Unit 2 Macro: Evaluation on Supply-Side Policies
Lots of students will be revising the economics of supply-side policies this week with their AS macro paper coming into view. There are different interpretations of what constitutes a supply-side policy measure. I like to label SSP (supply-side policy) to any policy or group of measures where emphasis is given to improving the working of markets, raising factor efficiency, improving the quantity and quality of labour and in lifting the capacity and competitiveness of an economy in a constantly-changing international environment.
Many supply side policies focus on improving incentives and outcomes in the labour market, others are geared towards bettering the performance of markets for goods and services, All of them centre on helping to sustain non-inflationary growth, improve trade performance, lift living standards and create new and fulfilling jobs opportunities.
This revision blog looks in particular at some evaluation points on supply-side approaches:
read more...»Unit 2 Macro: The Importance of Productivity
Productivity is a key measure of supply-side economic performance and labour efficiency.
read more...»Unit 2 Macro: The Output Gap
How much spare capacity does an economy have to meet a rise in demand? How close is an economy to operating at its productive potential? Has the recession damaged the economy’s productive potential? These sorts of questions all link to an important concept – the output gap. The output gap is the difference between the actual level of national output and the estimated potential level and is usually expressed as a percentage of the level of potential output.
read more...»Unit 2 Macro: Economic Cycle Glossary
A short glossary of key terms connected to the economic cycle
read more...»Tullow Oil and African Development
Yesterday I spent a fascinating evening in the company of Aidan Heavey, Founder and CEO of Tullow Oil plc, Africa’s leading independent oil exploration business and the top performer among FTSE-100 listed businesses on the UK stock exchange. It has approximately 100 production and exploration licenses in 22 countries.
read more...»Unit 2 Macro: Skills Shortages Hold Back Recovery
Here is a superb news report from Channel 4 news about the shortage of skilled workers in the North East of England (an area of high unemployment). Nissan this week announced a big new investment in car making at their ultra-high productivity plant in Washington, Tyne and Wear. But many of the manufacturers along Nissan’s supply chain are finding it tough to get enough skilled people coming througth to make realistic bid for the orders that will come from Nissa. Some businesses are having to turn down contracts because they dont have the extra workforce to cope with the higher volumes of businesses.
Skills shortages are restricting the growth of many small and medium sized businesses especially in manufacturing. Little wonder that Nissan is working very closely with Gateshead College to run an apprenticeship scheme - an example of external economies of scale in action.
read more...»Unit 2 Macro: Globalisation and the Growth of Ports
Ports are a key part of the critical infrastructure of a country engaged in trade with the rest of the world. This BBC news video looks at the rapid expansion of container ports in the Gulf - facilities that offer a vital link between Europe to the west and China and India to the east.
read more...»Unit 4 Macro: Productivity Improvements in China
Productivity is a measure of the efficiency with which a country combines capital and labour to produce more with the same level of factor inputs. We commonly focus on labour productivity measured by output per person employed or output per person hour.
A better measure of underlying productivity growth is total factor productivity which takes into account changes in the amount of capital available for each worker to use and also changes in the size of the labour force.
To give a simple numerical example, if the size of the capital stock grows by 3% and the employed workforce expands by 2% and output (GDP) increases by 8%, then total factor productivity has increased by 3%.
China has achieved impressive gains in productivity in recent years. Some of this is undoubtedly the huge spending on capital investment which has grown to nearly 50% of China’s GDP. The labour force has also grown although this is scheduled to level off and then decline in the years ahead.
What has driven improvements in Chinese total factor productivity?
read more...»Budget 2012 - analysis with evidence
As ever, there are loads of sources that students can use to analyse the Budget and to extract pieces of Evidence for the Examples they will need to add depth to their analysis in essays. Those who are attending the current round of revision workshops will recognise this as a key part of ensuring that they write essays which PEEL the answer (each paragraph makes one Point, using Examples with Evidence, offering Evaluation and Linking to the question). As start points, I would suggest these sources which are reasonably free of opinions:
BBC website: Budget 2012 at a glance, Farewell 50p tax rate, and Over 65-s tax-free income freeze
The Guardian Budget 2012: welfare cuts, tax cuts too, but retreat on child benefit and for the visual learners a nice graphic version: Tax and spending plans visualised
Unit 2 Macro: Policies to Drive Economic Recovery
We were looking today in AS macro at the policy options being considered as part of a strategy to drive a stronger recovery in demand, output, jobs and investment in the UK economy.
