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The Japanese automobile maker Nissan announced a couple years ago its plans for a new completely electric car, the Nissan Leaf. However, sales in the United States have been fairly low, only selling 10,000 of the cars in 2012. The reason for the small amount of sales is believed to be caused by its high price, due to an expensive and large battery back in the car, and the fact that the car has a small 80 mile range. In hopes to increase sales, the company is beginning to start production here in the United States. Producing the product closer to where it will be purchased will reduce production costs for the company, allowing it to decrease the price of the car and leading, hopefully, to an increase in demand.

Nissan is opening up a production plant in the U.S. to produce their car, the Leaf electric car. This is the first production plant. The short term is the building of the plant, which should decrease unit costs because they will no longer need to transport the cars to the U.S. The long term is the plan to create new technology to improve the car (battery, charging, etc.) and hopefully increase the demand, which could reduce unit costs even further. 

This article talks about the organic milk shortages, that farmers can't buy enough food to feed their caws because the price for their food has been increased, as a result they give less nutrition to their caws and get less milk. But demand for organic milk is still high and in the article they will some suggestions how to solve that problem.

The demand for organic milk is greater than supply because the production cost of creating organic milk is greater than the revenue. The reason for the shortage is that the cost of organic grain and hay has gone up but the price farmers receive for milk has not. As a result farmers buy less grain and hay which lowers the production of milk. The low supply of organic milk than in turn increases the overall price. The solution for this issue would be to increase the price of income the farmers would receive for their milk. If the solution were applied, the farmers would pay more for organic grain and more milk would be produced and consumers would be satisfied.

This article discusses the new Chevy volt hybrid and debates it's future. it can be said that the company, in regards to this car, is going to start benefiting from economies of scale as in the article it states that the production cost will become cheaper however it is obvious that the company is not producing at the minimum efficient scale as allegedly for each volt it sells, the company loses $49,000

Currently, the Chevy Volt costs $89,000 per car to produce. However, GM is selling the car at about $40,000, offering even more discounts in certain places to reel in customers. GM argues that in the long run, the production cost will decrease and begin to bring in profit.

This article is an excellent example of the concept of long term vs. short term decision making by a company. Right now, GM is losing massive amounts of money whenever they make and sell another Chevy Volt, but they hope the investment will pay off in the long run.

This article is about how consumers are not willing to buy 3-D TVs because of its high cost. The cost of the TVs are not the only problem; the cable package, the 3-D Blu-ray player, the DVDs, and even the cost of the glasses all add up together.

This article discusses the relationship between the cost of living and quality of life. Mainly, whether a high cost of living offsets the happiness that results from a higher standard of living. The United Arab Emirates was recently ranked among the top 30 happiest countries in the world. It may be a very expensive country to live in however compared to others in the region like Oman, yet the country provides excellent educational opportunities and healthcare. It is important when considering the standard of living to also think about the cost of living in an area, because while one country may provide its residents with a happier lifestyle it may come with a much larger price.

The production costs of the Cirque have been determined to be simply too high making the company unprofitable. They then decided to lay off 400 employees in order to cover costs.

The article talks about positive externalities in relation to hybrid cars. The marginal private cost is higher than the marginal social cost therefore there is an excess demand for P1 price. it then talks about how the government wants to subsidize hybrid cars that are more eco friendly and gas efficient but they aren't that subsidized as other projects are more important such as health care

Education is both a public good and a private good. A public good is defined by two characteristics: non-excludability and non-rivalry. Public goods are for everyone and there is no competition for the good. Most people believe that a higher education is a pure public good but it is not. Society benefits when people get a higher. education. Statistically people with a college education tend to be more active citizens and their volunteering.with their volunteering and other activities benefiting those around them. Also statistics have shown that more new products and services are available to society because of the contributions of college graduates. These are the positive externalities of education. The negative aspect of education is  that even though the benefits of higher education are shared the costs for higher education are not shared. A higher education benefits society but the cost of a higher education proves a problem for those that want a higher education. Students themselves do reap some benefits: they are likely to be better off- both financially and otherwise-than their compatriots who do not go to college. However, students do not benefit as much as society. Therefore education is both a private and a public good.

