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Caitlyn S

Ending the Oceans' 'Tragedy of the Commons' - 0 views

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    Oceans are one of the Commons, and as any other commons, it becomes overconsumed. Fishers all around the world keep devastating populations of the fish. To prevent overfishing, pollution and other human impacts, leading international marine scientists are proposing radical changes in the governance of the world's oceans. They carried an experiment in Chilie, and based on it, scientists state that they would be able to help to reverse "the tragedy of the commons". Problems in Chilie made people be open to new arrangements, scientists and fishers began working together to improve the situation with fish. By working together for some years, scientists became able to reveal about fish stocks and and the surrounding marine ecosystem. The new laws gave exclusive ocean territories to local 'artisanal' fishers, and excluded the big industrial fishing fleets, which had their own exclusive fishing zone. Scientists and small fishers then worked together to understand and rebuild the shattered fish stocks in their zone, leading to a shared vision and voluntary agreements on how to manage them.
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    This article talks about an experiment made in Chile. The use given to our oceans are no good, the article encourages huge changes in the governance of world's ocean to save them from pollution, over-fishing and other impacts made by the humans. All of these factors affect the marine ecosystem in a drastic way, now the levels of fish are decreasing as it says in the article "There was a general recognition that Chile's fish stocks were in trouble," says Professor Carl Folke. This has led to some fisheries to collapse leading the Chilean government for being responsible to take actions.This serves as an example of what's happening in the world today and for facin this problem he suggests that "You need a shared recognition that something has to be done, you need a good understanding of the marine ecosystem and how to regenerate it, you need a strong rapport between scientists and fishers, and you need a political moment when sweeping changes can be brought in." This problem needs to be faced responsibly otherwise there will be almost no fish stocks in the future, treating our commons well is important for us humans as this affects goods that are importand for living.
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    Leading international marine scientists are proposing radical changes in the governance of the world's oceans to save them from overfishing, pollution and other human impacts. "Marine ecosystems are in decline around the world. New transformational changes in governance are urgently required to cope with overfishing, pollution, global changes, and other drivers of degradation. Fishers and scientists had been working together on the problem for some years, trialling new co-operative models for fishery management, based on that science can reveal about the state of the fish stock and the surrounding marine ecosystem." The result is a national system of marine tenure that allocates user rights and responsibilities to collectives of fishers. The research indicates the key to managing fisheries depend on creating agreements that are both voluntary and flexible enough to cope with changes in the ocean environment, leading to fisheries that are both ecologically and socially sustainable.
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    I find this article particularl interesting because due to a political change in Chile, it has now effected the common resource tradegy of the Oceans. It has reduced the over fishing in Chile, which has let the fish start to regenerate. The research has found out that the key to managing the fisheries depends on making decisions flexible enough to cope with the changes that the ocean goes through.
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    I find this article particularl interesting because due to a political change in Chile, it has now effected the common resource tradegy of the Oceans. It has reduced the over fishing in Chile, which has let the fish start to regenerate. The research has found out that the key to managing the fisheries depends on making decisions flexible enough to cope with the changes that the ocean goes through.
Kyuhwan L

How to Know When to Tax and When to Spend - 1 views

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    I really found this article interesting because it explains the strategy of taxation that aligns with the business cycle. It explains that during times of economic hardship, a recession, then government should increase spending to first "soft blow for businesses and average working people," but to also stimulate the economy and move on to recover. This is reflected by the Keynesian theory of economy, where the government intervention is necessary to put the economy back on the right track. On the other hand, the government should relax expenditure and slightly increase tax to pay off deficit. This strategy is also supported by history, where the article gives examples of past U.S. presidents and government decisions during different times of the business cycle.
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    I agree with you that this article is very interesting. Like you said before it reflect the Keynesian school of economics. However, there is one problem with these theory, you don´t know if the government intervention are helping the economy or not. It is impossible to state which theory is better or if the economy work better with government intervention or without them. To investigate which one is better you would need two identic economies (this is impossible) in recession and intervene in one economy and in the other don´t make any intervention and expect that the market forces will solve the problem. "This strategy is also supported by history, where the article gives examples of past U.S. presidents and government decisions during different times of the business cycle." However the business cycle doesn´t affect all the economies in the same ways. For example the Spanish government is making a lot intervention but the economy is not recovering. On the other hand the biggest problem with the government interventions is that you can´t be sure in 100% about the effect of the intervention. You can study a lot the economy and prepar the intervention for months but you will know the result after the intervention, and the result may not be positive. The other problem with the government interventions is that many of them are not popular and many governments won´t risk losing popularity.
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    I agree with what Andrzej said about the fatc that we don't what are the best ways to help the economy, either making a goverment intervention or not. The problem is that none of this policies are 100% efficient and the example that Andrzej gives us about the Spanish government shows us how sometimes intervention doesnt recover the economy.
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    I agree with what Andrzej said about the fact that we don't what are the best ways to help the economy, either making a goverment intervention or not. The problem is that none of this policies are 100% efficient and the example that Andrzej gives us about the Spanish government shows us how sometimes intervention doesnt recover the economy.
Mariya L

