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This article clearly shows the way price and taxes changes the demand on tobacco. It gives us a good description of that products. So after that article we can conclude that tobacco is not that price sensitive. And attempts of the government to reduce the number of consumers by increasing taxes did not really work. The conclusion of the article makes it really clear and easy to understand: "From the above discussion it is evident that the price of elasticity of value is an important measure of the changes that will occur when a tax is imposed on tobacco products, this value is important in that it can help in determining the appropriate tax value that should be imposed in order to reduce tobacco consumption. Taxes on the other hand should be fair and depending on the price elasticity value of tobacco products certain groups in the economy may be unfairly taxed whereby poor individuals in the economy may have a greater tax burden than higher income individuals."

This article gives an example of how the value of the currency may benefit the economy but also affect the economy in the short and long run. Venezuela has faced food shortages in the past years, so the government decided to devalue its currency, in order to ease this shortages that are progressively increasing. However, it is expected that this measure will increase inflation and eventually weaken the economy more than it already is. As bolivars are worth less, then less American dollars can be exchanged, affecting the economy and the shortages becauseless imports can be purchased, and some of these imports are really essential (e.g. cornmeal, chicken, sugar, etc), and as it is stated Venezuela is really dependant on imports. This is a perfect example of how a weak currency may be positive yet really negative at the same time.

This is a perfect example of how a currency's value can effect the economy. In this case the article states that the appreciation of the the pound or sterling could effect the hard earned growth of the economy due to there being an increase in exports when the stirling was at a low of $1.49 and now that the value of the stirling is rising it will cause the costs of importing countries to increase and therefore lead to less imports ultimatley leading to less led exports, in the case of Britain. "The higher pound is going to be an issue for some exporters," said Lee Hopley, chief economist at EEF, the manufacturers' organisation.

Samsung and Apple are the most popular companies producing highly desired products, but it seems that Samsung has took the lead. The cross elasticity value of each respective smartphone is high and positive, making them close substitutes for one another. With the high cross elasticity value, the sales for each product is sensitive to one another, making the market fierce.

This article is very interesting, Andy. I find it amazing how blackberry has almost completely dropped off the face of this planet! Its all about samsung and apple now. Since the Iphone 5 came out, I am guessing that the demand for Samsung phones has dropped!

It's a nice article about the consumption in India. The consumption do durable and non-durable goods in India is decreasing at the same time as the inflation is increasing. The value of money is not the same as it was before, so the consumer can't buy the same quantity of products and this reduce the output of the consumers. The interest rates are relatively high so the households prefer to save money at a higher interest rate than loan money from the bank. The decrease of the consumption is real problem for the industrial production, according to the author I think that lower interest rates and reform measures may be able to revive the consumption. Also in my opinion the government should think about new monetary policies to reduce the inflation because the inflation at 10.8% is a serious problem.

This article talks about how Indias consumption is straining. Since the inflation is so high at a level of 10.8% the money has begun to lose its value and therefore the consumption of durable and non-durable goods has decreased as we can see in the article by 8.2% and 1.4%. Causingg the production to decrease by 0.6% further more making the economy suffer more. Although in the article it states that low interest rates and reform measure might be able to increase the consumption of the economy and therefore decrease the already hight inflation rate.

Brazil's central bank announced a $60 billion program on Thursday aimed at halting the slide of the Brazilian real, making Brazil the latest emerging economy to seek to prop up its sagging currency. Similar moves have been made by central banks in Indonesia and Turkey. I chose this article because it covers one of the most important aspects of foreign currency, which is the depreciation of it. The consequences of having a weak currency could be severe, as the value decreases in comparison with other currencies, for example Euros, therefore it will take more Brazilian Reals to buy Euros (1 Euro= 2.98804259 Brazilian Reals). In this case this depreciation of the currency has led to some action from the Central Bank in order to boost up the value of the currency. This does not only affect Brazil, it also happens to other emergent economies such as India.

The International Monetary Fund is reviewing whether China's currency should still be considered "substantially undervalued," in light of its rapid rise in the past year. The review could take months, but if the IMF decides China's yuan is just "undervalued," that milder label could undercut U.S. efforts to challenge Beijing's currency policy in an election year.

