World of Business - Peter Day on the BBC Web Site
I am delighted that one of my radio 4 heroes Peter Day is starting a new page on the BBC news website. Peter has always had a happy nap for understanding the dynamics of change in business and markets, expect plenty of revealing and thoughtful insights linking to his radio 4 work including World of Business. Click here to access his new page
Econ3 - Sexism and Ageism alive and well on our TVs
Those of you who are about to take your Econ 3 exam (or whose students are getting ready for the final push), might find this story about sexism in TV an interesting example of inequality in the labour market. A report out yesterday and being pursued by Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, Harriet Harman suggests that a lowly 18% of UK TV presenters over the age of 50 are women. Some channels are worse than others.
The story is also a good example of how current government intervention in this labour market is having little effect. Anti-ageist and sexist laws exist and yet there appears a very real 'glass-ceiling' when it comes to women over the age of 50 wishing to work on TV. If legislation is ineffective what other policies could students suggest might improve the situation? A quota system? Fines? Here is a real chance to offer critical and evaluative analysis on government intervention.
Follow this link to read a report.
Unit 3 Micro: Businesses Prospering During the Depression
This is a cross posting from the Business Studies Blog
It is now six years since the global financial crisis triggered a prolonged downturn in economic activity. The UK economy, like other developed economies, has struggled to escape from a period of stagnant economic growth.
However, despite the weak economy, many UK firms have succeeded in significantly growing their revenues and profits.
Here are three examples of such businesses. Their strategies for success are different – but there are also some similarities.
Can you compare and contrast these three – and also identify some other businesses that have enjoyed similar success despite the tough economic environment?
You might also consider:
- What factors have driven revenue growth at each of the three businesses?
- Has their growth strategy been one or organic or external development?
- To what extent has their growth been driven by international expansion?
- Do you think their recent success can be sustained?
- What factors might that continued success depend on?
read more...»
The exams are nearly here - as if you need reminding! Well, here’s a reminder!
Here's a very simple, but totally unsubtle reminder for your students on the upcoming dates and times of the AS and A level exams in Economics for the AQA, Edexcel and OCR awarding bodies.
Follow this link to download the 'Exam Countdown' file. There you will find a small and easy to use Powerpoint file called 'Exam Countdown'.
Follow this link for a quick tutorial on how to use the resource.
Open and run the slideshow (ensuring that you have 'enabled macros'). The screen will change to a setup slide after a couple of seconds. Click on the exam that you wish to remind your student about and the countdown timer will start. The timer shows how many days, hours, minutes and seconds remain before their exam starts. There's nothing like instilling a sense of urgency!
Please note this file is fully functional. If you would like an editable version (where you can edit the times, dates and 'event') you will find one as part of the 'Super Teacher Utility Belt' resource available from our PowerPoint games-based learning site.
AS and A2 Key Term Glossaries
Brought together in one blog resource - click below for details
AS, A2 & IB Economics Revision Quizzes - Master Listing
[updated 22 April 2013]
Our Economics team have been busy over the last few weeks authoring a comprehensive new collection of multiple-choice revision questions designed to support AS, A2 and IB Economics students.
Over the next couple of weeks, we'll be uploading these quizzes to the tutor2u website and also creating Zondle versions to enable them to played using the tutor2u mobile and tablet App.
Please bookmark and share the link to this blog entry and visit regularly to check on our progress as we add new revision quizzes.
read more...»Unit 3 Micro: Mergers and Acquisitions Update
Some examples here of recent merger and acquisition activity - students might want to consider the types of business integration on display in these examples:
read more...»Economics Revision - Mind Map and Visual Notes Competition
There are thousands of AS and A2 students out there at the moment putting in some serious hours of revision ahead of the May and June papers. Effective revision is more of an art than a precise science but many students are producing some superb mind-maps, revision flash cards and other visual resources to telling effect.
We like to showcase some of them at this stage of the year. In the spirit of friendly competition, we will offer some book prizes to our favourite mind maps and similar revision notes. You can email them through to us (ideally one image per mind map, 800 x 600 size works best for us but we can resize any image). Or post them on twitter and add @tutor2u or @tutor2u_econ to your tweet so that we can see them!
