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This article describes the transition of the Canadian Wheat Board after the Canadian government ended its monopoly. This means the wheat farmers in Western Canada are now going to have to be more competitive as they don't have a monopoly over the industry, and so the industry is ideally transitioning from a concentrated market structure to a competitive market structure.

I thought this article about the state of the US economy was particularly interesting. The statistics of ratio large firm to small firms (3-1, small) is increasing. The article also states, "The market rewards and punishes with little regard to whom or what or how it impacts. Generally, it is large firms that enjoy these little gems of taxpayer munificence. They have become "too-big-to-fail."

Due to the increase in different nationalities in the population of the US, there has been a huge increase in demand for translation services, especially in the medical field. Because of this non-price determinant of demand changing, the demand curve for translating services shifted to the right. As the curve shifted to the right, this means that the equilibrium price and quantity both increased. Since a market always moves toward equilibrium, in this case it meant supply had to increase as well. It is for these reasons that the company discussed in this article is looking to expand its services and acquire new companies - so the market will be back at equilibrium and the demand for translating services is met by the same supply.

"I think we've got something of an abnormal equilibrium in the market at the moment in that we've got high inflation and a weak economic recovery on one side but we've got very low interest rates on the other," explains Cook. This article, as said by Mr.Cook above, explores the current market, and how the equilibrium is "off" because of the high inflation, weak economic recovery, and low interest rates. It is almost as if although measures were taken to find that equilibrium, the market has not responded as it should.

Unemployment is a huge issue that is coming from the eurozone economic challenges. There is a negative growth, and increasing unemployment rate. Changing the value of currency, and having difficulties stimulating economic growth are contributing to the problem. The economy is slowing down, which inevitably leads to higher unemployment.

A government sponsored agency currently controls the prices for dairy products in Canada. This was implemented because the government wanted to regulate the prices paid to dairy farmers and the amount of milk they could produce, in order to protect the farmers. However, problems have begun to arise because of these price controls, mostly due to the fact that the market price is much higher than it should be (which hurts consumers) and it is costing billions of dollars each year.

A market failure occurs when the transaction between a buyer and seller imposes costs on a third party and these costs are not included in the price paid. The third party impact is called an externality. When the externality is negative, like in this scenario, then we should try to limit the consumption, thus raise the price, however this has evidently not happened.

This article focuses on the equilibrium in the oil market, or in this case a "fragile" equilibrium. Recently, Europe as well as other parts of the world, have been trying to find alternatives for using oil. For everything, other than transportation, there is an alternative to burning oil. So in places where the population is steady, and not rising dramatically...the demand for oil is going down, therefore shifting the demand curve and the equilibrium price. However there are still many countries in which the demand for oil is growing. I the oil industry, the equilibrium is constatly wavering...but so far, it has stayed in a range and hasn't strayed too far from that range yet.

The price of crude oil is said to be the underlying reason for the effect of the Rupee weakening.There is downward pressure from losses in the domestic shares. "Importers looking to meet month-end import commitments weighed"

Hello, In this article it talks about how the shares for GE fell in response to a lower revenue than expected. The fall in revenue of General Electric was caused by a slower than expected growth in the European credit crisis. It says even though GE was making a profit, the slower European market causes them to have a decrease in revenue. They say that because if the credit crisis sales in Europe are not as high and even though people are still purchasing products, the growth at which sales in Europe should have increased are increasing less than what GE wants them to. GE claimed that they are going to change their market footprint through new products and technology in order to increase their revenue and thus increase their shares. From Tim

"Facebook Inc.'s lineup of six major Wall Street banks to manage its initial public offering reflects the social network's determination to pursue a conventional IPO and avoid an exotic approach to the share sale, people familiar with the company said." This article approaches to the idea about the interaction between the banks and Facebook, these interactions can shown in a relation of the free markets. also, the article mentions the competition Facebook with other social sites.

The telephone market has two monopolies. 1 has over 70% of the landlines the other over 70% of the mobiles. This means that there are two extremely powerful companies which have a lot of influence in the market and how the mnexican population spend.

This article discusses the environmental and human health costs of power plants. These type of costs would be considered negative externalities of production, because they are harmful effects that do not effect the firm producing the power, but rather a third party, society as a whole. When producers are making the power, they value the cost as the private costs to their firms, but as outlined by this article, there are many social costs which they do not consider, and this leads to over-production, which means the market is failing, as the resources are not being allocated efficiently. An interesting aspect is that they are able to put a true "cost" on environmental and health effects, which can be quite hard to determine.

This article talks about the rising prices of commodities due to the aggressive and proactive economic policy of China. With the surge in Chinese purchases of commodities such as iron ore and oil, a huge demand has been created in the commodity markets, which were previously unprecedented. The sluggish reactions to the commodity demand,due to archaic infrastructure and depleted resources, have lead to a substantial spike in the prices of commodities. I personally believe that the massive purchases of resources by China is leading to a bubble in the commodity markets. As said in the article Iron ore was once 13$ a tonne in 2001, and now is 178$ a tonne. Although some might say that the rise in prices are a corollary to the rise of China as a economic power, I do not believe the mass consumption of commodities can be sustained over time.

This article shows how resources are allocated in a free market by pointing out that both the quantity demanded and demand for gasoline fell. The quantity demanded fell because of a higher price; demand is falling because of uncertainty (which pushes the demand curve to the left). This shows allocative efficiency because if fewer people are working it make sense that fewer people are driving because these people no longer have to drive to work. Furthermore, these people may not have the ability to drive as much anymore because of their lower income.

This article demonstrates how price is used to allocate resources in a free market, in the area of education. Since there aren't enough teachers and universities for every student across the world who wishes to go to university to go, this education must be allocated to people via price. Because of this, only people who can afford the education can go to school. The amount of people who can go to university is also regulated by admissions and marks, but it is an example of where price can affect who gets to make use of the resources.