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This article is essentially connected to aggregate demand (investments), but the following part can be perfectly analyzed with the this week's topic, aggregate supply: "The investment will also help U.K. energy security by reducing hydrocarbon imports at a time of higher international oil and gas prices. "Too often we've been seen as part of the problem, rather than part of the solution because production output had fallen. But we're stopping the decline and increasing output and that will have a more positive impact on the U.K. economy," Mr. Tholen told The Wall Street Journal. The higher investment in new projects and redevelopment of older fields will help bring another 500,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day onstream by 2017, taking output up to around 2 million barrels of oil and gas a day by 2017 or earlier. The higher investment in new projects and redevelopment of older fields will help bring another 500,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day onstream by 2017, taking output up to around 2 million barrels of oil and gas a day by 2017 or earlier." High international oil and gas prices mean higher average costs of production - change in the costs of raw materials, because oil and gas are widely used in most production processes. This is the reason for the shift of the SRAS inwards. However, higher price level means that the oil production and oil-transforming industries will increase their output. This is also great for the sake of price of imports, which are relatively too high, allowing domestic industries to decrease their average costs of production, meaning that SRAS will increase. So we should consider effects of both aspects and add them up in order to get a real picture (overall effect of current oil and gas prices). Investments are shifting the LRAS curve to the right, because there are likely to be improvements in the quality of the factors of production (technological advancements, discovery of new resources and re-establishing the past (oil) fields,

A lot of people have preached in the past about how we should destroy the social class system, about how the difference between wealthy and impoverished is an abomination and that the workers should rise up against their oppressive bosses and show them that the employers need their employees and not the other way around. However, most people probably haven't considered the economic angle to it. I hadn't, till I read this article, and I didn't more than the first few sentences to get me thinking. In a country where 10% can buy whatever they want and the other 90% can barely afford to feed their families, how do you get anything done. Those 90% probably do menial labor all day, creating goods and providing services for the 10% that act as their directors, and while this system works out fine for those 10%, your entire aggregate demand is still comprised of only the wants and needs of a tenth of your population. The fewer people you have with the ability to buy things, the smaller your macro-economic activity will be and, thus, your GDP. Now, while this kind of inequality is not fatal to a countries economic stability, per the previous reasons, it definitely puts it at a disadvantage to countries of equal wealth, resources, and population where demand is spread more evenly per capita.

The European Union and America are to open negotiations with the aim of creating the world's biggest free trade area worth €86bn (£75bn) within two years.

The article talks about the trade deficit in Europe. Prime minister Cameron wants to increase GDP by 0.5%. This would make a major difference to Europe's economy and could become a "game-changer". Cameron wants to accomplish this goal by breaking down trade barriers.

The European Union and America are to open negotiations with the aim of creating the world's biggest free trade area worth €86bn (£75bn) within two years. Breaking down the remaining trade barriers and securing a comprehensive deal will require hard work and bold decisions on both sides. EU and US economies account for nearly half of the world's economic output and a third of global trade, meaning that a transatlantic free-trade bloc would hold great sway over emerging economic superpowers China, Brazil and India.

This article describes negative externalities in the oil business. This is a global problem and definitely one of the most debated topics in environmental contexts. 'The climate changes are harming the earth, a lot of it is claimed to be caused by burning of fossil fuels. The Gulf of Mexico oil spill is a great example of the creation of a negative externality. The goal of getting more oil to fuel our lifestyle and make a profit for BP trumped any recognition of the massive economic and environmental damage that flowed from their blown out well. Is the cost of this mess going to turn up in the price of gasoline in the US? Probably not. Will it turn up in our tax bills? Probably yes.'

I found this article quite interesting as it explains negative externalities very well and gives examples to better understand it. It also goes on to state that one of negative externality that is very relevant to the article is the negative effects a product may have on the environment. It shows the reader that many gas companies are able to cut corners to make the product cheap and more desirable, but in the process it makes a mess of the environment. A popular example that they use to prove their point was the Gulf of Mexico Oil spill.

