Unit 4 Macro: Managing the Global Commons - Limits to GDP
In this excellent 20 minute talk Professor Geoffrey Heal from Columbia University discusses the broad concept of society’s capital including natural capital. He focuses on the limits of GDP as a measure of economic progress in a world that depletes all forms of capital including natural capital. Net Domestic Product (rather than GDP), HDI, HPI and adjusted net savings all get a mention in his talk. Being rich and being sustainable are rarely the same thing.
He defines sustainability as “keeping the total value of a nation’s capital stock in tact” and this definition encompasses all forms of capital (physical, intellectual, social, human, natural). Economic development changes the profile of a nation’s capital stock - for example industrialisation leads to deforestation and a rapid run down of natural capital, replaced often by life-changing physical capital, intellectual capital and human capital.
Living standards have been raised through this substitution process but the fundamental question central to the whole environmental debate is the extent to which the natural stock of capital can continue to be run down at present rates.
The weight of scientific knowledge says that the answer is no - we cannot replace a stable climate by more human and physical capital under a business as usual pathway. Heal argues for strong sustainability - giving bigger emphasis to protecting and maintaining eco-systems.
read more...»Unit 4 Macro: Mini Documentary on Financial Instability
“It is not that human beings are irrational, it is that they are human” Here is a terrific short film on the causes of financial instability and the cracking of faith in markets. The Institute for New Economic Thinking has just launched the first of a series of short documentaries on economics Click below for the first of them
read more...»Unit 4 Macro: Globalisation Revision Quiz
This 12 question - Type the Answer - Revision Quiz created using Zondle focuses on globalisation
read more...»Unit 4 Macro: Revision Quiz on Macro Concepts
Test your understanding of some key Unit 4 macro concepts with this quick quiz created using Zondle
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...»2012 Economics Revision: Ways to Improve your Paper
Here is a revision presentation offering ideas for stronger evaluation and analysis in your AS and A2 economics exam papers. Ten strands are suggested for students who want to build really good answers especially to evaluation questions.
read more...»Superb article on unemployment
Here is a superbly clear and relevant article on the Channel 4 news blog from Jonathan Portes, head of thr NIESR - it focuses on the unemployment problem facing the UK economy and outlines some policy options for cutting the jobless total. Superb for both AS and A2 macro students.
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...»Unit 4 Macro: Unemployment Scarring Effects
In the past we have discussed some of the long term economic and social costs of a persistently high rate of unemployment and we have used the term hysteresis effects. It seems that a new term is being used to cover some of the consequences of millions of people being out of work - unemployment scarring - and this revision blog looks at some of the causes of this.
read more...»RES Annual Essay Competition for Students 2012
Entries for the 2012 Royal Economic Society Essay Competition are flowing in strongly with just less than a month to go before the final date for submitting an answer.
read more...»Unit 4 Macro: Pain in Spain as Fiscal Austerity Bites
Over a million people supported a general strike in Spain last week in protest at the announcement of the deepest fiscal squeeze in Spain’s post-Franco history. Corporation tax has been increased (in contrast to the UK where business profits tax is being cut), departmental budgets are being slashed and energy bills are rising. There are wage cuts for civil servants and unemployment benefits are being held - cut in real terms. This is fiscal austerity on a huge scale and carries big political risks.
Faisal Islam from Channel 4 wrote in his blog that “to inflict numerical statistical austerity on a country with mass unemployment and already in recession is shock therapy that I cannot remember for an industrialised nation.” One cannot help make comparisons with the stronger economic situation in Germany where it has just been announced that public service salaries will rise 6.3 % over the enxt two years. This will boost consumption, increase demand & contribute to growth as Germany continues to recover from the 2009 recession.
