Group items tagged

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 tells the balance of payments of Ghana skyrockets comparing to the same period in 2011. The main reason is the falling price of cocoa beans, which is a main export of Ghana, and the falling export volumes. With the export going down and imports of oil, and other non-oil imports skyrocket, the balance of payment become negative value.

For this week, I decided to find an article that is very close to most of us, because we all, at one point or another, eat meat, as well as drink milk. When we consume these products we probably don't realize what harmful chemicals go into these products and how they can negatively affect us. This article talks about the antibiotics and hormones that are injected into livestock to increase the rate of growth as well as in cows, the increased production of milk, and how these chemicals can negatively effect us.

Although part of this article talks about the hypocrisy of staging Climate Change Comferences (due to the environmental implications of travelling to it), the middle of it talks about some economics. Instead of just harping on the envoronmental effects of climate change, people are suggesting that the negative externalities of creating pollution may begin to affect a country's GDP. This is interesting because now the social cost that the company should have paid is now being bounced back for everyone to pay.

Hello, This article talks about problem and the negative externality an 5,000 gallon oil spill has caused in a local river, which covered over two miles. The article talks about the clean up act and how some fish are dying. The article does not talk about how the dying fish will affect local trade, however, I think it should not affect it that greatly due to the fact there are other rivers and seas from which to fish in and the river was quiet small. However, the oil could get into people's drinking supply and it could make people ill. From, Tim

The use of normal cars creates a negative externality of consumption; through the air pollution and noise pollution that is created. The intention to launch an electric car share program in Paris reduces this negative externality; as electric cars do not make any noise and do not (directly) cause air pollution.

Sirius XM Radio was once saved the "January Effect" thanks to their merger several years ago. They experienced the benefits of economies of scale as a much larger organization, which brought the two previous companies back up in stock. However, they are still facing many challenges because economies of scale do not solve all problems. Some of the issues: "A low profit margin of 9.2 percent, and an astronomical Total/Debt to Equity of 492. Also, the rapid change in broadcasting technologies, and the Internet radio gaining ground, it is a matter of time before satellite-radio becomes obsolete. Satellite subscriptions are part of consumer spending that is usually negatively affected by a weak economy, consumers will not spend excessive money on this."

This article shows an importance of price control on goods. Because of the high diesel and gas prices, people's life are being affected, in a negative way. First of all, people who own cars will fell the financial pinch, because now they spend a lot more on diesel. And lives will not keep running, in some contexts, without cars. And diesel is a fuel for heating too. Canada's winter is freezing cold, without heating, life will be miserable. To ensure people's welfare is protected, a price ceiling for diesel, in this case $1.44 cents per litre.

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.

Russia and its partners (Belarus and Kazakhstan) are looking to seal a free trade deal with New Zealand. However, the articles talks about external issues to consider that will affect or be affected by the deal. The main concern of both parties is the current negative state of the global economy and how they intend to overcome this by trade. " "The priority goal is to fight protectionism together in all its forms; traditional and new alike ... It is important to build bridges, not walls," he said. "

This article talks about how negative externalities links to taxes and how it can affect a person. It compares taxing soda with other products like fuel, cigarettes etc. and how the government makes decisions on what to tax. Quote the article: "Even as adults, we sometimes wish for parents to be looking over our shoulders and guiding us to the right decisions. The question is, do you trust the government enough to appoint it your guardian?"

This article concerns the problems that are being caused by a wagon-assembly factory in India. Not only does the factory cause air-pollution through fumes, but it also causes noise-pollution and vibrations that make living in the area very uncomfortable. This clearly illustrates how the MSC is much greater than the MPC of production, and is therefore is therefore a "Negative Externality of Production".

As many of us know, Canada has a great healthcare program that is provided by the government. The US, on the other hand, has opted in the past to keep healthcare a private good. The American goverment is now seeing negative repercussions of this decision, and this article outlines how they are thinking of modelling their healthcare system after Canada's by introducing government healthcare insurance. Although this may not completely eliminate private healthcare companies, it may discourage them for the reasons we learned in Week 12. This idea of reforming the current policies has stemmed from stories of families who have gone broke after needing emergency surgeries while not being able to afford insurance.

This article discusses how the government is trying to deal with the greenhouse gasses that are having a negative impact on our environment. The governent is taking steps to promote the use of biofuel over ethonol by using tax subsidies....

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 discusses the current issue in the United States when it comes to the price controls for sugar. Not only has it cost a lot of people their jobs, it is also eliminating the possibility for the growth of more jobs. And the problem isn't just with the jobs...the price control for sugar has caused an increase inprice in many goods that use to make their products...such as breakfast cereal....so even thought the price control is meant as a normative economic action...it may negatively impact the market.

This piece by The Globe and Mail outlines Canada's ongoing shortage of healthcare professionals, particularly family doctors. Although it doesn't address economics directly, this article applies to our topic because doctors are considered a 'service', and thus not having enough of them is a scarcity within Canada's economy. The author talks about how difficult it is to find a regular family doctor in her area. According to her, there are actual business dedicated to helping people locate doctors. At the end of the article, statistics reveal that this is a normal problem occuring in a large part of Canadians. There is actually also a major shortage of healthcare professionals in developing areas such as Africa, where there aren't even suitable medical locations in the case of an emergency. **By the way: I apologize for my lack of tags other than 'scarcity'... I accidentally posted the article before tagging anything else! **I fixed the tags... finally figured out how, woohoo!!

This is a great example of scarcity, and even opportunity cost. These doctors are somewhat of a luxury, and although they are a need, the scarcity makes them a reasonable want as well. Scarcity may have largely negative repercussions, yet there is an occasional positive outcome for some unit in an economy. It's certainly beneficial to the other businesses (helping to locate doctors) that have evolved from this problem, and those companies are profiting from a Nation's scarcity.