I bumped into this article as I was searching for negative externalities.The article describes negative externalities as general and in terms of oil spilling. As for that it also described the environmental issues and gaves examples from the Gulf of Mexico.

This article describes how oil has become less elastic through the past years. It also discusses the balance between the scarcity of oil and the demand being supplied and the quantity demand. Oil is still in the ground, and it has been supplied frequently the past ten years, but there is some economical decisions to make to set the standard for the future of oil.

The demand of oil has been increasing over the past year which is playing a role on the demand and supply balance. Because the demand in oil is increasing, the price of the oil would also increase. It takes longer for oil to be drilled from the ground which causes the oil to take longer time and a change to the response in price. "In economic terms, the oil supply is becoming less elastic as new oil supplies come increasingly from unconventional oil." The demand for oil reflects on how much we need oil in our everyday life. Individual people can reduce the amount of oil they use by using public transportation, if where you want to go is close by. This saves gas and oil because you do not need your car and the bus would carry a lot of people.

This article describes the change in oil prices on the population. The article states that the supply of oil is becomming less elastic and therefore there is a increase in price. The way to win oil becomes harder, because deeper holes have to be made to extract it from the earth. The article furthermore looks into changes from an economical point of view. It looks at examples of what can be changed and where changes have been made.

In this article it talks about the poor economy in Indonesia and the little income some of its citizens have. Due to so little income some people cannot buy proper food for their families resulting in malnutrition. This is a huge problem for the economy as it cannot get back on its feet if people do not spend money, but if there is no money to spend then what can one do?

This article tells us that because the prices of foods as increased, there is poverty and malnutrition is countries like Indonesia. Two different types of surveys was taken in Indonesia before 1996 and immediately after the economics crisis in 1999. The result was that some food nutrients like iron and calcium was more than usual during the crisis years and and food nutrient like Vit C was almost nothing.

The article talks about topic covered already in the title, with some interest to the growth of industry of southern euro-zone countries and exacerbation of German and French production. So obviously, here I can refer to PPF where resources (also human capital) are being used more efficiently; here is the movement inside existing frontier or perhaps even outward shift with improved quantities and qualities of goods (especially capital). Nevertheless, economists still fear the euro-zone might fall in recession again if there are two quarters of consecutive fall (if the economy contracted). The market clearing price of many durable goods can be determined only to some extent, due to the presence of outside disturbance (fiscal and banking crisis - therefore always introducing new policies and bail-out deals). Another thing associated with the previous sentence and the article is the price mechanism (interaction of demand and supply) which allocates resources. Under unstable circumstances which are currently taking place in euro-zone, incomes are plummeting (falling GDP per capita) except for some particular periods of time when the economy meets actual growth, meaning that there is less demand leading to an inverse effect for producers. Normally, producers wish to supply more at higher prices, especially if income of people soars so they buy more of that goods. Therefore, higher prices do not present an incentive for producers to produce more. All the producers want to increase their producer surplus; but the trend is clear - towards maximized community surplus, since producers depend on consumers' utility.

Basically, article is about Egypt's endeavor to find foreign investors for financing infrastructure projects and increasing its dwindling foreign currency reserves. Two of the most important terms derived from the week 2 are scarcity and opportunity cost. Turkish investments of $20 bn dollars and 500 mio euros from the EU (depending on Egypt securying the loan from IMF) in Egyptian infrastructure and foreign currency reserves deficit have an opportunity cost of spending that amount of money for other purposes. In this article, Egypt's foreign currency reserves and budget are scarce, so Egypt wants to get money to reduce unemployment rate via economic growth (4.5 %). Here we also have the factor of production - this is capital which comes from investments in physical capital (infrastructure) and in my opinion also human capital (reducing unemployment, improving education and healthcare perhaps ...). One thing that will be crucial for Egypt is the factor of entrepreneurship.

