Theory Thursdays! Public goods
This week’s Theory Thursday extension topic focuses on the provision of public goods, questioning whether public goods in the true sense of the term really exist, and whether governments really are the only possible providers. I’ve included a student worksheet and a detailed teacher guidance sheet for download. If you happen to have very keen and able students that cope well with the extension worksheets, you could always suggest that as further extension material they find out about Clarke taxes (the level of tax that corresponds to an individuals willingness to pay for their share in a particular public good). Public_Goods_student_sheet1.pdfPublic_goods_teacher_sheet1.pdf
Theory Thursdays! Interesting indices
Most students will now have met indices in some shape or form in their A-level course, probably in relation to the Consumer Price Index. This extension activity helps students to develop their understanding of the construction of indices in general. As a starting point, you may want to ask your students to contribute towards the latest Economist Big Mac Index, which looks at the price of a Big Mac in various cities around the world in order to work out whether exchange rates are over- or under- valued as well as the cost of living in various countries. The Economist has asked people around the world to go into their local McDonald’s and then post the price of a Big Mac onto their online forum - you can do this here.
read more...»Theory Thursday! Utility Possibility Frontier
It’s that time of the week again where I introduce some economic theory that is beyond the scope of the A-level course, but will certainly get keen students thinking about wider applications of their economics. In last week’s post on using indifference curves to analyse choices made by individuals, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at why people choose to live in household, and how this affects their decision-making.
One of the tools that we can use to look at this is the utility possibility frontier - this is really quite similar to a production possibility frontier, which most A-level students will have met by this point in their course. The utility possibility frontier shows all of the possible combinations of utility (or ‘satisfaction’) that can be achieved by both partners in the household, and can be used to illustrate whether either partner gets any satisfaction from caring about the other, and who holds the relative bargaining power in the relationship.
I’ve included a link to a presentation that students and teachers can work through which outlines some of the core economic concepts relating to living in households, and the decision-making that takes place within those households.