We will announce the winners on the 1st of May! Check below to see some of the early entries. This blog will be updated on a regular basis.
read more...»Revision Quiz: A2 Economics: Perfect Competition (1)
This 10-question revision quiz focuses on the model of perfect competition.
Launch Revision Quiz: A2 Economics: Perfect Competition (1)
Revision Quiz: A2 Economics: Monopoly (1)
This 10-question revision quiz focuses on model of monopoly.
Launch Revision Quiz: AS Economics: A2 Economics: Monopoly (1)
Revision Quiz: A2 Economics: Contestable Markets (1)
This 10-question revision quiz focuses on the concept of contestable markets.
Launch Revision Quiz: A2 Economics: Contestable Markets (1)
Revision Quiz: A2 Economics: Business Costs & Revenues (1)
This 10-question revision quiz focuses on business costs and revenues.
Launch Revision Quiz: A2 Economics: Business Costs & Revenues (1)
Unit 3 Micro: Minimum Wage and Inequality
The UK national minimum wage (NMW) has been in the news in recent days with several reports suggesting that Coalition government ministers are considering introducing a freeze on the pay floor or going further and reducing the minimum hourly pay rate. The NMW was introduced into the UK in the spring of 1999 and has been up-rated regularly but never cut. It is presently at £6.19 an hour and recommendations on changes to the pay floor come from the annual review conducted by the Low Pay Commission
Unit 3 Micro: Small firms and innovation
The success of small firms is crucial to hopes of a sustained recovery in the UK economy and the government is keen to promote innovation within small and medium sized enterprises with a range of tax incentives including the Patent Box. The Patent Box system allows companies to apply an effective 10 percent preferential rate of corporation tax to profits attributable to patents and is introduced from April 2013.
Will this fresh supply-side fiscal policy prompt a significant boost to patent applications from UK firms? The evidence so far is mixed. The number of patent applications to the UK Intellectual Property Office from within the UK was just 15,370 in 2012, almost equal to the 2011 figure of 15,343. (Source: Independent, March 2013). But there has been a large rise in the number of patent applications made in the UK by foreign businesses especially in the pharmaceutical sector.
The reality is that most small businesses are too busy reinvesting their revenues back into growing their businesses rather than going through the lengthy, uncertain and often costly process of making multiple patent bids on their new product and process ideas. In a recent blog from the Wall Street Journal it was claimed that "it is almost impossible to defend software or business process innovation patents in the UK." Others are more optimistic - read this short piece from the Scotsman which claims that the Patent Box fits well with the ambition of the Scottish government to attract inward investment from high-knowledge businesses.
read more...»A2 Economics Revision Notes
To support Year 13 students preparing for their final A Level Economics exams, we've been busy updating and extending our collection of free revision notes for A2 Economics core topics. Set out below are links to the current A2 Economics revision notes. Please bookmark or share this blog entry as we'll update this master listing each time we add new revision notes.
AS Economics students can find a full collection of AS Revision Notes here
read more...»Making the most of Edexcel Results Plus- updated for Jan 2013 exams
Read on to find out how to print out individual grade reports for all your students using the complete results spreadsheet you can download from ResultsPlus
Unit 3 Micro: The battle for 3rd place in mobile operating systems
Lots of companies are battling for third place in the market for smartphone operating systems. Apple's iOS and Google's Android dominate, how much scope is there for more rivals targeting mid and low-tier mobile devices. Mozilla, Microsoft and Blackberry are featured.
read more...»Unit 3 Micro: Winning Bids in 4G Licence Auction
The winning bids for the 4G licences in the UK have been announced. Paying for a licence is an entry barrier into this market - but the total value of the bids was a small fraction of the £22bn gifted to the government in 2000 when the 3G licences spectrums were sold - the latter was an example of the winners' curse in action.In 2013 the telecoms businesses were more savvy - freeing up money to invest infrastructure and capacity. Will this be a kick-start to growth that the UK government expects?
Revision Presentation - Public Goods
This updated revision presentation provides an introduction to the concept of public goods.