This article is talking about how the result of the presidential election effect the health care. Mitt Romney will probably end the health care whereas Obama will absolutely keep it. Health care is a public good, it has positive externality and should be encouraged. However, the cost of providing health care is very high. According to the article, 'Affordable Care Act won't be fully in place until 2014'. Two candidates has different solutions. Obama choose to keep it, and Romney choose to end it due to the high cost. From this article we can see the limitation of government intervention of economy, and how different parties and people have different opinions.

This article is very interesting in that it shows how a massive company like Air France is making decisions to cut spending drastically in order to reduce their production cost. On a side note, I found this article thanks to my french class, so if any of you are french / speak the language and would like a more interesting view on the topic, check out this link. http://www.france2.fr/jt/20h/

The article is about the giant West German Daimler- Benz group which tries to decrease the cost of production to avoid the future economic breakdown the cost of technology which was the main concept for Daimler and the number of workers decreased according to the such find of economic collapse of the company.

This article discusses the duopoly in the telecommunication industry here in the UAE, Etisalat and Du. the article clearly points out the fact that both companies over charge, stating that internet here costs 50% more, when compared to internet pricing in the UK. This market was a monopoly, dominated by Etisalat but the entering of DU is said to be rapid and thus they are suffering from some diseconomies of scale. The way the article concluded was quite interesting as it stated that the Abu Dhabi government subsidized it's airline industry so that people could visit and enjoy lower rates, and then says it should keep the broadband cost more competitive so that it can attract the companies of tomorrow

Economies of scale is the increase in efficiency as a company gets bigger. In this case the economy of scale is the creation of larger shipping containers. The great thing about scales of economy is that it has lowered the production cost of products such as the creation of t- shirts for some companies. However as companies have more products to they needed bigger containers to transport their goods. As the supple of t- shirts increases the size of the ship that transports the goods needs to increase in size as well. Maersk lines , the world's biggest shipping container company has decided to increase the size of his ships. The company plans to build 20 ships with a capacity of carrying 18,000 twenty-foot equal units. The company does this out of efficeny in transportation and gas cost. The larger the ship the more it can carry and the less times the ship will have to travel back and forth to transport goods. The increase in ship size than is an example of the economies of scale when bigger = more efficient.

This article is very fascinating, it is about miners protesting for larger wages and from this, the effect of their actions which have now made the cost for platinum higher.

This article is an article raising awareness of negative externalities, however, it does have one example going on in Singapore that exemplifies negative externalities. They plan tear down a woodland to build an international school. The negative externality is due to tearing down trees. The example the writer gives is that the residents around the woodland will have to pay more money for A.C because of the rising temperatures due to less trees around them. 

This article from the Huffington Post explains why Fedex, the popular express mail company, is cutting jobs in the united states and over seas to save a more money as 2012 was not a good year for fedex. They expect to save 300 million in fuel alone from the job shredding. Very interesting article as it shows why companies would cut jobs to save more money, basically a way of thinking put in place by President Reagan long ago.

The article talks about how chipotle's production cost of meat has risen therefore forced to increase menu prices.

This article is about the deficit that North Canton is facing because their variable costs are rising and there marginal revenue is decreasing. In the short run, they are able to continue production because they have enough revenue left over from last year but in the long run, they risk not having enough revenue to pay off the deficit.

This article talked about how an Iceland company Carbon Recycling International ehf, saw the rising demand and planned to increase output. It made the firm more efficient because recycling carbon reduced cost and saved resources. It also reflected the situation of perfect competition. Oil companies are price takers, they can't control the price of oil. And the product are homogeneous: oil form different company don't have significant quality difference.