I am trying to encourage my students to put things into context as soon as possible in their longer essay-style questions. Here are some thoughts on a question on policies designed to bolster growth:
read more...»Unit 1 Micro - Labour Migration and the Economy
Migration from one country to another has become an increasingly important feature of our globalizing world and it raises many important economic, social and political issues. About 200-million people — about 3% of the world’s population — now live in countries in which they were not born. In the United Kingdom in 2010, the number of international migrants as a percentage of the population rose above 10% for the first time after several years of high rates of net inward migration
read more...»The Story of ‘Adam Sugar’ (aka Aggregate Supply)
This is a great activity my HoD Luke McIlvenna did today with our mutual Lower Sixth Economics Class, which helped them to develop and demonstrate their understanding of aggregate supply.
read more...»Unit 4 Macro: Focus on India - World’s Cheapest Computer
A few weeks ago came the announcement that an Indian business is finally set to launch the World’s cheapest tablet computer. This laptop device will sell for around 18 times less than the price of an iPad in London! How can a laptop be manufactured for less than $US 40?
read more...»Unit 4 Macro: Focus on India - Supply Side Issues
The rapid growth of the India economy has been helped by her economy enjoying a number of supply-side advantages. That said there remain structural supply-side weaknesses that will limit her continued competitiveness and development. This blog looks at the plusses and the minuses.
read more...»Unit 3 Micro: 3D Printing and a Manufacturing Revolution
Additive manufacturing or 3D printing is an emerging technology that takes product design data which provides a geometric representation of a product such as a pen and that data is then sent over to a machine that allows products to be manufactured ‘on the spot’ typically using additive materials in liquid or powder format.
This TED talk from Lisa Harouni (co-founder of Digital Forming) looks at examples of intricately designed products made using this new and increasingly affordable manufacturing technology. 3D machines can build structures, build replacement parts and parts within parts - the detailed resolution possible is incredible.
read more...»Unit 2 Macro: Population Shift in China
What happened in the UK in 1851, the United States in 1920 and in the World in 2008? These three years mark the estimated year when the size of a given urban population overtook the size of the rural population. And now China has reached this significant landmark.
The Chinese Bureau for National Statistics reported recently that in 2011, the proportion of urban population reached 51.27 percent (1.3% higher than in 2010) with the urban population standing at 690.79 million persons, an increase of 21 million persons in a year. China’s rural population stood at 656.56 million persons and for the first time her urban population was 34.23 million persons more than the rural population.
Click below for some study / teaching resources:
read more...»Unit 4 Macro: Natural Disasters and their Economic Impact
From tsunamis to tornadoes, from droughts to floods, 2011 was a particularly nasty year for natural disasters in many parts of the world. These natural disasters inevitably have demand and supply side effects affecting not just those countries affected but ripple impact across regions and in the broader global economy.
The Al Jazeera news video report below provides a clear overview of some of the major natural climatic shocks of 2011 and could easily be used as an introductory resource to discuss what are some of the micro and macroeconomic effects in both the short and medium term.
These include:
* Effects on the stock of physical capital / infrastructure
* Impact on a country’s human capital
* Effects on commodity prices, export revenues
* Effects on agricultural output, profits, investment, productivity
* Ripple effects on manufacturing industries and energy supply/cost
* Impact on state tax revenues and the costs of re-building and providing emergency financial support
* Effect on the movement of population following extreme climatic events
* Natural disasters and changes in the distribution of income / risk of poverty
This Economist graphic (published in Jan 2012) looks at the human cost of natural disasters and claims that “the world has succeeded in making natural disasters less deadly.”
read more...»Unit 4 Macro: India - the Road Ahead
Here is a short 12 minute video on prospects for the India economy produced by economists at the International Monetary Fund. It covers some of the key current issues including high inflation in a supply-constrained economy, partial progress in reducing poverty and the impact that poor infrastructure has as a constraint on further growth and development. Click on the video link below
read more...»Unit 2 Macro: Will a Youth Jobs Subsidy Work?
The Coalition Government recently heralded a new scheme designed to address the structural problem of high youth unemployment in the UK economy. Under their “youth contract” plan, employers will be given “wage incentives” worth £2,275 to take on some 160,000 18-to-24-year-olds. But will it have much impact on the problem? The independent Office for Budgetary Responsibility says that the net effect on overall unemployment will be close to zero, because the subsidy incentive will lead to a switch in employment away from older workers.
read more...»Unit 2 Macro: Analysing Government Spending Cuts
It is rare that a day would go by without you being able to find a news article on issues that affect the macro-economy; a good tip is to constantly think like an economist and analyse these issues as you may do in the exam.
read more...»Unit 2 Macro: A Widening Regional Divide in Life Expectancy
Life expectancy in the United Kingdom continues to improve. But one important aspect of the deep and structural divide in incomes, economic activity and status and health across different groups in Britain is the marked variation in average life expectancy for men and women. The UK Statistics Commission has just published new data on this covering the period 2004-2010 and finds that:
read more...»Global Economy: Increased risk of future shocks
A new OECD report on the risks of external shocks to the global economy looks like being really useful for teachers preparing fresh materials for their courses. “The interconnectedness of the global economy makes it more vulnerable to major shocks…...these shocks include cyber attacks, pandemics, geomagnetic storms, social unrest and financial crises.” The report can be downloaded here.
