The Economist and the FT on Twitter
The Economist is on Twitter and providing a solid flow of interesting links to new features. So too is the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU). Follow the Financial Times on Twitter here and I also like Martin Wolf’s economists forum.
Rated: 
(1/5), based on 1 review
The New Economist Cinema Ad - Red Wires
Last week we posted a request for films likely to enthuse young economists as they deepen their understanding of the subject. Thanks to those who have contributed ideas.
This week the Economist launches an innovative advert “Red wires - let your mind wander” for cinema audiences.
The Economist is enjoying a strong run at the moment; global circulation is up and as always their front pages are distinctive, thought-provoking and they make great wall displays! Their advert is aimed at the millions of intellectually curious people who have not yet picked up a copy of the Economist, perhaps because the title itself hints that the content will be dominated by economic and financial news.
This ad features wire-jumper Florent Blondeau walking through a city on a series of inter-connected red wires
The Supply-Side Benefits of Imports
Many students on introductory economics courses hold on to a rather naive view that exports are good and that importing is negative for economic performance. Exporting for its own sake (mercantalism) carries obvious risks as countries that have accumulated huge trade surpluses have found out. And access to cheaper imports of goods and service can have a very liberating effect on the supply-side of the economy. Lower priced imports create competition for domestic industries and allow home-based manufacturing businesses to source cheaper intermediate and capital goods.
You would expect the Economist to support trade liberalisation - but this feature in the Economist is worth reading for students who want to understand some of the supply-side benefits of reducing import tariffs.
“As part of those reforms, India slashed tariffs on imports from an average of 90% in 1991 to 30% in 1997. Not surprisingly, imports doubled in value over this period. But the effects on Indian manufacturing were not what the prophets of doom had predicted: output grew by over 50% in that time. And by looking carefully at what was imported and what it was used to make, the researchers found that cheaper and more accessible imports gave a big boost to India’s domestic industrial growth in the 1990s.”
The rest of the article is here - The merits of imports
Game theory and emotions
The most interesting and recently controversial application of economic theory has been in the realms of Game Theory.
Game Theory was born in the inhuman brain of Johnny Von Neumann and is the branch of maths which especially suits the “dismal science” of economics.
Fundamentally it digresses from classical economic assumptions in that it sees the world where the right thing to do depends on what other people do. The point of Game Theory, like much of science and economics is to find a simplified model of the real world, or in other words a universal prescription (which became know as the Nash equilibrium – the least worse in any circumstance).
read more...»Keynes and Entrepreneurship Society Meetings this Spring
As always a warm invitation is extended to colleagues who might want to come along to one or more of these meetings. Please let me know beforehand so that we can get a feel for numbers!
Thursday 22nd January
Keynes
Will Whitehorn
CEO of Virgin Galatic
Thursday 5th February
Entrepreneurship Society
Christina Domecq
Founder of voicemail-to-text software firm SpinVox
Thursday 26th February
Keynes
David Miles
Managing Director and Chief UK Economist at Morgan Stanley
Thursday 5th March
Keynes
Stephen King
Group Chief Economist for HSBC
Thursday 12 March
Keynes
James Bevan
Chief Investment Officer for CCLA
Roger Bootle on Keynes
““Everything you wanted to know about Keynes and were afraid to ask.” I think I can reduce Keynes’ view to seven essential propositions.2
Roger Bootle, senior economist from Capital Economics is on top form in this article in today’s Telegraph
Latte Lesson (1)
As we near half term I like to take a break from the classroom and have a latte lesson - where the Economics department provides the Fair Trade tea and coffee and elevenses whilst students arrive at the coffee bar armed with their own selection of interesting articles gleaned from the media over the last seven days. There are only two rules! One that students must talk about their articles rather than read them out! And secondly that nobody goes near a copy of the Daily Mail.
I really enjoyed the first latte lesson of the day - here is a snapshot of the issues discussed together with some links to the source material:
read more...»Should we take economists seriously?
Does the publication of economic data encourage too much meddling by governments and policy-makers? How much use is data in telling us what we already know - that the economy is going through a bad time. The Today programme featured this discussion between Tim Harford, author of The Undercover Economist, and Phil Collins, of the London School of Economics, on how much influence economists should have.
Economists—Attack and Defence
Here is an attack on Economists from Simon Jenkins in the Guardian..... and here is the Guardian’s defence in an editorial!
Sinking economy - but how deep?
The Economist features the ‘sinking’ British economy on their front cover this week. Over at the Telegraph, Edmund Conway writes about a risotto recession whilst in the Independent, the sage Hamish McRae reflects that most people who are harking back to the stagflation of the 1970s are not actually old enough to remember what it was like! And he argues that the world is better placed to withstand the current oil price shock than thirty years ago.
