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Economics in the News : Archive for May 2006 The following articles on Economics in the News were published during May 2006 |
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| Economics in the News (31-05) - Absence of a wage-price spiral in the UK | How fast wages are rising has important implications for the economy. Indeed this is a factor that the Bank of England carefully considers when it is setting interest rates (base rates) each month. So far we have not seen a wage-price spiral following the sharp rise in oil, gas and electricity prices. | ||
| Economics in the News (31-05) - AD and the economic cycle | All countries experience an economic cycle – it is a natural feature of macroeconomics! This revision note covers the basics of different stages of the economic cycle. | ||
| Economics in the News (31-05) - Essay plan on entry barriers | Essay plan for an A2 question: With the use of examples, explain the various barriers to entry to a market and how these barriers might affect market structure. | ||
| Economics in the News (30-05) - An EU tax on emails and SMS texts? | Reading my copy of the Guardian this morning, I had to check the date on the front page to confirm that it was not April 1st. Why because the idea of a tax on each and every email and SMS text sent within the European Union seemed on first reading to have just about every characteristic of a decent April Fools joke! | ||
| Economics in the News (30-05) - Essay plan on costs | Essay plan on diminishing returns, returns to scale and production costs for a firm in the short run and the long run. | ||
| Economics in the News (30-05) - Revision SWOT on the UK economy | A short revision SWOT analysis for the UK economy - drawn up in a revision lesson on by my A2 students. | ||
| Economics in the News (29-05) - Advice on writing essays | Advice on writing A2 essays for the Unit 5 and Unit 6 AQA Papers. | ||
| Economics in the News (29-05) - Essay plan on trade | Essay plan on the benefits of international trade and evaluating the arguments for trade protection by developing countries | ||
| Economics in the News (28-05) - Copper, Inflation and Investment | A selection of three business and economics articles in the newspapers this week - covering copper speculators, inflation and business investment. | ||
| Economics in the News (28-05) - Revision on Demand Management | Cutting interest rates to stimulate demand; raising government spending to inject some extra spending into the economy and avoid a recession; opting to increase direct taxation if there is a danger of an over-heating economy. It sounds fairly straightforward doesn’t it! The textbook theories of demand management using monetary and fiscal policy appear straightforward. But the reality is somewhat different for there are several problems with using monetary and fiscal policies as ways of smoothing the economic cycle for a country. | ||
| Economics in the News (28-05) - Structure of output in the EU | The new edition of Regional Trends (39) from the Office of National Statistics provides as always plenty of fascinating insights into the complex differences between the regions of the United Kingdom and our regional position relative to the European Union. | ||
| What does a current account deficit tell us about the performance of an economy? And does it matter if a nation operates with a high current account deficit? We will consider these two questions in this revision focus. | |||
| Revision notes and updated charts on UK monetary policy. Designed for A2 students. | |||
| Essay plan for "Explain the main causes of economic growth". With some supporting data for OECD countries. | |||
| The Japanese economy is poised for its highest growth rate for many years according to the latest world economic outlook from the OECD. View a streamed presentation on Japan's economic rebound. | |||
| Revision notes on the issue of tuition fees, suitable for both AS and A2 students considering the economcis of tuition fees | |||
| Download a two page student handout on this issue and a one page powerpoint student handout for notes. | |||
| A selection of recent web resources on the issue of student tuition fees in the UK. | |||
| Explain how a fall in the value of the exchange rate can affect inflation, unemployment and the balance of payments. | |||
| With the use of examples, explain the factors that affect the supply of labour to a particular industry. | |||
| The “tragedy of the commons” is a metaphor used to illustrate the potential conflict between individual self-interests of producers and consumers and the common or public good. Revision on how you can link this into some important economic and environmental issues. | |||
| The BBC has launched a new section of their website to coincide with a series of features on China and India, the emerging giants. I have put together a streamed revision presentation on aspects of China's super-charged growth! | |||
| The financial markets are having a particularly turbulent time at the moment and it has been a fairly shocking few days for stock market investors both here and overseas. | |||
| An updated streamed revision presentation on the economics of contestable markets - focussed on A2 students | |||
| Market structure often forms the basis for many A2 level essay and data response questions. This updated streamed presentation considers the market structure - conduct - performance concept as it relates to different markets. | |||
| A selection of interesting news and comment pieces in the online press over the last couple of days. | |||
| Revision essay plan on monopoly power and government intervention. Designed for A2 students. | |||
| A revision presentation on the performance of the UK economy under New Labour. | |||
| A revision essay plan on the causes and consequences of price deflation | |||
| A revision essay plan on the economics of a trade deficit and the significance of a current account deficit. | |||
| An essay plan on why some countries grow faster than others - suitable for both AS and A2 students. | |||
| Revision notes on the links between the UK and the global economy. Suitable for both AS and A2 students. | |||
| There was some important macroeconomic news yesterday and it has proved to be a difficult few days for the FTSE-100 index. | |||
| Yesterday saw two important pieces of news relating to the economics of the EU. Slovenia has been given the go ahead to join the Euro and Bulgaria and Romania's entry to the EU in January 2007 is given only a conditional acceptance. | |||