Elite schools head east as Asia's education market booms - 0 views

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    This article disclose a description of the situation about education in Asia. There are a lot of kids who want to get an English-language education in countries like USA or UK, but they would like to stay closer to their families, because not everybody can easily leave home and go to foreign country alone. Because of the high demand for schools that give international-level-education in English, there are more and more schools like that. But still I think supply of that type of education and schools is miserable, and that might be one of the reasons why the prices are so high. For example, in Kazakhstan we have a British school - Haileybury. It has an IB program as well as Riverstone International School does, the one that I go to. But! Riverstone is situated in Idaho, USA, and charges about $15,000 for one year of High School. Haileybury - aroung $32,000. The reason why I mentioned the location of Riverstone is because of the huge difference between being in US and Kazakhstan. Staying here in America helps to study English and understand cultural difference, being back in Kazakhstan, helps to stick to your family, but one will never fully undestand that international tone and go beyond certain level of English. Plus the prices are very different even if we would add tickets, insurance, etc, to go to America is even cheaper and has more benefits and positive sides. So in the conclusion, I just want to say that these type of schools is demanded by a lot of Asian (and not only Asian) students, but can be afforded only by affluent middle classes. Thus I hope there would be more supply of that type of schools, which led to competition between schools and cheaper prices (or our education system will change and we will have one standard system everywhere).
Seyeon O

NHL lockout: The nuts and bolts of getting players back on the ice - 2 views

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    The NHL (national hockey league) is locked out and the whole season is in jeopardy as players and the owners are fighting over who gets the bigger pie of the 3.3 billion in revenue per year. The negative externality resulting from this is that the fans of NHL is left out and may not see a single game until the talks are resolved.
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    There was a similar case with NBA last year . This is the problem with the sport nowadays, the teams, the athletes and other players are trying to earn more and more money. The sportsmanship is disappearing, there no place for great athletes, for example Lance Armstrong, he was a great racing cyclist, an example of hard work, he had millions of funs and now we know that he was the best .... cheater. In Spain there is a problem now with the TV rights, the main clubs (Real Madrid y Barcelona) are earning the biggest part of television transmissions of the BBVA league (about 70 millions) and the rest of the clubs earn from 2 to 35 million (5-8 clubs are in state of bankruptcy). Nobody thinks that the fans are the most harmed (It is a negative externality).
Mariya L

Emerging markets' growth slowing, HSBC PMI report says - 2 views

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    In this article the author talks about the slow down in the economic growth of 16 leading emerging markets. Earlier compare to the Eurozone countries, UK and the US, the economic growth of those 16 countries was far higher. After this short period of stagnation, the world economists ask whether the growth, which depends a lot on exports, will increase or not. It weather will "wobble along, buffeted by worries in the developed world"; or temporary stop and then "bring back the days of the strong growth". Right now, the world economy is in the state of the recovery, in the past it went through the recession that started in 2008 and the trough. The fall in indicators mostly stopped, and the economic health very slowly continues to recover from the past.
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    "The index covers 16 leading emerging markets, including India, Brazil and China, which all saw their rate of growth fall. Rates of economic growth in these countries have been far higher than in developed nations, often coming in at about 10% a year." I think that the author is trying to say that Brazil in China have the highest rates of economic growth and not UK and the US. The exports in these two countries are very important; China is the country which more products export in the world. Their economic growth is slowing because of the recession in the other counties where the consumption has decrease and the people try to save money so the imports of products from China is not so high as it would be in a period of economic growth in all the world. I think that only in few countries the economy started to recover from the recession, in most of the economies are in stagnation. This suggest us the probably the worst part of the recession is behind us and the economies will start to recover, however these fluctuations in economic activity do not follow a mechanical or predictable periodic pattern so we can´t be sure when the recovery will start.
Jean Eric