This article talks about Britain and its problematic exports with subsequent trade deficit problems. Interestingly enough, university courses fees are considered exports as well (money inflow). Britain is a country which is immensely integrated in the global trade flows, but they have a problem of trade deficit. "Part of the reason is the slowdown in continental Europe and America, which take 54% and 17% respectively of British exports. Another is the gradual depletion of North Sea oil and gas. A third is that Britain's strength is in services rather than in the raw materials, machine tools and handbags that emerging markets crave." This running trade deficit can amass huge problems and according to the article [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/10427783/Britain-to-have-worst-2014-trade-deficit-in-industrial-world-on-EU-forecasts.html] Britain will have to tackle it by using expenditure-reducing policies, expenditure-switching policies or supply-side policies.

This bring cross elasticity to a whole new level. Now that the elections in the US are done, it's sometimes hard to remember just how crazy campaigning can get. Candidates will grab at whatever statistics or new bits of knowledge that tell them how they're doing in the polls and or what they need to do to get ahead. This year, one of their focuses is...what kind of soda we drink? That's right, because cross elasticity is all about how two product correlate and the correlation between the president elect and your favorite soda has only like, what, 20, 30 degrees of separation? And you'd be surprised just how many other details of your life they'll look at to see where their target audience is. And these guys aren't the only ones trying to get an edge from such seemingly irrelevant information...

tax 'dodging' has been happening withing big companies in the UK due to the low economy progress. However, Cable says that the UK's tax claimers should be more strict about this as medium and small companies are paying their taxes and loosing profit to paying tax as their demand is low and therefore it cannot be only payed by the costumers but mostly by the companies themselves.

This is a great show of how the government needs money and so, not out of spite for any business but out of a need for funding, they are considering putting a tax on a local Enterprise Car Rental franchise. Obviously, the owners are not happy with this and say that price would hurt them and the customers, which would only consist of out-of-towners and not the locals who want the downtown renovated in the first place. The suggestion they made, which seems fair to me, is to put an even smaller percentage tax on all restaurant's goods and services. This way there is less harm done to any single producer, because restaurants as a whole have a much lower inelasticity than car rentals in a single town, and any given customer, of which there would be many more for a restaurant, would not feel they were losing as much money to this tax. Plus, a tax on restaurants would force those citizens that wanted their community to look nicer to pitch in a little.

You don't have to read much of this article to understand the gist of what the author is saying. As we all know, the business cycle fluctuates like a sin graph, except, at the same time, the real GDP steadily increases as more innovations are made the things can be done for cheaper. Paying attention to those ups and downs are important for governments because, when the downs occur, the government needs to put in more spending to cover for private industries and to try and stimulate the economy. However, what the US government has failed to do now-a-days is lower spending when the economy has built its way back up and above where it was before. This isn't because US citizens will start mass protests in the streets against a higher sales tax or less funding for the public education system, but because officials want to ignore the fundamental concept that, just like the economy went down before, so shall it in the future times.

This article has no direct correlation to supply side of an economy, as it mainly talks about Cypriot economy's bank crisis - credit crunch, predictions on GDP and changing patterns of banking (limitations to every-day withdrawals from ATMs). But the reason I chose this article is that they should aim at increasing the production side of an economy and so aggregate supply, shifting the LRAS curve to the right, and, in addition to that, structural reforms of the economy which overly depends on the banking. Particularly, Cyprus should undertake interventionist supply side policies, such as investments in infrastructure - roads, railways, harbours, airports and telecommunications all serve to lower production costs of all economic agents in a country. Or perhaps investments in technology and industrial policies which would increase the productive capacity of an economy.

