Group items tagged

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.

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 discusses how oil is becoming an inelastic good. Although people can arrange their lives to reduce their consumption of oil, quickly there comes a point where it is not possible to purchase a smaller amount of oil. Oil would definitely be considered an essential good.

The article evaluates elasticity in terms of oil supply and demand. it states that there are still untapped oil reserves which are more expensive to obtain and requires more time. As a result, oil is becoming less elastic. it talks of possible ways of reducing oil consumption such as public transport or getting a more fuel efficient vehicle which is unlikely as it is expensive. it also evaluates the the elasticity of supply. it talks off how suppliers need a minimum price/barrel in order to keep a balanced budget so suppliers are reluctant in increasing supply in order to reduced the prices. It provides data over a 10year time period which analyses the oil consumption and supply of oil in terms of different uses and change in costs. It also relates it to the recession stating that job loss has lead to less people commuting decreasing demand and increasing price

South Korea's terms of trades have increased for the 9th straight month. It has increased 2.7% since last year. Imports have declined faster than exports, which is why the terms of trade have increased.

Silvia Liu, UBS economist, stated that "deteriorating terms of trade had been the norm for Taiwan since 2000" but that "the nation's terms of trade... have seen a welcome reversal since late 2012."

Statistics New Zealand is reporting that the Terms of Trade of the country are the highest that they have been in 40 years. The improvement is due largely to the prices of dairy exports, which have risen sharply in recent months. The TOT of merchandise have risen by 7.5 percent, driving the them to their highest since 1973. At the same time, the unemployment rate has been steadily decreasing and surveys show that consumer and business confidence is increasing.

The article is talking about the strengthening housing recovery and robust auto sales contributed to moderate growth across the United States.Employers added only 88,000 jobs in March, a sharp slowdown from average gains of 220,000 in November through February. And consumers cut back on their spending at retail stores and restaurants last month, a sign that higher Social Security taxes have made more Americans cautious about spending.Debate was about Fed policymakers about when to rein in the bond-buying program, which began last fall.The Fed is expected to stick with plans to keep short-term interest rates at record lows at least until unemployment falls to 6.5 percent. And it will likely continue purchasing $85 billion a month in Treasury and mortgage bonds to lower long-term rates and encouraging more borrowing.

This article is a very recent article, published on the 7th of Feb, and is actually written by Peter Coy, one of the people introduced to us in the "Help Wanted" task. this article in short talks about how people are unemployed and argues the incentive for people to work with the increased unemployment benefits. Furthermore it brings up an interesting point of how they experimented and found out that anybody who has been unemployed for over 6months is likely not to find a job.

This article is interesting because it is quite important in terms of the impact it could have on the U.S. India is one of very few countries near the Middle East that is "stable" at the moment, and the U.S. as a country imports quite a bit of its oil from the Middle East. This is very closely related to what we have been studying this week, in that when something is scarce, or demand is high, prices elevate. Not only is it a good decision on India's part to raise prices because it will help their own national fiscal rating, but it will also take advantage of the fact that many countries will begin turning to them as a primary source of oil / diesel until the situations in the arab spring are resolved. India is doing a smart thing fiscally, while capitalizing on unrest in the arab spring and maximizing their profit during this time of high interest in the good that they have to offer.

This article shows the initial stage of something that will have a snowball effect of sorts in terms of the relation between supply and demand. We can see that the yearly economic losses as a result of this shortage amounted to $50bn, meaning that companies and fisheries will attempt to compensate for these losses by raising prices in the future. It is a great example of the relation between supply, demand, and pricing. 

this article is a good example of terms of trade, and i think it is an important one because it is talking about one of the more developing countries. This article is also rather interesting because there are several graphs included which could be used in an IA.

The article is talking about the economy of US right now. The aggregate demand is far lower than potential and government is cutting expenditure rapidly. However, the author thought that's not the right way of doing it. Although the money is short, government is still supposed to take necessary actions to induce recovery.

I found this article to be very interesting, because i think it is important to stay up to date with all the current events around the world in terms of politics and the economy etc... However for the past few years i had always thought of Brazil being a very big economic growth country seeing as it was part of the "B.R.I.C." s but in this article from the LA times they say that Brazil fell short of their projections and are looking for a way to regain their original growth rate.

The prices of electricity and power has risen a lot the past few months in Bulgaria. The price increase from last summer was about 14%. People are complaining but they have no choice but the pay the bills. Even though there are three electricity companies, they are specified for each region. These were considered "regional monopolies."

interesting article from the economist that summarizes a fairly recent "monopoly-like" event. This article is the perfect example of monopolies in the real world, according to the article a bulgarian electrical company had been raising the prices on their own terms because they had a monopoly on the market. This will also be done in the future in the case of water. I also read somewhere else that france and britain own together all of the worlds fresh water so we can see that eventually monopolies will spawn everywhere

Maltese is selling passports to members of other countries to have access to the EUs custom union. This may lead to trade creation and we would expect people to buy the passport for such a reason. However this could also lead to trade diversion and so people will have to factor in this with their decision to either join this monetary union.