Money can’t buy happiness - the backward sloping supply curve tells me so
Like many teachers, I'm firmly of the belief that money is not the root of happiness. I have to think like that - otherwise how do I argue with my old university friends who went to join the big banks that there’s more to life than big cars and foreign holiday homes ("Come and join us, Jon," they used to say to me, "you can set your own Libor rate and everything" ). It's important that we remind the 'those-who-can't-do' brigade that teaching is a life-style. It's a vocation. A calling.
Well, according to research by US academics Daniel Sacks, Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, the evidence suggests that wealth is a determining factor in happiness after all. Apparently, the data shows that there are no upper limits to happiness with regards to money – yes, the increase in happiness slows down but still rises.
Quick, somebody tell Victoria Beckham before David gives away all of his cash to the Paris children.
read more...»Unit 3 Micro: Samsung surges ahead in global smartphone sales
Unit 3 Micro: Major tea exporters consider a new cartel
This is potentially an important development in a key consumer industry - can major tea exporters successfully manage the world price of tea in the form of an international cartel? What are the conditions required for cartels to be successful? When do international price agreements break down? Can you think of some of the benefits and costs of such a scheme from the point of view of different stakeholders?
Links to follow:
Tea cartel formed by leading producer nations (BBC news)
World tea producers may brew up higher tea prices (Telegraph Australia)
A Mega example of contestability
Students taking their Business Economics unit exam this week might like to use online file-storage as an example of a contestable market. This comes during the week of an announcement by the colourfully-named internet tycoon Kim Dotcom of a re-launch of his file-sharing cloud-site Mega - which offers up to 50 Gb of free file storage and out-trumps its big and more established competitors at Dropbox, Microsoft and Google. According to Mr Dotcom he already has a quarter of a million registered users and over a million hits on his website within the first day.
read more...»Stakeholder conflict - the battle over rewards of work
Investors vs Managers vs Employees - a classic example of stakeholder conflict - is to be examined in a 30-minute radio programme on Monday evening, spotted by my colleague David Wright. Radio 4's Analysis series will be looking at "...how the relative power of executives has grown and is now reflected in their own
much higher financial rewards and enhanced esteem. And if both workers and investors want to increase their influence and their share of the rewards how might they go about it?".
The programme will also look at the power that trades unions held in the 1960's and 70's, and how that power was lost. Looks like a useful half hour: BBC Radio 4 on Monday 21st January at 8.30pm.
Unit 3 Micro: Why Lego is so popular and profitable
I really look forward to receiving my daily email from the Farnham Street Blog - over the last couple of years it has been a continuous stream of interesting ideas and links to thinking in business and behavioural economics. Today's article focused on the continued popularity of Lego bricks despite the loss of patents. Price anchoring, brilliant marketing, consumer perception, hard wiring into our brains the contextual value of a product ... the result is low price elasticity and the ability to raise price nearly every year! Here is the link
Unit 3 Micro: Business Economics News Stories
This Scoop It Board is curated daily to add new content and commentary on market and industry news relevant to A2 micro unit 3 students.
read more...»Unit 3 Micro: Business Economics Glossary (EdExcel)
Here is my current Business Economics glossary designed for the EdExcel unit 3 economics paper
read more...»Imperfect Information - obesity caused by the same problem as debt!
Given that the increasing concern over obesity (and it's knock-on issues) are fairly prevalent in the news at the moment I thought this article from the Independent may be of interest. The reporter is linking the causes of obesity and debt together - suggesting that our big problem as an animal is that we don't like to think about the future. I thought that it was an interesting link, not least because we probably all know that its true! It further illustrates the problem of imperfect information and our inability to consume products that benefit us in the long-run (e.g. pensions) and over-consume those products that we know are not good for us (e.g. 90% of what you have consumed over the last two weeks).
Happy New Year to all Tutor2u blog readers.
Unit 3 Micro: Revision Advice for the Exam
Here are slides from a streamed presentation on approaching the A2 unit 3 micro paper.
read more...»Unit 3 Micro: DropBox - Network Economics and Market Contestability
Here is a superb blog from the Economist magazine into a digital business built around the Freemium pricing model and where network effects are strong. Also good for understanding market contestability and the impact of new entrants on profit margins. Dropbox is my preferred file sharing system, I am pretty much locked in and wouldn't change!
Freemium is a business model in which some basic services are provided for free, with the aim of enticing users to pay for additional, premium features or content
The complete guide to freemium business models