It's the Aggregate Demand, Stupid - 0 views

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    Currently the Obama administration is talking about finding new ways to create jobs and stimulate growth. However, it has proved to be unsuccessful, as the only policy that will really help is an increase in aggregate demand. The article explains that aggregate demand simply means spending: "spending by households, businesses and governments for consumption goods and services or investments in structures, machinery and equipment." At the moment, businesses should not to invest because there is lack of consumer demand. The federal government could increase aggregate spending by directly employing workers or undertaking public works projects yet this proves to be difficult. The author explains that the most important thing is for policy makers to stop focusing on debt and attempt instead to raise aggregate demand.
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    THis article talks about how the recession has effected America and what America really needs is an increase in aggregate demand. That is the increase in consumption, investments, exports etc. They say that a direct solution to increase aggregate demand would be an increase in aggregate spending by employing citizens in public projects controlled by the government and if that isnt enough then its all up to the citizens. It then talks about how consumer confidence significantly effects spending. that is if house holds feel that they are rich, then they dont feel the need to save and as a result of that they spend the money they were going to spend and vice versa.
Saskia vK

Europe and US pledge to create world's biggest trading bloc - 2 views

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    This is an excellent article from The Telegraph that sheds some light on the possible creation of the world's largest trading bloc. This bloc would include the removal of trade barriers between the U.S., Great Britain, and all of the E.U., and would be of incredible importance and power given that this new trade relationship could strengthen all nations involved in order to rival the growth of nations like China and India. 
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    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.
Mariya L

The Importance of Income Elasticity in Decision Making - 0 views

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    This article presents a very good explanation what is income elasticity and how it may affect producers choices and sales. The article includes four main parts: types of products, types of customers, product life cycle and determing income elasticity. In the section "Types of products" author points how small businessses and luxury items' producers are affected by people's income, and how can they improve sales. Second section talks about targeting of the customers, for example some companies may focus on people with high-income, so consumers are not sensitive to the changes in price. Product Life Cycle section talks about aging of the product and appearing of the substitutes, and the ways of overcoming that problems, attracting consumers. And the last part of an article describes how to determine an income elasticity of demand. It is a good article that helps to increase understanding.
Caitlyn S

Price Controls Cause Chaos in Ethiopian Markets - 0 views

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    Price controls on many staple food items ordered by Ethiopia's government early this month have reduced grocery bills for many low-income families. But now shopkeepers are upset and some basic items are disappearing from store shelves. Economists are concerned about the long-term effect of the government's price-fixing strategy. The consumers responded by going to local retail shops on the first day of the new low prices to stock up on much needed basic good. how ever chaos has broken out between shop keepers and consumers as the shelves aare being cleaned of basic and even normal goods. The shopkeepers responded complaining that the weeks of low prices were unbaraible because of consumers being unhappy of even the lowest prices. The Ethiopian government defended it self that the price caps were needed to help the economic crises but 4 independant economist say that it would help the economy recover, but the government ignored them saying it would. Critcs warn that it will only help in the short term and only worsen the economy in the long term.
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    Price controls on many staple food items ordered by Ethiopia's government early this month have reduced grocery bills for many low-income families. However, shopkeepers are now upset and many basic items are disappearing from store shelves. Economists are concerned about the long-term effect of the government's price-fixing strategy as the price controls have triggered chaos and tension in the local marketplace. 'Ceiling price have been put on items such as meat, bread, rice, sugar, powdered milk and cooking oil due to merchants taking advantage of global price hikes. The consumers have greatly benefitted yet storekeepers are unhappy, some products they bought before the price controls must now be sold below cost. In a free market economy, the preferred way of doing this is to increase the supply and increase competition. The Ethiopian government has been heavily criticized. Despite the upheaval, government officials are hoping their experiment in price-fixing will help to curb inflation. Recently released figures show the inflation rate jumped from 10.2 percent in November to 14.5 percent last month.
Tisha D