I have put together a selection of charts on key recent developments in the Spanish economy focusing on growth, unemployment, the size of the fiscal deficit and other key macro indicators. There are also some links to newspaper coverage of the budget cuts and some news video clips.
read more...»Posen on slower growth in the UK compared to the USA
Adam Posen is a member of the Monetary Policy Committee featured in Extract 1 of the OCR F585 paper for June 20120. He has consistently argued that the Bank of England should maintain their policy of ultra-low policy interest rates and also expand QE if and when the economic conditions require it. In a speech to the National Institute this week, Adam Posen contrasted the differences in economic recoveries in the United States and the UK.
read more...»Global Economy- the 2012 BRICS Summit
Leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa are meeting for the 4th time to discuss a deepening of economic ties within the fast-growing bloc of countries. The acronym BRIC was first coined by Jim O’Neill from Goldman Sachs in 2001. Recently he suggested another group of countries that deserved to be included in a broader grouping of high-growth and increasingly influential economies in the world economic system.
These countries make up forty per-cent of the world’s population and over a fifth of global GDP. Crucially they, and another cluster of rapid-growth countries will be the main drivers of world growth in the years ahead even though they are not immune to the financial volatility and commodity price inflation inflicting external shocks on advanced nations.
One of the key items on the summit’s agenda is a proposal to establish a “BRICS Bank” that would fund development projects and infrastructure in developing nations. The summit is also on opportunity to discuss ways of building intra-BRICS trade, which expanded by 28 percent last year to $230 billion. There are divisions within the BRIC grouping - for example Brazil’s criticisms of China’s exchange rate policies but the summit is a reminder that the balance of power and influence in the world economy is changing forever.
Here is a selection of news articles and videos covering the BRICS summit for 2012
read more...»Intergenerational Equity - Fairness and the Slump
The recession and weak recovery is bringing about important employment and income distribution effects among different generations in Britain. The externalities of a slump are never uniform and I hope that good examiners at AS and A2 level will always reward students who bring comments and arguments about equity / fairness into their evaluative discussions. Recently there has been increased media coverage of the inter-generational effects of the financial crisis and the recession.
read more...»Blanchflower calls for more action to address youth jobless crisis
Professor David Blanchflower didn’t pull his punches when he was a member of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee and he is making his mark once more with an attack on what he views as the Coalition government’s lacklustre approach to tackling youth unemployment. Blanchflower is reported in the Guardian as wanting zero national insurance contributions for employers who take on younger workers in depressed regions and localities. And he wants greater investment in vocational education in schools and colleges with the school-leaving age raised to 18.
read more...»Life in the Slow Lane - UK Growth in 2011 Lags the Euro Area
Newly published and revised figures for growth in the UK economy show that output fell by 0.3% in the final three months of 2011, and that, over the year as a whole, real GDP in Britain climbed by a paltry 0.7% during the year as a whole. To put that into context, the crisis-ridden Euro Zone achieved growth of double that largely because of a strong performance from Germany.
Output in the UK remains well below the peak before recession engulfed the economy in the autumn of 2008. In the charts and links below we track some of the key economic indicators as the country stuggles to achieve a durable and resilient / robust upturn.
read more...»George Buckley at the Millfield Economics Society
Millfield’s Economics Society was privileged recently to welcome George Buckley, Deutsche Bank’s Chief UK economist, to the school to deliver a lecture on the current state of the UK economy. Laura Dearman reports on his talk and the issues raised in discussion.
read more...»Did the Bank of England cause the boom and bust?
What contributed to the boom and bust?
Many answers might focus on the reckless behaviour of lenders and borrowers; or irresponsible fiscal policies set by politicians who believed that the days of boom and bust were over. But to turn the question on its head, you could ask if “to what extent did Central Banks play a part in the debacle”?
read more...»Unit 4 Macro: Evaluating 3 Years of Quantitative Easing
It is now over three years since the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England cut policy interest rates to 0.5% and subsequently introduced a policy of quantitative easing (or an asset purchase programme) now worth £325 billion.
These have been difficult times for the Bank. The average rate of CPI inflation since 2008 has averaged 3.5% - well above the official target - and the Bank has faced pressures from many sectors of the economy not least the millions of pensioners and other net savers whose incomes have been dragged lower by this period of ultra-low interest rates.
Has conventional monetary policy lost its effectiveness in the aftermath of the global financial crisis? Bank lending continues to fall, consumer and business confidence is fragile, many people have seen interest rates on unsecured credit rise not fall, and the depreciation of sterling seems to have had a muted expansionary effect on demand, profits and jobs.