AS Macro Key Term: Spare Capacity
Spare capacity measures the extent to which an industry, or economy is operating below the maximum sustainable level of production - there are spare factor resources of land, labour and capital. There are many measures of capacity utilisation including surveys of business activity, the estimated output gap and the rate of unemployment in the labour market.
read more...»AS Macro Key Term: Brain Drain
A brain drain is a term that describes the movement of highly skilled or professional people from their own country to another country where they can earn more money. It has been used to describe net outward migration of people from several European Union countries in recent times (notably Ireland, Greece and Spain) - another phrase for this is human capital flight.
A sizeable brain drain can bring economic costs and benefits for the sending nation. One disadvantage is that countries lose out on the benefits that might have accrued from the resources used in educating people who leave. Add to this the loss of tax revenue from those who choose to live and work overseas. A sizeable loss of skilled workers (many of whom may be younger and therefore more geographically mobile) could lead to labour shortages in the sender country, putting upward pressure on wages and labour costs.
Some of this income earned overseas returns to the sender country in the form of remittances (adding to GNP) and many skilled migrants often leave only for a year or two - the percentage of permanent migration inside the EU is relatively small.
A2 Macro: Chinese investment in the EU
There is much focus on Chinese foreign direct investment in Africa and Latin America - China is also making huge investments in Australia as my friend Mark Johnston writes about in this blog. Here Euro News looks at investment in the European Union by Chinese owned businesses. New motorways in Poland ahead of the 2012 European Football Championships, co-financed by the EU, are being built by Chinese companies. The Chinese are also buying up public debt, in Greece, Spain and Portugal.
AS Macro: Essay Plan on Rising Imports
Here is an essay plan on this question: Assess the extent to which a rise in imports may affect macroeconomic performance (25 marks). Like many macro questions, the focus is on the longer-term performance of the economy – this requires a brief explanation at the start of the answer – e.g. economic growth, unemployment, inflation and material well-being. The essay plan can be downloaded using the link below:
Essay_Plan_Imports_Economy.pdf
The economic & social benefits of migration
My own students know that I am strongly in favour of open migration and oppose the government’s attempts to impose artificial caps on economic migrants from outside of the EU. A hat tip to Philippe Legrain for spotting this article from today’s Guardian which is heavily tilted towards the longer-term economic and social benefits of migrants for the UK economy. So David Cameron wants to talk about immigration? Bring it on As a partial counter-balance perhaps I should link you towards a piece in the Daily Mail by Andrew Green: Why is the BBC STILL so hideously biased on immigration? I have also linked below to some of our recent blogs on the migration issue. And here is a link to a presentation on the enlargement of the EU that I gave in London back in February 2011.
AS Macro Key Term: Double-Dip Recession
A double-dip recession happens when an economy goes into recession twice without having undergone a full recovery in between. There are several different possible causes of a double-dip recession:
read more...»Patent Box or Innovation Box as Innovation Stimulant?
The UK coalition government does not yet have a growth strategy worth the name but they have invested plenty of capital in the idea of a Patent Box. This involves a lower corporation tax on profits drawn from patented products) and is a supply-side policy to make UK an attractive location for innovative industries. One proposal is that royalties and other profits from patented products and technologies would be taxed at just 10 per cent.
But many economists argue that this is at best an ineffective way of lifting the amount of research and development in the British economy. They look instead to the Netherlands where an Innovation Box has had a significant impact - it reflects the view that patents are only a small part of the innovation process - you dont necessarily have to patent an idea to make small scale innovations commercially viable.
Channel 4 news tonight visited Sandwich in Kent where the Pfizer research and development facility is set to close.
Economic Growth Presentation
Here is a streamed version of my notes from the LSE presentation last night on “Where is economic growth going to come from”? PDF Handout available here
A copy of Professor John van Reenen’s powerpoint presentation is available to download. Download ‘Where is Future Growth Going to Come From?’
