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The article quantifies the external costs of smoking in addition to the private costs imposed upon the smoker. It cites a cost of $150 for cleaning costs (for cars dirtied by ash), with up to $1000 for high-end models. Cleaning a house plagued by smoke is estimated to cost up to $2000. This does not include the costs associated with healthcare payments that need to be paid to employees as part of coverage plans. Furthermore, it is estimated that $96.7 billion is spent on private and public healthcare pertaining to smoker-related illnesses. These negative externalities are not accounted for in the price of a pack of cigarettes (the article states a price of $4-$5 for a single pack) and thus results in an allocative inefficiency - smoking is grossly overconsumed by society.

This is a great article. It covers no only the firsthand costs of smoking, but also the long term effects on costs.

South Africa has been, for quite a while now, experiencing significant market failure caused by state-owned enterprises (SOEs) falling over their feet to emulate private sector models (at the same time suffering from maladministration, waste, subversion of corporate governance, power struggles and managers caring more for their glamorous images and fringe benefits than service to community). The pressure for SOEs to be genuine development agents hardly came to be, as efforts in this direction were never really enforced. The New Growth Plan (NGP) implicitly and explicitly acknowledges these failures and is in haste to fill the gap by seeking to drive growth in jobs via the creation of new sectors as well as lifting the energy of old, sluggish and declining sectors and industries. It's a race against time. More about this NGP is discussed in the article.

The article discusses the reason why India's private sector employment is relatively low given the high economic development and prosperity. Wages are said to not have risen to levels suggested by per capita income figures and this has been attributed to the plethora of cumbersome laws and regulations that govern Indian labour markets. Due to the inflexibility, private sector employers respond by not hiring too many workers in the first place due to fear of disputes. At least 45 laws exist at the national level, and up to 4 times as many at the state level. The author cites a change in government's attitudes to labour market as the remedy to India's unemployment.

This article discusses how, in some circumstances, fiscal policy has no knock-on effect onto private spending. This is the case when government debt is high (over 60 per cent of GDP) and when exchange rates are flexible.

The UK started reducing government expenditure, easing its fiscal policy to compensate for debt: There are a couple of notable points raised by the BRC in the Outlook: one is their view of economic growth and the other is the number of job losses caused by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne's public spending cuts. The BRC state that they believe the UK economy will continue to recover but at a slower pace than after the recessions of the 1970s, 80s and 90s. They put this "sluggish outlook" down to "the gradual normalisation of credit conditions, efforts to reduce private sector indebtedness and the impact of the Government's fiscal consolidation."

This article talks about the process -that has just began- of privatization of the spanish airport controller, in order to reduce deficit and increase supply; a process that is meeting high opposition among the most traditionalist politicians together with most of the employees of AENA, who until now, where public workers, and had some advantages, less working hours, less possibilities of getting fired; which are now losing.

This article is a report on the state of burial prices in Hong Kong greatly affected by the lack of supply of room for the dead. For private burials, the costs can go well beyond $25,000!

this article shows the situation in today's Hong-Kong where supply curve has moved to the left because of an increase in prices and demand curve moved to the right, because demand has increased this is caused by a lack of room( supply), so a new equilibrium is now formed which i think will soon change because of a resource being scares which will increase price even higher

this article shows the situation in today's Hong-Kong where supply curve has moved to the left because of an increase in prices and demand curve moved to the right, because demand has increased this is caused by a lack of room( supply), so a new equilibrium is now formed which i think will soon change because of a resource being scares which will increase price even higher.

The Recovery Act of 2009 gave 787 billion dollars for economic stimulus, this action by the government is a prime example of Keynesian economic theory as the government is bolstering economic growth and development while simultaneously reducing unemployment. It is recorded that 1.5 million private sector jobs have been saved and there has been six straight quarters of economic growth.