Consumption externalities in Singapore
The excellent Jason Welker has a superb post on aspects of consumption externalities in Singapore.
New series of BBC Earth Report - Deforestation and Externalities
BBC World’s Earth Report has just started a new series of reports and the first edition is a powerful programme on deforestation in Indonesia and the impact that this has on carbon emissions. Across south east asia peat swamp forest is being drained to make way for oil palm or pulpwood trees. The destruction of tropical forests causes about 20 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions – more than the world’s entire transport sector – making tropical forest countries such as Indonesia, some of the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases in the world. Which incentives will be most effective in limiting the permanent damage of huge rates of deforestation and the costs of damaging burning trees?
Scots may lead the way in setting minimum price for alcohol
The smoking ban first came in north of the border and now we find that the Scottish government has been proactive in trying to curb the economic and social costs of high alcohol consumption and binge drinking. Establishing a minimum price per unit of alcohol seems like an obvious economic approach to the issue and this report by Colin Blane looks at the plan for a minimum price of 40p per unit - making a bottle of wine at least £3.60.If it works the number of hospital admissions could be cut by many thousands per year. Will Scotland become the first country in Europe to go down this path? This short video piece would make a good starter resource for a lesson on intervention options and an evaluation of their potential impacts.
£1bn programme to electrify the Great Western Mainline
This Times article covers the announcement of a major investment in the rail network - £1bn of extra spending to electrify the Great Western Mainline. About 300 miles (480km) of line will be upgraded at a cost of £1.1billion, including tracks from Didcot to Oxford, Reading to Newbury and Liverpool to Manchester. Lord Adonis the current Transport Minister is quoted as saying that the scheme will “pay for itself over a 40 year time period”. The investment might make a good case study for cost benefit analysis: Students might generate a series of advantages / disadvantages and then discuss how they divide into private and social costs and benefits.
Q&A: Demerit Goods and Negative Production Externalities
Question: I was wondering what the difference between a demerit good and a good that has negative externalities in production was?
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(5/5), based on 2 reviews
Economies of Scale for Wind Farms
The scale of the new farm project at Eaglesham Moor near Glasgow is stunning but projects of this type inevitably create a huge furore especially for those living in the area. My own personal view is that wind farms as a source of renewable energy are things of beauty - this BBC video provides an aerial view of the Glasgow project and might be a good one to use when teaching about the economics of renewable energy, cost benefit analysis and economies of scale.
The UK Government has a target of providing 15.4% of all electricity supply from renewable sources by 2015. Jim recently blogged about the London Array here
Consumers stung by slump in bee population
If there is any honey left for tea, the chances are that it will be much more expensive in the days and weeks to come.
There are many causes including the impact of pesticides used in industrial farming, the longer-term impact of climate change, fungal infections, parasites and a shift genetically modified crops. But there is no denying a potentially calamitous decline in the size of the UK and European bee population.
This BBC report claims that the British bee-keeping fraternity are warning that there could be no domestically-produced honey left on supermarket shelves by Christmas. A mite infestation that has killed off a quarter of the UK’s honey bees this year and bee-keepers have been lobbying government for financial help to prevent the problems becoming a rout of the bee population. As market supply falls, the price of honey increases. But the effects are much broader than this. Bees pollinate many of the plants and vegetation which we then go on to consume so we can expect higher prices for our morning coffee or orange juice and also milk. Here we have a graphic example of inter-related markets.
A blog on the Guardian web site makes this point forcibly:
“Some 250,000 species of flowering plants depend on bees for pollination. Many of these are crucial to world agriculture. Bees increase the yields of around 90 crops, such as apples, blueberries and cucumbers by up to 30%, so many fruits and vegetables would become scarce and prohibitively expensive.”
One immediate response has come from the European Union which has agreed to set up recovery zones for bee hives - namely patches of farmland planted with pollen and nectar-rich plants. The fear is that this is too little too late, and the wider externalities from the demise of the bee population will prove to be very expensive for all of us.
Experinomics Resources
A selection of resources from the conference today courtesy of Jen and Chris - starting with the trading game resources - all related to Experinomics as a Tool for Learning
read more...»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
OCR 2888 - June Case Study - Broad Themes
This is the first in a series of blog posts relating to the OCR A2 Economics Case Study, Economics in a European Context. This summer the pre-release case study materials focus on the EU automotive industry and many of the economic and environmental issues that link to this important industrial sector. I have been working on our toolkit for this paper (due out in a few days) and below I have tried to capture some of the broad themes that I feel are covered by the case study materials. Please do add your own ideas through the blog!
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