Unboxing marathons to boost demand
Last week, Disney hosted an 18 hour "unboxing marathon" of Star Wars toys on YouTube. Unboxing is a new approach to marketing which involves unwrapping, unboxing, assembling and then demonstrating...
Coffee Snobs who Refuse to Drink Instant!
An early example here of income elasticity of demand here as the Telegraph reports on the decline in the demand for instant coffee and a corresponding increase in the demand for ground coffee and...
Whitbread to pay the Living Wage
Whitbread has announced that it is opting to pay the living wage for their employees but that some of the extra cost will be passed onto consumers through higher prices for some of the products....
China's Impossible Trinity
This is a high level piece of A level economics especially relevant for Upper Sixth (A2) students.
Where does the UK's overseas aid go?
The debate over the scale and substance of the UK's humanitarian support for displaced refugees from the Syrian crisis has focused attention on how the UK spends their annual aid budget. The UK...
Can Apple Continue to Grow Like a Start-Up?
In this short video, Daniel Garrahan from the Financial Times looks back at how Apple.Inc has been transformed over the past 20 years. Can the rapid growth be maintained or will Apple be affected...
Economics and Politics - a classic combination
A little bit like Mel and Sue on Great British Bake Off, Economics and Politics really complement each other nicely.
How often does a banknote change hands?
I really like this super analysis from the Guardian's data bloggers, based on research from OnStride Financial, in which they use the Quantity Theory of Money to calculate the "velocity of...
Short Survey on Using Videos to Teach Economics
How can video help economists communicate with a wider audience? Should videos be 5 minutes - or shorter or longer? Should they include graphics or documentary footage? The truth is, no one knows....
Falling living standards for jobseekers
This article http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-34151666 looks at one of the more obvious costs of unemployment for the individual worker - the loss of income. by 2020, the Joseph Rowntree...
Chinese businesses winning contracts on the new Silk Road
The new Silk Road is a hugely important development in the context of China's growing economic and financial influence in the world economy.
Divestment - Tesco off loads South Korean stores for £4.2 billion
Tesco is in a hurry to reduce their debt pile and avoid a costly share rights issue to raise fresh finance. The giant UK retailer is going through turbulent times. Their market share in the UK...
Gender pay gap driving UK inequality
More evidence here of the interlinked nature of an economy: the causes of inequality are complex - the gender pay gap and a lack of access to education being the major causes according to the World...
Preventing sunburn by changing habits
This info-packed piece from the BBC is full of great behavioural economics insights into how we can reduce the number of people getting sunburnt.
Amazon's Costly Fire Phone Flop
Stick to selling things rather than making them. That might be the message for Jeff Bezos and his team at Amazon after they decided to abandon their attempt to enter the increasingly contestable...
Kicking the Habit - Smoking Rates Increasing in 40 Countries
The UK, US and Australia have had much success in lowering rates of smoking. However, smoking rates in other countries remain stubbornly high and in around 40 countries are actually rising!This...
What books would you recommend to your economics students?
I posed this question on twitter a couple of days ago and lots of teachers and graduating students got in touch with their suggestions. Here is a flavour of them. I'll happily add to the list if...
Buy It Now!
Most of us have used eBay, and I bet that the way we have used it has changed over time, as we don't bid as frequently in auctions and rely on the Buy It Now feature instead. This is a great...
How did China become a global superpower?
As A2 students start to return to their studies, now is a great time to grab their attention and move them on to considering the global element to their economics. This super iWonder storyboard...
Assumptions in Economics
If you’re starting Economics, you will perhaps be starting to think about some of the limitations of a social science. Unlike physicists, economists don’t have a laboratory in which they can...