including two recent videos from BBC news.
read more...»Economics Q&A: How might rising food prices affect food retailers and manufacturers in the UK?
Food retailers are service sector businesses selling food products to consumers. The leading retailers in the UK are Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda (Walmart) and the Co-Op/Somerfield. Although the food retail industry in the UK is dominated by a handful of national chains, there are many others including thousands of small-scale retailers. And discount retailers that have done well in recent years including Aldi and Lidl.
Food manufacturers process foodstuffs into new products and they rely on buying raw materials from wholesalers. Good examples to use might be Nestle, Heinz and Sara Lee.
The larger retailers manufacture some of their own-label foods although they may choose to out-source this to another manufacturer. And likewise, some food manufacturers have their own chain of retail stores or outlets - for example Gregg’s the Baker or Domino’s Pizza.
read more...»China limits rare earth exports
China (which produces about 97 percent of the global supply of rare earth metals) has announced that it plans to restrict exports of rare earths by 10% for 2011 and it is also increasing export taxes for some rare earth elements to 25 percent in 2011.
These moves raise fears that shortages of rare earths will drive prices higher and make many hi-tech consumer goods more expensive.
read more...»Watch out for the £7 chocolate bar!
Will a collapse in global cocoa production bring an end to chocolate as an affordable treat and giver of blood sugar? This article from the Independent today was timely as I am teaching price volatility in commodity markets in my AS micro class as a prelude to discussions abour price intervention strategies such as maximum prices / buffer stock schemes etc. I have attached my class homework as a word file in case it is of use to colleagues.
Cocoa Economics (AS micro)
Cocoa_Economics.docx
Here is a highly relevant section from a new report from Commodities Now
“World food prices have been trending higher as emerging markets have increased their share of global food demand due to rising populations and incomes. Food products are having to compete for finite resources such as water, land and fertiliser inputs and are increasingly being used for alternative applications such as bio-fuels. As an example, ethanol now accounts for approximately one-third of annual corn output in the US, up from 5% a decade ago.”
