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The strong dollar and increasing competition present a barrier for McDonald's effort to increase its profit. McDonald's used to have inelastic demand, since it did not have much competition and changes in price would not affect total revenue. If they wanted to increase total revenue, they just raised the prices. However, nowadays, as competition takes place, their demand is becoming more and more elastic, because of the more substitutes offered by competition.

The article discusses how, in the past, the US government's response to foreign imports competing with the domestic steel industry has been to create trade barriers. However, as David Phelps, president of American Institute for International Steel, explains in the article, this practice takes away from the competition that should exist within a market, such as when two domestic steel industries are competing. On the other hand, what differentiates domestic competition and international competition is that US will lose output if it can't support its domestic industries.

This article relates to demand, because it highlights one of the biggest advertisement opportunities for the monopolistic competition market that is the automobile industry. This market has monopolistic competition because the products are not identical, and the makers have the ability to influence prices. It is easy for firms to enter the market, and there are a lot of car-makers out there. Therefore, advertisement and recognition is key. This is a great example of advertisement.

Everybody has an opinion and I for one understand this debt crisis very little. It's not that I don't think it's important, it's that I'm very vague on who exactly we owe money to, what the current plan is to pay it off, and why everyone else is up in arms about this. The econ modules in the textbook section this week said that, sometimes, the government *wants* the budget to be at a deficit. I still don't understand why but, my guess is, the US's current situation is not a good demonstration.

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

Because of the decreased amount of work opportunities the unemployment rates go higher. That is bad enough for any country, and even worse for a country like China who are dependent on their production and export. The scarcity of work opportunities get bigger, and creates competition on the market. This will contribute to a poorer population since the competition gets higher and people then work for less money.

This article talks about how the FCA plans to make the competition a little more intense. By doing this, they plan to have companies sell more of the products in demand and less of the ones that are less likely to sell, thus creating more profit for a company. This causes other companies to try to challenge them, growing the market/economy. The FCA is also not allowing companies to hurt a person financial, trying to grow the market.

A policy for the price control of certain medicines was approved by India's cabinet this week. The goal is to make medicine more affordable than it already is to the poor (producers argue that there is already sufficient competition in the market to keep prices low).

This article talks about how the Indian government is imposing price control on certain drugs to. The government claims that its is doing this to make it more affordable for the poor. They say this will also help patients become aware of less costly alternatives to some drugs.

As the article states: "The world's largest economies took a step toward common global guidelines for exchange-rate policies with a pledge Saturday to refrain from targeting their currency policies to gain a competitive trading advantage." This is well-involved in this week's topic, which is aggregate demand. Particularly, this article refers to its component, net exports (export revenue minus import expenditure, or simply X-M) and then its subsidiary component, changes in exchange rates. If a country's exchange rate becomes stronger, then this makes the country's exports more expensive to foreigners and vice versa. Manipulating with exchange rates can bring a certain country substantial trading advantage and this is what G-20 wants to overcome and allow free-trade market as it should be.

This article demonstrates demand well, simply because it shows how the demand for a certain product is growing and companies in Russia are racing to have the better product on the market. "Cost, reliability, service contracts, after-sales support, and customer relationships will be key competitive factors," concluded Tohani.

Here we have an uncanny case of a company that has little to no competition, yet its market share is actually dropping. Sony has been constantly ignoring the price elasticity of it products so much so that they refuse to recognize their fall from favor in the market war. "Our initial expectation is that sales should double at a minimum," Jack Tretton, chief executive of Sony Computer Entertainment America, said in an interview [at the time]. "We've gotten our production issues behind us on the PlayStation 3, reaching a position to pass on the savings to consumers, and our attitude is the sooner the better." As a result Sony has kept its prices constant.

The U.S. trade deficit widened slightly in August as exports slipped, suggesting trade will probably not be much of a boost to growth in the third quarter. The import growth is weak and consistent with sluggish domestic demand. So in fact this article is about the goods and services account under the current account. The possible reasons for such trade deficit may be a decrease of foreign demand for US exports, decreased domestic interest rates and speculators' anticipations for the US dollar to rise, which means that there will be a tendency for the price of US dollar to appreciate. This leads to even less competitive exports. If I look at this situation from another perspective, more currency flowed out for imports than it flowed in for exports, creating the debit item and exacerbating the current account.