Revision - Labour Market Failure (presentation)
Here is a revised streamed presentation on market failure in the labour market
read more...»Snack attack
Street hawkers normally have an instinctive ability - honed through several generations - to spot well-heeled tourists a mile off and engage in a spot of first degree price discrimination and exploit informaton failure among confused jet-lagged travellers. Here is a neat short story of a Dutch couple who may just have bought the most expensive plate of four samosas in commercial history. Then again, perhaps they were just the first to complain to the local police.
The article is also memorable for alerting us to the availability of camel urine - a bargain at just over £1.34 per litre.
Maintaining profitability in the airline industry
My students have been tackling this assignment this week as part of their microeconomics course.
(a) Many airlines have reported heavy losses and several have already gone into administration or filed for bankruptcy. Using cost and revenue diagrams, explain why airlines have been experiencing such losses (15)
(b) Discuss the ways in which airlines can control their losses and continue to operate profitably in an industry where costs and revenues are unpredictable (15 marks)
Answers to part (b) sort the wheat out from the chaff!
Madonna’s pub accused of price gouging
It sounds like a classic case of price gouging or price discrimination and it is a bitter blow for non-regulars at the pub owned by Madonna and Guy Ritchie. Several newspapers have relished the news that the Punchbowl in Mayfair has been charging different prices to different customers for the same drink - segmenting the market between regulars and occasional visitors. The Telegraph reports that Brian Richardson, 52, who has been a customer for 12 years, was charged £3.50 for a pint one day, and £3.90 the next. He said: “I was shocked. I complained to staff. They have got two prices - regulars prices and non-regulars prices.”
It is not often that I link to the business stories covered in the Daily Mirror - but here we go!
Plenty of room at the Beijing Inn
The long awaited financial bonanza for Beijing’s hotels during the forthcoming summer Olympic games seems less likely to materialise with the news that many 3 and 4 star hotels remain vastly under-occupied with the games just a few days away. It seems that the expected influx of nearly 500,000 visitors from overseas will prove to be an over-estimate - tourists appear to have been put off by the cost of travelling, fears over security and the time and expense of arranging visas. Domestic visitors from elsewhere in China seem to have been affected by the massive earthquake in south-west China and the snowstorms that struck the south in February.
The response of hoteliers when market demand turns out to be lower than forecast is a classic form of second degree price discrimination - reducing rack rates in a bid to increase the take up of unsold rooms. Given the travel distances involved, it would appear unlikely that the price reductions will have much impact in enticing people onto planes bound for Beijing this August. Most of the four or five star hotels will already be full of Olympic dignitaries most of whom wont have to pay a penny for their time at the Games.
Revision: Labour Market Failure
Markets fail when they do not reach an efficient and/or equitable outcome from society’s point of view. At AS level, you will have studied many examples of possible market failure ranging from the provision of public and merit goods through to externalities and the welfare consequences of monopoly power in markets. At A2 level, you are asked to explore some issues relating to labour market failure. This revision note flags up a few of them:
Revision note:
Revision_Labour_Market_Failure.pdf
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