| Evaluation is about making critical judgements and coming to reasoned conclusions on the basis of the evidence that you have in front of you. Here are ten suggestions for improving your evaluation skills in Economics exams. | |||
| Trust lies at the heart of market exchanges and when trust is damaged, the effects can be long term and significant for legitimate traders. Information failure is a root cause of market failure and there was a good example of this in the media yesterday with an expose of fraudulent trading of organic meat in the UK. | |||
| Economist Mike McDonald offers a perspective on whether any government should take steps to limit economic growth. | |||
| It is too early to call an end to the “bull run” for commodity prices but yesterday showed just how quickly market speculators are to act when they sense a turning point in the global economy. | |||
| There was a super article in yesterday's Independent on the rapid increase in the price of frozen orange juice, an excellent example of a market displaying price volatility for demand and supply-side reasons. I have slightly adpated the article and included some questions that might be useful as part of microeconomic revision for an AS level group. This can be downloaded below as a word file. | |||
| For some time, economists have been warning of the inevitability of a sharp fall in the US dollar in global currency markets arising from the yawning current account deficit. Are we now seeing the start of the dollar's collapse? | |||
| An update on carbon trading in Europe. The price of carbon credits in the new European Union emissions trading scheme has fallen quite sharply in recent weeks and many analysts of the new market for carbon emissions believe that prices in the market could remain depressed over the next two years. | |||
| This week I am giving some revision presentations to students at school, they cover AS and A2 issues and I will be providing these presentations to other students and teachers on the daily economics blog. | |||
| Brief comments on ways to improve marks on the Jan 2006 AQA Unit 4 paper "Working as an Economist" - the case study paper on the EU | |||
| A selection of news stories and follow-up links to keep you fully up to speed with developments in the UK and international economy. In particular we focus on another manic week for commodities! | |||
| The government taxes housing in many different ways. Some of them directly affect home-owners whilst other taxes affect providers / suppliers of housing. Changes in taxation inevitably affect the allocation of resources in the housing sector. Today's blog contains a revision file on the taxation of housing and a selection of recent articles. Useful perhaps for AS students preparing for the AQA unit 3 paper. | |||
| US interest rates rise for the 16th month in a row; the Bank of England releases a new inflation report and a new league table places the UK as the most competitive economy in the European Union. Catch up on some of the day's top macroeconomic news stories. | |||
| Two word documents containing some suggested answers to the A2 micro and macroeconomics concepts tests. You can download both files from this link. | |||
| Three AS revision tests and some links to a handful of good economic news stories from yesterday. A2 revision test answers and other files can be downloaded. | |||
| Today's blog provides two revision tests for A2 economics - where students are asked to define and develop a dozen important concepts and ideas in each of the tests. Download the files, I will supply suggested answers in an attachment to tomorrow's blog. | |||
| In today's blog, the Financial Times goes digital, Real Business magazine lists thr Hot 100 fastest-growing UK companies. And average disposable wealth per family tops £40,000 | |||
| One of the big stories this week has been the results of the six auctions for the UK rights to show live Premier League soccer in the three seasons beginning with the 2007-08 campaign. | |||
| Last night the first programme in a new season of In Business focused on the thorny issue of productivity. Why is it that the UK economy has found it so difficult to increase productivity relative to many of our major competitors both in Europe, North America and the far Eastern countries? Why lies behind this disappointing productivity performance? And, ultimately, does it matter if our productivity isn’t quite at the super-charged levels that other countries seem able to sustain? | |||
| One of the key issues that students at A2 level have to consider are the factors that affect the pricing decisions and the pricing power of firms within markets. Virtually every firm has some degree of autonomy in setting prices for their goods and services, but they must often make those decisions in a complex and ever-changing business environment. How will competitors respond? How sensitive are consumers to price changes? What effect might government regulation have on pricing power? Is pricing power linked to where an economy is in the economic cycle? Today's blog looks at some of these questions with some updated revision notes. | |||
| Today's blog contains updated revision notes on the issue of how to measure changes in living standards between countries, and in particular, standards of living across the twenty five member nations of the European Union. Download a revision file. | |||
| A selection of BBC news video clips have proved useful in revision with my AS economics students. I have linked to some of them today together with a selection of other resources included in a Word file. They cover a range of micro and macroeconomic topics. | |||
| How to slow down a juggernaut without causing a recession? Last week the Chinese authorities raised official interest rates by 0.27%, the first rise in interest rates for eighteen months, in a bid to bring about a soft-landing for the Chinese economy and create the conditions for more balanced and sustainable growth in the future. | |||
| The world of Economics has been paying tribute today to John Kenneth Galbraith who has died in hospital at the age of 97. Without question, Galbraith was one of the giant figures of Economics in the last century and into the first decade of the new millennium. | |||
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| Other essential economics resources: | |||
| econoMAX - the Economics Magazine for AS & A2 Economics | |||
| Economics Exam Technique - Guidance from the Examiners | |||
| The UK Economy in a Nutshell | |||
| The European Economy - New Free Resources | |||
| Economics - Student Discussion Board | |||
| GCSE Economics Revision Notes | |||
| AS & A2 Economics Revision Notes | |||
