This article suggests that export promotion might not always be beneficial for manufacturers that export their goods, even though this is often why it is implemented.

This article describes a perspective on economic growth and development in Nigeria. Particularly, it focuses on the development of the manufacturing sector in this country in an attempt to fuel economic growth and therefore contribute to development.

This article describes Bolivia's attempt to join the Mercosur trade bloc in South America, which we learned about this week. There are obvious benefits to the trade bloc that it wishes to exploit, but some people don't feel it is ready to join the trade bloc.

This article describes the Czech current account balance. The current account is experiencing a widening deficit, as a result of "the outflow of dividends outweighing the foreign-trade surplus". This means that, although this country is experiencing good trade, too much investment in the country is leading to outflow of money to foreign investors.

This article discusses the balance of payments in Ukraine, and details many of the various aspects of the balance of payments that we have studied this week.

This article describes the decrease in currency value of the rupee, which the central bank is trying to correct by selling dollars and purchasing their own currency.

In order to protect its domestic industries from European subsidized-sugar, Canada places high duties (tariffs) on imported sugar. This article details how local firms are benefiting due to a ruling that allows these trade barriers. While consumers would benefit from free trade because they can purchase sugar at a low price, it would have a harmful effect on domestic firms, which is why protectionist measures are put in place.

This article discusses the possibility of a free trade deal between China and Canada; while Canada has the potential to benefit greatly from this deal, Canadians are weary for numerous reasons, including Chinese takeovers of domestic companies, and human rights issues.

One topic we have discussed a lot in supply-side policy is the funding of education, and how increased funding can lead to more efficiency in the economy. However, after the Ontario budget, the government decided to freeze teacher wages to try to reduce funding in this education sector; which has created many problems in our province as teacher unions are now taking action, with the threat of a strike still being possible. Supply-side policy gone wrong.

A year ago, the Occupy movement became one of the big news topics of the year - the popular slogan of this movement being "We are the 99%." This was reference to distribution of income, because protestors were angered at the unequal distribution of income leading to the "Top 1%" having such control over the economy. This article takes a look at how income inequality has continued to change since the movement has started.

The world economy is in a troubling situation right now, and leaders of the G-8 countries have often disagreed on how to deal with economic troubles. Angela Merkel (Chancellor of Germany) has pushed Europe into using austerity measures to attempt to solve its debt problems; but with this meeting the focus shifted rather to economic growth, and how the countries would work together to achieve this in the next few crucial months.

This article details the risks that are associated with the cut in interest rates in Australia. Interest rates are a form of monetary policy that is being used by Australia to try to create a better economic situation.

This article describes a decision by the US Federal reserve regarding inflation rates. The article points out that the unemployment rate has declined and inflation has increase, showing the trade-off. They hope, by monetary policy, however, to attempt to both reduce unemployment and achieve a stable rate of inflation.

This article discusses the increase in inflation that is occurring in the Eurozone, even though the economic conditions are weak. The article cites high energy and transport costs as one of the reasons inflation increased. This inflation affects consumers because they must pay higher prices to buy items that they require.

This article discusses the problems of unemployment around the world - while unemployment is leveling off in the United States, it continues to increase in the Euro Zone, which is suffering from economic problems.

When countries form a free-trade deal, it allows the imports and exports between the countries to grow, because there are less trade restrictions such as tariffs. This means that, with import prices decreasing, aggregate supply in Canada will increase.

The aggregate demand in an economy is made up of the total spending on goods and services in a country, and one of the components of aggregate demand is consumption (consumer spending). This article outlines some reasons as to why consumer spending - consumption - is expected to increase in the US in the coming months.

Unemployment is one of the indicators used to look at a country's macro-economy. The low unemployment in Germany leads economists to believe that the economy is recovering, meaning it is going through the "recovery" stage of the business cycle - a positive thing for a country after a global recession.

This article discusses how petroleum countries in South Africa were fined for price-fixing. This is an example of large firms who form a collusive oligopoly, because they are working together to agree on prices that will maximize their joint revenue. However, due to the fact that this means higher prices for consumers, it was an illegal agreement and so the firms are being fined.

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.