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This article talks about India and its current account deficit. Import substitution is a good way to reduce current account deficit by reducing the import expenditure.

A tad early, but Christmas music will be coming on the radio next week! At least here in DC.. The article outlines a government plan to make a little extra revenue, and how that plan was so fiercely opposed. The tax would be imposed on the producers, given that they produce more than 500 trees a year, and in turn the producers would probably have to increase their prices. Since it is a specific tax with a fixed amount of $0.15 (not dependent on the price of the trees) it will shift the supply curve up. Even though the article states that the program "wouldn't have any impact on the final price consumers pay for their Christmas tree" - there would be an inevitable small impact at least in one retail area of the trees. Since there are so many consumers that will want Christmas trees, a tax would bring in a fair amount of money, as there are no substitutes for Christmas trees.

This article is about the Canadian e-book company, Kobo, and their fight for sales against Amazon's product, Kindle. Kobo and Kindle are both very similar and have been competing against one another as 'substitutes' (as we've read about) for a long time. However, a new Kindle was just released that is priced even lower than the Kobo just in time for Christmas. Kobo's problem is that since Kindle has lowered their prices, they are sliding along their demand curve and thus increasing their demand. Kobo might not be able to afford lowering their prices much further, and so this might mean their whole demand curve will shift to the left because Kindle has better prices.

I've never even heard of the Kobo and I live in Canada. I guess it doesn't have very much of a chance, especially with the new price competition.

This articles talks about the retailers are managing to increase their prices and pass on higher costs onto their customers. Its talks about how people think that increasing the price will not change the demand or quantity because consumers would accept the price increase because all retailers have the same cost structure and would start to pass the higher prices through. It also talks about that they can increase their prices because their is no substitute for their product. In general there is a economic growth within the world. Average prices in the apparel market rose more than 5 percent from January to May.