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Economics in the News : Archive for July & August 2007 The following articles on Economics in the News were published during July & August 2007 |
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| Beyond the Boom - York's economy in focus | Peter Day visited the City of York for the launch of a new edition of In Business to take the temperature of the British economy sixteen years on from the end of the last recession. 60 quarters of uninterrupted expansion since the autumn of 1992 – a growing economy almost seems to be taken for granted. But this macroeconomic stability masks many uncertainties and fears underneath the surface. Is the expansion still built in solid foundations? | ||
| Shallow business books | The end of August approaches with indecent haste and I have a clutch of summer book purchases in various states of completion gathering dust in my study and bedroom. | ||
| Better prospects for young entrepreneurs | A report in the Guardian today makes positive reading for those committed to promoting an entrepreneurship culture in the UK. | ||
| Britons 'feeling the pinch' as taxes and interest rates bite | A combination of higher tax payments, rising mortgage costs and higher prices for food and other essential purchases is causing a squeeze on consumer spending according to the latest macroeconomic forecast from the Ernst and Young ITEM club. | ||
| Dollar continues to fall against the Yuan | The external value of the US dollar against the Chinese Yuan continues to fall. | ||
| Articles on the Theory of Demand | All of these articles relate to some of the causes of changes in the market demand for different goods and services. When reading through them, consider some of the conditions of demand and how they link in to the particular story. | ||
| Should Northern Ireland be given the freedom to reduce corporation tax? | A large group of business leaders in Northern Ireland have called for the UK government to reduce corporation tax in the province as a means of kick-starting a much needed rise in domestic and foreign investment. | ||
| Rising demand for motor homes | This BBC news online clip looks at the surge in market demand for motorhomes. | ||
| Trade and Intellectual Property Rights and Market Failure | According to the International Anti-Counterfeiting Coalition (www.iacc.org ), global trading in counterfeit goods is estimated to have reached hundreds of billions of US dollars each year. | ||
| Oil prices, inflation and interest rates | This article from the Sunday Observer looks at the links between oil prices, consumer price inflation and UK interest rates. | ||
| Changing market structure in the funeral industry | Traditionally the funeral market in the UK has been dominated by small family-run funeral directors. But the market structure is changing as listed companies such as Dignity take an increasing share of a growing industry. | ||
| Economic growth in the UK | "There are 12m children alive in Britain today who have never experienced anything other than a rising economy.’ In this article on economic growth in the British economy, David Smith from the Sunday Times considers the degree of macroeconomic stability that has persisted for the last fifteen years. He looks at what might derail the economy and bring about a recession. | ||
| Making football affordable - Bradford City lead the way | Bradford City fans are clearly a price-sensitive lot! Despite the pain of relegation into League Two for the 2007-08 season, they have responded in fine style to a decision by the club to slash season ticket prices from £234 to just £138, which equates to £6 per game. | ||
| Unemployment in Scotland | This BBC news online article reports that employment in the Scottish economy is at a record high and that unemployment continues to fall. But set aside this good news, long term unemployment remains a problem and there are signs that Scotland continues to under-perform as an economy compared to Scandinavian nations. | ||
| New study finds the highest wealth gap for 40 years | The respected Joseph Rowntree Foundation has published new figures translated into poverty and wealth maps of Britain which reveal inequality to be at 40-year high. The data chimes with the widely held view that Britain is becoming a more polarized society with wealthier communities prepared to spend more and more money protecting their possessions in gated communities. | ||
| Rising Food Price Inflation | Will rapid food price inflation feed through to a higher rate of inflation for other goods and services? This is a key question at the current time as the world economy has to adjust to a period of much higher food prices. A recent article in the Financial Times focused on the issue. | ||
| Price wars force some smaller booksellers to source from Tesco! | There was a great example of market arbitrage opportunities in a report in the Times a couple of days ago concerning the imminent publication of the seventh (and in all probability the last) Harry Potter book. | ||
| Britain plc for sale | Sean O’Grady has an article in the Independent this morning which focuses on the rising share of UK listed businesses that are partly or wholly owned by foreign corporations. The open nature of our capital markets has always left the UK economy relatively exposed to foreign merger and takeover activity from football clubs to banks and from steel companies to the owners of British airports. | ||
| Flood defences – an example of a public good? | This article from BBC online looks at the arguments for spending more on flood defences following the impact of the recent floods affecting many parts of the country. | ||
| The (un)Happy Planet Index | The New Economics Foundation (NEF) has published its latest annual report on happiness and well-being. The Happy Planet Index ranks European countries according to a combination of life expectancy, life satisfaction and carbon footprint. | ||
| Sony opts not to cut the price of the Sony PS3 in Europe | Last week Sony announced a sharp fall in the price of the Sony PS3 in the US market. However it has opted to use free games and accessories instead to boost sales. This BBC news online article provides some of the background: | ||
