Ten Thoughts on Improving Your Economics Papers

I gave a presentation to my AS and A2 students this afternoon on some ideas for improving the overall content of their answers in the forthcoming economics exams. I have attached it as a PowerPoint file - there are no snazzy graphics or images - just a series of slides containing some personal thoughts on building extra concepts into answers. The PowerPoint doesn’t include the many examples we looked at for each section but it might be useful to some for revision.

PowerPoint
10_Ways_to_Turn_a_Good_Paper_into_a_very_Good_one

Canny pricing in a slowdown

There is a super feature on pricing strategies from Adam Jones’s management blog on the Financial Times web site - available here

Canny businesses are willing and able to adjust their pricing strategies to suit ever changing business consumers. The key seems to be in having good market intelligence about which consumers have a demand that is sensitive to price and those who spending on goods and services is affected more by changes in real take-home income. Deep discounting is often observed in an economic slowdown or outright recession as businesses look to shift unsold stock, maintain sales volumes and generate extra cash to tide them through the tough times. But as the FT blog points out, offering discounts to consumers can risk unleashing an unwelcome price war (which damages profit margins) and overly-aggressive discounting can ultimately damage the brand.

There is a bit more on pricing do’s and don’ts in a recession here

Dismal prediction for Zimbabwe proves accurate

On April the 18th I asked Can inflation get any worse in Zimbabwe?

In the blog I suggested that without the hasty departure of the tyrant Robert Mugabe, things would get worse.  Back in April, the Bank of Zimbabwe had just issued a 10m Zimbabwe dollar note.  I predicted a billion dollar note in a couple of months.

Unfortunately, it’s looking like my gloomy prediction may prove true.  Today the BBC report that Zimbabwe bank issues $500m note.  That’s worth a couple of bucks.  So a billion Zim dollars is equivalent to around five US dollars. For now.

Ricardo Rules OK?

This week’s newspaper headlines have been dominated by the £2.7 bn tax bribe (whoops .... tax adjustment) announced by the embattled Chancellor Alastair Darling to compensate for the fiasco over the abolition of the 10% starting rate of income tax. The FT this morning linked the economic effects of this tax cut to one of the most celebrated and controversial ideas of moden macroeconomics - Ricardian equivalence theory ..... how sexy does macroeconomics get!

10p tax row additional

Hello all

Just a quickie from me. Found that many of my U6b economists were unsure on the meaning and implications of the 10p tax row. So I designed a very quick guide using a couple of examples: thought you may find it useful. I make no promises that tax thresholds and calculations are 100% accurate: just like the Treasury, in other words! Feel free to mess around with, change examples, raise font size etc, it was all done on the hoof on the board in a lesson!

Ian

PS not sure if the attachment worked on the last one, so I have put contents into extended text

NICE decade is over

Mervyn King declared that the NICE decade was formally over in his Inflation Report published today – NICE stood for non-inflationary continuous expansion (a good term to use in the exam) – but the combination of sharply rising food, energy and fuel prices is driving inflation higher whilst contributing to a fall in real incomes and a wider economic slowdown.

One Million Blog Views

Since the new blogs were launched at the start of February we have been delighted to see the average daily page views climbing. And this morning we reach one million blog page views! Thanks to all.

Mervyn faces the Music

The Governor and his colleagues faced the press yesterday at the launch of the quarterly inflation report .... here is a selection of comments from them from questions fired from economics journalists, there is some great evaluation in here for AS and A2 economics students!

Surge in UK inflation

The latest figures for consumer price inflation were far worse that expected. Consumer prices increased by 0.8% in April taking the annual rate of inflation to 3.0% - right at the top of the level allowed by the government as part of the inflation target. Both goods and service price inflation moved higher as the UK economy struggles under a series of cost-push inflationary pressures. I have attached a PowerPoint file showing some of the key inflation charts.

Learning Lessons from: The Simpsons

Back to the econ lab at UCL, and this time the experiment was mercifully short, unlike Experiment 11 which I participated in last time. This one was a market research experiment, a lot more enjoyable but also less wholesome to pick apart.