Here are a few evaluation slides on Monetary Policy and the Bank of England from our recent A2 macroeconomics revision workshop together with some links to recent news reports on the Bank of England’s strategy and the impact of policies such as QE.
read more...»Free Trade Agreements
Given the return to protectionist strategies that we have seen post -financial crisis as governments seek to protect their domestic economies, it is interesting to see a number of free trade agreements being discussed this week. To aid with application and context, pupils might be interested to read about the following agreements that have been in the media this week between
USA and South Korea
Canada and Japan
Given this context, for revision purposes it might be worth considering the macroeconomic consequences of such deals and use this to contrast against the reasons for, and consequences of protectionist strategies.
Solar Panels and Tariffs
The US and China rely heavily on each other for trade but retaliatory protectionist policies continue to be a recurring theme between these two nations that prevent the free movement of goods and services between the two countries. Allegations that the undervalued Yuan gives an unfair advantage to Chinese exporters, twinned with high US unemployment has led to protectionist American responses and a tariff (tax on imports) on Chinese solar panels to protect this strategic and growing industry. The move followed a review by the US Commerce Department which in a preliminary decision claimed that Chinese firms are benefiting from unfair export subsidies.
read more...»Where does my money go?
It will be interesting to receive my personal statement spelling out exactly how much of my income is paid to the state and what it is being spent on! However for those wanting this information sooner than this, there is a great resource from the Guardian data team which shows you, on a sliding scale, exactly how much direct taxation you pay on your income and specifically where that money is spent.
This is an excellent resource for fiscal policy and useful to start debates about how and why the UK taxpayer is taxed and where the government should be spending the revenue received. There is no doubt that following Wednesday’s budget, the role of fiscal policy will take centre stage in Economics classrooms up and down the country - keep your eye out for some top analysis in the media over the next few days.
Phil Holden’s Video Clips
With the Easter holidays and key revision period not too far away, economists with exams approaching may find the excellent youtube channel of Phil Holden useful. My pupils find these clips concise with clear explanations and they act as a useful revision tool for a variety of AS/ A2 micro and macroeconomic topics. I’m sure colleagues have come across this before but if you haven’t then it’s well worth spending some revision time on this link
Unit 4 Macro: Video Resources on the Euro Crisis
Here is a selection of news video resources that I have been using when teaching the economics (and politics) of the Euro Zone crisis
read more...»Evidence of the dangers of protectionism
One of the dangers for a country implementing protectionist measures is the risk of retaliatory action. We have only to look at US-China trade relations to find plenty of evidence for this. The US objects to what they see as a Chinese policy of deliberately holding down the value of the yuan in order to boost Chinese exports. However, in addition to this they also object to government subsidies which the Chinese government give to some of their producers in order to help lower their production costs and so make their goods even more competitive in world markets.
read more...»Unit 4 Macro: Enlarging the EU
Here are some links to video resources on prospects for further enlargement of the European Union single market.
read more...»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 4 Macro: Sovereign Wealth Funds
Students of A2 macro will no doubt becoming increasingly familiar with coverage of sovereign wealth funds in their study of global economics, trade, investment and currency developments. A sovereign wealth fund is a government or state run investment fund usually created by supernormal profits from natural resources such as oil, gas or minerals. Here is some brief background on them:
read more...»Economies hooked on central bank stimulants?
Three years ago Andrew Sentance was one of the 9 members of the MPC who voted for the extraordinary measures of bringing base rate down to 0.5% and creating the new stimulant of Quantitative Easing in an attempt to bring the economy around. In today’s Sunday Telegraph he recalls why he voted for them at that time, and explains why he thinks that they must be gradually withdrawn now from an economy which has become dependent on them for its survival.
read more...»Greek Debt - Its Over, Totally Over!
Another great piece of work by the team at the Guardian here using Xtranormal. This one tries to explain the current situation regarding the Greek debt deal. Is it over? Sorted? maybe not…
read more...»