| The Economic Naturalist - In Search of Explanations for Everyday Enigmas | 'The Economic Naturalist - In Search of Explanations for Everyday Enigmas' by Robert H Frank is two hundred pages of scintillating and fascinating economics, written with a lovely lightness or touch and which I devoured in one sitting yesterday. This is a book that simply has to find its way onto the bookshelf of a school or college library - it beats Freakonomics hands down! | ||
| Monetary and Fiscal Policy - The Rise in Bond Interest Rates | This BBC news online article considers the reasons for the rise in both short term and long term interest rates. | ||
| Economics Top Trumps | At the Business Teacher National Conference in London last week Michelle Stephenson gave a post-lunch presentation on some of the interactive learning exercises that she and her team at South Cheshire College have been developing, using and testing in the classroom. One of her ideas immediately struck a cord with me, namely an exercise created by John Clarke on the basic macroeconomic performance of each of the European Union countries, used as a starter exercise to introduce AS economists to the EU. | ||
| Business Post delivers strong revenue growth whilst the Royal Mail struggles with new strike | These are difficult times for the Royal Mail. This week the second one day strike of postal workers will cause yet more damage to the goodwill between the Royal Mail and their customers. And hot on the heels of the damage caused by industrial action is the news that Business Post, one of the Royal Mail's strongest competitors has announced that turnover has risen 13 per cent in the first quarter of 2007 compared with the same period last year. | ||
| New report supports arguments for a fat tax | The debate over which policies to tackle obesity are more effective and efficient is renewed today with news of a fresh study published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health and reported on BBC news online. | ||
| New IEA Report on World Oil Demand and Reserves | The International Energy Agency has published its latest forecasts for the world oil market and hints at the risk of an energy crunch as world oil consumption continues to expand set against an eventual decline in global oil reserves and the ability to expand production profitably. | ||
| Repugnant Markets – Tim Harford on BBC Radio 4 | The excellent Tim Harford has a programme on Radio 4 tomorrow night with the enticing title "Repugnant Markets". This is part of the Radio 4 Analysis programme | ||
| The ethnic and religious background of our entrepreneurs | Luke Johnson has a terrific piece in today's Financial Times about the background of some of our most successful and influential entrepreneurs. | ||
| Bread prices rise as the surge in global wheat prices takes effect | Premier Foods has announced that the price of its Hovis and Mothers Pride branded breads will rise following the surge in world wheat prices. It is another example of how agri-flation is feeding through to the prices of processed foods. | ||
| An Outstanding Day at the Business Teacher National Conference 2007 | Top speakers, a full house of enthusiastic teachers and a superb venue made the Business Teacher National Conference 2007 perhaps the best-ever Inset event for Business teachers. | ||
| Stephen King on conflicting macro objectives | Writing in today's Independent, Stephen King, chief economist of HSBC considers the problems of achieving control both of inflation and the exchange rate. | ||
| National Farmers Union calls for an end to set aside | The National Farmers Union has this week called for the suspension of set aside payments from the EU in response to the impact of the floods. They claim that world stocks of cereal are at their lowest level for 30 years after disappointing world and EU harvests in 2006. | ||
| China's pollution crisis - the cause of 750,000 premature deaths? | A new report from the World Bank highlights the scale of the pollution crisis facing the booming Chinese economy. Sixteen of the world’s 20 most polluted cities are in China. | ||
| Facebook Phoney? | Are people 'cheating' by hiring staff to update their entries on social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace? | ||
| Luke Johnson salutes the rise of the serial entrepreneur | Developing a successful entrepreneurial culture is critical to our long term economic health. And in today’s Financial Times, Luke Johnson salutes the emergence of well over a thousand serial entrepreneurs as a huge positive for the British economy. | ||
| Reading on the Secretive World of Private Equity | News that the troubled business Virgin Media is considering a £5.2bn takeover approach from Carlyle of the United States in what could become Britain's second-biggest private equity brings private equity back into the spotlight again. | ||
| The iPhone - High profit margins from early adopters | Stunning early sales for Apple's new iPhone provide a great example of the profits that can be made by selling to 'early adopters' - consumers willing and able to pay a premium price to be the first to get their hands on new technology; the first to be seen making use of the latest gadgets and gismos. | ||
| OECD produces new study on labour migration | The new International Migration Outlook for 2007 published by the OECD finds that nearly four million new immigrants entered the 31-member nations of the OECD on a permanent basis in 2005, an increase of 10% from 2004. | ||
| The Collapse in Savings | There was what on the surface a pretty shocking economic statistic revealed last week looks. Most of the media focus each month is on the latest inflation and labour market statistics and the implications of these and other macro indicators for the likely movement in official interest rates. But the figure that caused people to take notice last week was data which shows that the household savings ratio - the percentage of our disposable income that we choose to save rather than spend - has collapsed to just two per cent. It seems that, for now, people have given up on savings. This is the lowest savings ratio for over fifty years. | ||
| New Focus on the London Economy | The Office of National Statistics has published a new overview of the London economy which provides striking evidence of the divergences in economic performance between London and many other regions of the UK. | ||
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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 | |||