Quarrying and aggregate supply firm Breedon believes profits will "significantly exceed expectations" after margins continued to improve in the final few weeks of last year. The company, which has its Scottish headquarters at Ethiebeaton in Angus, said market forecasts for the year look set to be significantly surpassed during a finish which escaped the disruptive influence of winter weather. We don't often think about how macro- and micro-economics can come together, but, for big companies, one is no more important than the other. Not only do you have to think about the margins and competition of your own market, but how your market is doing in general. It doesn't matter if your beating the other guys with a better price and more demand if that price is barely enough to cover what your supplying. On the flipside, your countries economy could be doing great and your factors of production most favorable but, if everyone's getting more benefit from those advantages than you are, it's only a matter of time before get too far a head. This article is a perfect example of where a European company has become enthusiastic about future profit predictions based not only on competition and margin but just on the welfare of the whole country in general

This article talks about the increase in demand of gold and the amount of price paid to get gold between 2010 and 2011. The demand of gold increased by 11% from the first quarter of 2010 to the first quarter of 2011 while the price increased by 40%. The increase in demand directly increases the supply of gold because if people want it, the rate of mining would increases so that gold is available at all time. Also, the amount of money spent on the gold would also increase because gold does not grow and one day gold would finish. The people who sell the gold would therefore put additional money on the price of the gold to get their own profit. This process would however continue because every time gold is found, the amount of gold left in the earth reduces. This allows the seller to always increase the price of the gold which means that there can never be a balance between the price and the demand. As the demand of gold increases, the price of gold decreases and the amount of gold left on earth decreases. Looking at the chart in the article, we can see that if the demand of gold increases the supply of gold would also increase but there was a slight decrease in the years 2007 to 2009. The article states that 'China's total annual gold demand topped 700 metric tons for the first time ever last year and is expected to keep rising over the next decade'.

For the past century or so, cigarettes have been an inelastic product. Due to their addictive properties, changes in the price have had a minimal effect on market demand, allowing tobacco companies to rake in boat loads of cash. In the early 1900s, big tobacco hit its peak in sales with the ability to advertise in color and through whole new mediums (newspaper, radio, TV, etc.) It was at this time that the American public and many other nations, although I don't which, started to recognize the dangers of smoking and the government begin creating restrictions. Though cigarrettes now have prices that fluctuate like gas, can't have ads on radio or television, and can't be sold to minors, consumer demand has still remained for them because of how powerful the addictive effects of nicotine are on the human brain. However, now there is an alternative to conventional smoking which replaces deadly secondhand smoke with clean water vapor. E-cigarettes are a trend that is sure to build demand and will cigarettes and cigars as elastic as a rubber band.

This article talks about the increase in price of oil and the increase in demand for oil. Analysts said that the price of oil would increase as time goes and suppliers are trying to meet the demands of people. The cost of one barrel of North Sea Brent has increased and made a new record in both euro and pounds. 'Many analysts say the broader trend is that prices will continue to rise because of risks to oil supplies'. Oil supplies were slowed down in the late 1970's and early 1980's because of the war between Iran and Iraq. During global consumption, oil would increase in price by about 1.3 million barrels a day said by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. However, supply will fall by about 310,000 barrels a day.

KARACHI: The trade potential between India and Pakistan is estimated to be around $20 billion against the current around $3bn, according to a working paper published by ICRIER. However, non-trade barriers (NTBs) and bureaucratic hurdles continue to impede growth in the bilateral trade. Here we see the restrictions of trade between India and Pakistan are causing problems and both countries want to work out an agreement to end such unnecessary barriers. Estimates say that $20 billlion in trade could be made between the two nations, more than 6 times the current amount. What's help up the removal of trade blockages is the need to agree on goods and service regulations, especially in textiles and banking.

This article describes the new tax on various medical wares such as replacement hips and defibrillators. The new excise tax is within the US, and the prediction is that it will raise $20 billion by 2019. The tax will affect smaller companies the most, and as much as 10% of small companies earnings per share may be paid in tax.

This article talks of the excise tax placed on replacement hips, implantable defibrillators and other FDA-approved wares. This was originally done to help fund the health laws expansion of insurance coverage. However, this tax is starting to hurt companies producing these goods as they are having to introduce cost cutting plans. "Stryker Corp. said in a statement Thursday that the $130 to $150 million in will owe next year could consume one-third of of its research and development budget." The tax is becoming a burden on companies as they must give the money to the government instead of their research funds.