Economics HL - Jacob Solomon's group - Year 1

Recently, the NFL's Buffalo Bills made a deal with the city of Toronto to hold a certain number of regular and preseason games at the Rogers Centre in Toronto. However, due to scheduling conflicts, one of the games has had to be dropped, but the Bills say that the price of the tickets won't be going up because of it, but actually going down to increase demand. The NFL can be considered a monopoly because there is no professional football league like it in the world, and its annual revenues are huge.

"Wal-Mart's influence on the U.S. economy has reached levels not seen by a single company since the 19th-century rise of Standard Oil, economists and historians say" To state that Wal-Mart is huge would be an understatement and in my perspective, it is the perfect example of economies of scale. The article is a bit lenthy though but the points are well explained.

Victoria Cadman, economist at Investec, said no change in the rate of inflation would be an "uncomfortable reality" for the Bank of England, which confidently forecast inflation to fall rapidly throughout 2012 and into 2013. The Bank's policy-makers will be less inclined to pump more money into the economy through its quantitative easing programme if inflation continues to remain above target. This article discusses the expected increase in inflation figures which are coming out tomorrow because of high oil and food prices. These increases in inflation will lead to a higher cost of living, which is undesirable for pretty much everyone.

Jan 11th 2012, 15:07 by C.O. | LONDON SCOTT SUMNER recently wrote a nice post entitled "The myth of the pro-German ECB". I disagree with his argument that the Balassa-Samuelson effect explains higher inflation rates in the European periphery (isn't this effect based on productivity gains in the tradables sector?), but in my view he is right on his main point: monetary policy by the ECB was too tight for Germany. This article is about how Germany seems to be the only country in the eurozone not failing because of the reduction in aggregate demand from the euro. It explores the reasons for this.

This article discusses the declining threat of further economic downturn for the United States...a recession is one of the things that can be considered when looking at a macroeconomic level...

This article discussed how Robert Skidelsky, a member of the British House of Lords, is Professor Emeritus of Political Economy at Warwick University. For more from Skidelsky, visit Project Syndicate or follow it on Facebook and Twitter. By Robert Skidelsky, Project Syndicate The recent European Union summit was a disaster.

It is about how European Union summit was a disaster, and that the debts of the government has been mounting up. Therefore, they are thinking of plans for the future to make the eurozone stay, survive and not dealing with economic downfall.

This article offers an explanation of the role of the bank of Canada in the economy and all the different factors they have to assess and keep in mind in order to help economic growth...one of the factors they must consider is aggregate demand....as it is related to a lot of other factors.

AirAsia has monopoly on the route between Kuala Lumpur and Sandakan, as Malaysian Airlines subsidiary airline Firefly is no longer a competition between the two destinations.

"Hewlett-Packard (HP), the world's largest information technology company and an icon of U.S. business, announced that it intends to exit the personal computer industry, including the rapidly expanding smartphone and tablet segments"

This article discusses inflation in Poland, and includes a lot of information from the nation's policy-makers and economists. This represents a case of anticipated inflation, because they are looking to combat rising prices, and evaluating which methods work, and which do not. The inflation has slowed down, and forecasts/estimates of the economy are looking better, due to increasingly manageable factors such as borrowing costs, interest rates, & price growth.

Brad Delong goes through the changing american economy and showing how the unemployment rate affects the real GDP.

This article discusses the impact of business franchises in the US economy. The output and production of the franchises has been increasing and maturing as the economy gets better. This contributes to the national output, and the capacity for that output known as aggregate supply.  "The franchise industry is a unique business sector and a vitally important contributor to the U.S. economy spanning some 300 lines of business, supporting nearly 18 million jobs, 825,000 establishments and providing for over $2.1 trillion in economic output,"

According to the article, there was in increase in the number of applicants filling for jobless benefits literally just last week! It has reached such a drastic level that it is the highest since two months ago.

This article discusses the imminent increase in unemployment as 100,000 public sector jobs are going to be cut. This seems to be "cyclical unemployment" as the job-cuts are due to a recession rather than permanent structural unemployment.

I found this article particularly interesting because it sheds light on motivations to quit the job search - lack of experience and education, as well as the reliance on (the now changing) federal Extended Benefits program.

This article discusses the UK's big issue of rising food prices as a result of inflation. It says that the UK hasn't had a let up in rising food prices for a long time, with prices on a constant rise and the considerable issue of those poorer customers who are struggling to afford these high prices.

India's booming GDP has been making it become a leading pioneer in economic development. However, while the demand side is soaring, the supply side is lagged behind. The production capacity is not enough to catch up with the expand in demand. However, while the trend could not slow down, India can neither create enough jobs nor fund an ambitious welfare state without faster economic growth.

This article talks about how beer prices are rising and like the concept in oligopoly, the rest of the firms follow and vice versa. "After South African Breweries bought Miller in 2002, it set out to take market share from Bud. Its bigger rival responded by slashing prices. The others were then forced to match."

This is a report on the World Bank's economic predictions for the financial situation of India in 2012-13. Economic growth will be low, and aggregate demand in mentioned in the context of fiscal consolidation and higher interest rates. These factors will decrease the AD, and we are especially aware that higher interest rates decrease investment and firm spending. Both of those activities will undoubtedly hinder India's national economic growth.