Most Popular Topic Tags on the Economics Blog
recession, demand, economics, price, unemployment, prices, inflation, investment, costs, profit, downturn, supply, trade, debt, employment, confidence, euro, gdp, competition, capacity, risk, production, china, oil, incentives, exports, expectations, housing, pay, manufacturing, sterling, food, profits, property, mortgage, tutor2u, globalisation, banks, revision, slowdown, borrowing, usa, retailers, emissions, deflation, airlines, innovation, dollar, supermarkets, entrepreneur, efficiency, monopsony, elasticity, aqa, welfare, consumption, economist, productivity, keynes, saving, google, opec, wealth, depression, moodle, depreciation, jobs, credit crunch, competitiveness, economic cycle, cars, tim harford, externalities, stocks, infrastructure, environmental, strategy, carbon, vle, monopoly, subsidy, evaluation, management, eu, losses, protectionism, spare capacity, inequality, environment, poverty, bank of england, budget deficit, construction, behavioural, wages, macroeconomics, carbon trading, steel, commodities, output gap, skills, japan, oligopoly, currencies, imports, bbc, stagflation, contestable, cpi, agflation, farming, newsnight, choices, regulation, survey, taxes, government failure, itunes, minimum wage, lse, climate change, paul mason, population, intervention, keynes society, aviation, amazon, fiscal stimulus, single market, pricing, dan ariely, nationalisation, cartel, pollution, eton college, interest rates, shareholder, london, rationality, redundancies, market failure, rpi, mpc, shipping, behavioural economics, germany, robert peston, india, rsa, reputation, currency, quantitative easing, facebook, income elasticity, stakeholders, current account, brazil, coffee, savings, microsoft, monetary policy, crowding out, collapse, barriers to entry, multiplier effect, economies of scale, suppliers, price discrimination, uk economy, development, quiz, apple, surplus, taxation, tesco, free, scrappage, labour market, behaviour, tragedy of the commons, opportunity cost, open source, vat, smoking, cost of living, poverty trap, merger, growth, speculation, edinburgh, ownership, discrimination, northern rock, global, cost benefit analysis, ireland, oecd, supply chain, shareholders, scarcity, balance of payments, petrol, liquidity, duopoly, etonomics, iphone, starbucks, trade deficit, happiness, budget, human capital, capital, subsidies, immigration, eurozone, takeover, exploitation, ecb, paradox of thrift, wiki, advertising, public sector, labour force survey, peter day, utility, wants, brand, tax, poland, iceland, blog, recovery, foreign exchange, european union, indirect tax, robert frank, roger bootle, ocr economics, heathrow, hbos, hotels, freight, creative destruction, federal reserve, kaletsky, price war, information failure, crude oil, spain, gini coefficient, transport, government borrowing, leverage, sony, migrants, us economy, animal spirits, stephanie flanders, waste, information, fishing, milk, eu enlargement, anchoring, obama, entrepreneurship society, aggregate demand, needs, internet, forecast, discounting, real income, copper, deficit, contestability, nissan, evan davis, companies, fairness, geoff riley, blogging, standard of living, aqa economics, consumer welfare, martin wolf, renewable, labour mobility, collusion, imf, fair trade, pubs, income tax, obesity, res, disposable income, david smith, national debt, devaluation, consumer surplus, corus, vacancies, global economy, sub-prime, tariff, twitter, price capping, joint venture, accelerator effect, guardian, startups, youth unemployment, yuan, immobility, edexcel economics, edmund conway, redundancy, tata, walmart, relative poverty, sentiment, tickets, coal, vehicles, cash, base rate, russia, diesel, marginal cost, external shocks, movies, liquidity trap, contestable market, income elasticity of demand, libor, broadband, fixed costs, comparative advantage, accelerator, allocative efficiency, pensions, training, economic efficiency, trend growth, king of shaves, satisficing, undercover economist, hot money, price mechanism, deleveraging, positional goods, congestion, jobless, social entrepreneur, apprenticeships, hyperinflation, migration, financial times, age structure, cyclical, chris coleridge, monopoly power, pay cuts, reserve currency, ryanair, wheat, mervyn king, ucas, law of unintended consequences, carbon tax, aldi, gillette, deindustrialisation, barclays, price volatility, yahoo, organic growth, liberalisation, house prices, richard thaler, derived demand, veblen goods, paul krugman, schumpeter, royal mail, markets, diseconomies of scale, logging, green revolution, tax burden, savings ratio, pension, demography, structural, nhs, job losses, ocr, the economist, scotland, cross elasticity, brics, redistribution, biofuel, drugs, gold, nelson thornes, research, producer welfare, ebea, footfall, british airways, income distribution, social costs, ft, enterprise, natural monopoly, tariffs, general motors, o2, deforestation, economic welfare, bonds, asda, will king, automatic stabilisers, landfill, long tail, jim o'neill, disincentives, economax, energy, podcast, share prices, external shock, slump, resources, profit margin, fiscal drag, hysteresis, ftse, philip allan, hedge fund, students, buy to let, logic of life, contraction, equity, elasticity of supply, oil prices, market power, health, ben bernanke, market structure, global business, enlargement, retailing, supply-side, hedging, declan curry, nokia, chris anderson, bric economies, diane coyle, dynamic efficiency, price fixing, fiscal policy, winners curse, zimbabwe, stimulus, hamish mcrae, toyota, john kay, claimant count, green shoots, compound interest, contestable markets, frictional, rory cellan-jones, status races, healthcare, repossession, eastern europe, public good, credit, royal economic society, sustainability, invention, accession countries, probability, sustainable growth, gnp, superfreakonomics, vertical integration, inflationary pressure, business model, default behaviour, rentokil, retirement age, business cycle,All tags
ECONOMICS TEACHER RESOURCE NEWSLETTER
Join over 4,000 other Economics Teachers in the UK and around the world who receive the tutor2u Economics Resource Email newsletter. Get special offers, first news of latest resources, teaching ideas, conferences and workshops.
Recent Threads on the Economics Teacher Discussion Forums:
Posts in: General Economics Teaching
Video Case-study - lunchtime prices slashed
Long Exam Example to Use for Revision Please?
Good hotel in London for school trip
Competitive Markets
Diminishing Returns
Complementary goods - HELP Please!
URgent Help Needed
Equilibrium concept
The price of life
Extended Project Qualification