Here we have an article about the current value of the Euro. It is a perfect example of a situation when a country (in this case a group of countries) would like to have a weaker currency. Why the euro zone wants a weak currency? Because the country within UE are trying to increase employment and a low exchange rate means more exports and more domestically produced goods. The bad side of the weak currency is an increase in inflation however the rate of inflation in Europe is very low and unemployment is very high, so the European central bank will try to balance both values.

This article talks about the recent shutdown of the US government and its effect on the American currency. The author of the article questions whether the US dollar will save its supremacy and will stay an international currency as it used to be. The government shutdown has seriously affected the value of the US dollar. Therefore, affecting everybody who has held their money in that currency, "China, the largest foreign owner of US treasury bonds, would feel much of the pain." This serves as an example of the factors that affect the currency and what are the consequences of it.

Thai Baht has depreciated 0.6 percent to 31.305 per dollar in the previous weeks. This was the baht's weakest week in a month. This has been due to the recent political protests against the amnesty bill. Foreigners have been cutting holdings of the nation's assets in fear of instability. This shows how a demand for a currency can decrease due several factors, including political unrests. As foreigners fear that the nation future in terms of its economic performance is not stable, the demand for Thai baht decreased. People are more reluctant to invest as they fear the political unrests could lead to a fall in value for the assets.

The British Pound and European Euro Exchange Rate has rallied to a one month high. The Euro to Pound exchange rate has dropped 0.7 percent on the day to 84.03 pence against its lowest since early October. The Euro has also lost ground to the American Dollar, which has done well recently. The Pound has also rallied to a 5 year high versus a much weaker South African Rand.

I found this article interesting as it shows two sides of the same coin. On the one side the pound where its estimated that the british economy has passed the recession and that the pound is going to rise in value, as it has rallied to a 1month high. On the other it states how the euro is still struggling against the dollar and the rand and that the central bank of eurpope is going to decrease the interest rates in order to spur the growth of the economy.

A negative externality is a cost incurred by a comapny or a party that did not agree to whatever action caused the extra cost. This article discusses the negative externalities that we incur when we use fossil fuels etc. The cost of production and damage caused by the use of fossil fuels is not included in the price we pay for 1 gallon of gasoline. This is the negative externality. A lot of the government involvement in the private sectors is actually aimed at reducing such negative exteranlities concerned with environmental pollution. Several companies also try to reduce externalities by introducing policies. For example, SAP AG has policies that its employees cannot buy cars that have carbon emissions beyond a certain limit.

Your article is very interesting. In the end the writer talks about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, two weeks ago or something like that I read that BP (they were the owners of the deepwater Horizon) will pay $4.5 billion in fines and other payments, the largest of its kind in US history. It is a lot of money but how can we estimate the value of million animal life's and the destruction of a big part of the Gulf of Mexico. The worst is that we could avoid it because the BP company saved money in the security systems in these Deepwater. I think that after this disaster the government should check all the deepwaters in order to reduce the possibilities of new cases.

A negative externality is an action of a product on consumers that imposes a negative side effect on a third party. Many negative externalities are related to the environmental consequences of production and use. for example the emmisions of green house gases. in this article it explains that when i company creates negative externalities neither the company nor the consumer pays for them so there the government has to step in to stop it by ptting regulations which increases the cost of the comapanies decreasing the negative externalities. but national companies complain because they say if regulations are set they cant compete with international firms like in china where there are no regulations for fuel negative externalities. for example a negative externality was the gulf of mexico oil spill where BP oil prices didnt rise to clean up the mess but the taxes did

As a cost-saving strategy, the Canadian government has cut off circulation for the Canadian penny. The nickel, the toonie and all the coins in between cost less than their face value to produce, yet the penny cost 6 cents more than it is worth. The federal government has calculated that terminating the production of the penny will save the government 11 million a year, allowing the federal government to spend on more pressing issues. However, this change only affects physical cash transactions and not purchases made with credit or debit cards.

Singapore's labour productivity- defined as average output per period of time- fell by 2.6 percent in 2012. This includes the manufacture sector, construction sector, and service sector. Only the information and communicators sector show a positive increase. Labour productivity has been decreasing continuously. In the fourth quater of last year, labour productivity fell by 2.5 percent, which is the fifth consecutive quater showing a decline. The numbers attribute to the slower economic growth in the past two years. The government has been trying to increase productivity in certain sectors that see the most potential increase. Not only that, nominal wages- wages not yet adjusted for inflation- shows a 2.3 percent increase. Unemployment rate is 2%. The article can be related to aggregate supply. If labour productivity sees a decrease, it is likely that aggregate supply falls as well since labour is one of the factor of production. If the country sees a fall in its output then this suggests a decrease in the growth of the economy or may even reflect in the country's GDP value. Not only that, an increase in wages will also increase firms' cost of production, and therefore contribute to a fall in aggregate supply. However, on a good note, its unemployment rate is at 2%, which is considered as quite a good rate. This may suggest a quite full working capacity of the economy.

This article indicates how economists measure demand and supply changes in prices or income. It also points out two extreme cases where the price will get the extreme values. They are Perfectly price elastic and Perfectly price inelastic. I think these are pretty interesting informations that we can go further in order to understand more about economics and its systems.

To try and beat the recession Iran have decided to just print more bank notes but by doing this they have just reduced the value of their currency and this increase in supply has not really done anything to help them.

The increase demand for iPhone 5 causes the Apple shares to close at almost $700. The firm receives two million pre-orders. Most iPhones will be delivered to stores later this week, but some orders may be delayed. An estimate of up to 50-60 million iPhones could be sold by the end of the year. However, the soaring demand causes concerns for the firm, as they may not be enough products to meet the consumers' demands. This could potentially delay the delivery of the products. I chose this article, because I think it relates a lot to the idea of scarcity. Though it may not be the biggest concern that could affect people's lives tremendously (not as much of a concern as problems like shortage of food or water), but it tells us that mass resources can become scarce very easily as a result of high demand for it. This can easily connect to the fundamental concept of economics. That is supply and demand. As a result of high demand for the products, the quantity that can be supplied by the market may not satisfy the consumers' demand. This is also an example of human 'wants.' Most people don't need an iPhone, but because of their 'wants,' they want to get one for themselves. You can see that human wants are infinite and that resources are finite that will eventually become scarce. This could potentially add value to the iPhone 5 if the products become scarce. Bibliography "Economics Basics: Supply and Demand." Investopedia - Educating the World about Finance. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Sept. 2012. .

NEW YORK-According to a new report published Friday by the United Nations Development Programme, Raider Nation has for the fifth straight year held the lowest position in the Human Development Index rankings. Taking into account such factors as health, education, and poverty, the report stated that the Human Development Index value of Raider Nation is 0.302, far below the global average and indeed at the very bottom of the 187 territories surveyed by the international organization.

This article talks about the relationship between the success of a country at the olympics and its Human Development Index. The countries that had a higher HDI won more medals than countries with low Human Development Index. Nevertheless, Ethiopia hasn't followed the trend. With HDI equal to 0.33, Ethiopia came 29th in the end of the games. It is not surprising that there is a relationship between HDI and number of medals. In developing countries sports are often not as popular as in developed countries. In the US students are encouraged to develop both educational and extra-curricular skills. While on the other hand, in lots of developing countries education is the only aspect that values.

Japan's trade deficit increases in October as increase in imports exceed increase in exports to the US and China. Over the past years, weakening yen has helped promote exports, but also increases the cost for imports. The increase in cost for imports, such as crude oil, helped widen trade deficit. This shows the relationship between the current account and the exchange rate. Japan is currently going through a balance trade of goods and services deficit. This results in downward pressure on the exchange rate of the currency as there is an increase in the supply of yen due to increase in imports.

This article focuses on the trade deficit of Japan. Japan's trade deficit nearly doubled in October, as growth in imports outpaced robust increases in exports to the U.S. and China, the Finance Ministry reported Wednesday. There are several factors that led to trade deficit. Firstly, the weakening of the yen over the past year had its significant impact on imports and exports. After meltdown of the nuclear power plant in 2011, Japan has faced loss of the generation capacity, therefore forcing Japan to import natural gas and oil. Overall, weakening in the Japanese yen over the past year has helped exports, but it has also increased the cost of imports.However, the exports are not as stable as they could be. Slowdown in economic growth of China has led to decrease in demand for Japanese exports.Overall the article talks about the details of the trade deficit of Japan.