Euro Crisis - 2 views

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    This article is about the ongoing European Economic Crisis. A decrease in number of jobs and increase in population has led to higher rates of unemployment than ever before. Due to the high unemployment, lesser people are paying taxes as well. So the tax revenues for the country is falling too. Hence they cannot extricate themselves from the debt either. Two of the worst affected countries are Spain and Greece. However countries like Germany and Austria were not affected that badly. Initially in Germany retails sales went down, but since unemployment didn't increase tax revenue wasn't affected. For example the state of Baden- Württemberg pays 49% of the income for taxes.
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    Like you said one of the most affected countries is Spain where the situation is really bad and the unemployment is really high. There are a lot of things that contributed to this situation, the people spend more than gain, the banks didn´t work properly, the government didn´t intervened… The reasons that many people don´t pay the taxes is because they don´t have nothing and the inequality in Spain is a big problem now. The standards of live of a lot of persons are bad; there are families that live on the grandfather's pension. The people are angry and blame for everything the government.
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    This article talks about how the euro crisis is effecting the unemployment level severly. It states that due to the record new high level of unemployment since 1975 at 11.6%, at a rate of 11.7% now, less people are paying there taxes. This causes the governmnet to have less of a budget nad therefore it cant subsidize as many companies as it originally wanted to further increasing the crisis. What the governmnet needs to do in this case in lower the taxes so a larger amount of people can afford it and therefore more people would pay tax increasing the governments budget and therefore increasing subsidies
Andrzej Z

India's consumption story is slowing - 2 views

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    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.
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    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.
Seyeon O

Dying Coral Reef - 1 views

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    The coral reefs in Sweden is an important common resource where it provides habitat for many marine life and maintains biodiversity. However increased human activities such as trawling and eutrophication has caused the number of coral reef sites from 3 to 1 and the last remaining site is in bad condition. Coral reefs, once damaged causes many of the species of marine life to disappear and extremely difficult and time staking effort is required to restore. This is an example of "tragedy of commons" and adequate measures must be made to prevent further tragedy from happening.
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    This article talks about the decline in coral reefs due to a virus affecting their growth. This is a huge problem for the oceans because coral reefs support around and estimated 75% of all sea life and with out them, well we wouldnt have any fish to catch. So the survival of corals in our seas is absolutely essential.
JungHsuan L

Medical device excise tax - 0 views

shared by JungHsuan L on 20 Nov 12 - No Cached
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    Medical devices encompass an extremely wide range of products, such as surgical gloves, dental instruments, wheelchairs, coronary stents, artificial knees and hips, defibrillators, cardiac pacemakers, irradiation equipment, and advanced imaging technology. The U.S. medical device industry has estimated total sales of $106 billion to $116 billion a year. A few large firms account for the lion's share of this revenue. For example, Johnson and Johnson's worldwide sales of medical devices and diagnostics totaled $26 billion in 2011; the firm had total sales (on both medical devices and other products) of $65 billion, on which it earned profits of nearly $10 billion. Medtronic had $16 billion in sales and profits of $3 billion in its 2011 fiscal year. One trade group has estimated that the ten largest medical device makers will account for 86 percent of the sales of covered medical devices and hence pay 86 percent of the receipts from the excise tax.
Jean Eric

Oil Spills, global warming and negative externalities - 3 views

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    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.
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    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.
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    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.
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    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
Benjamin D

Africa's hopeful economies The sun shines bright - 0 views

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    This article talks about the economic growth that is occuring in many African countries, this is probably the region with the highest growth of the world. In the past and still now Africa has been the region with the highest inequalities and the one with the highest poverty rates, however, due to its productivity more and more people are becoming weathier and even a middle class is starting to emerge. Furthermore, economic growth doesn't necessarily mean that everyone is being benefitted, the majority of this continent lives below poverty levels, and live under disease and hunger. The Economist had labelled Africa "the hopeless continent" a decade ago, a profound change has taken hold. Labour productivity has been rising. It is now growing by, on average, 2.7% a year. Trade between Africa and the rest of the world has increased by 200% since 2000. Inflation dropped from 22% in the 1990s to 8% in the past decade.
Matthew R

Decades of oilsands air and water pollution 'clearly evident,' say scientists Read mor... - 3 views

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    Scientists in Alberta have found evidence that oilsand operations have been sending toxins into the atmosphere for decades. Also, levels of toxins in Namur Lake have tripled since 1960. Critics have raised serious concern over the rising pollution in our atmosphere and lakes. This relates to our lesson for the week because the atmospher and lakes are common access resources. They are open to the common. These resources are becoming depleted because of the overuse of these resources.
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    It is a very interesting article because it is a very recent theme. In the last week I read that the soot is three times more polluting than the scientist though. It is a very good example of negative externality of production. The toxins in the atmosphere are negative externalities for third parties. The company will produce at q1 concerned in their own cost. The MSC is higher than the MPC and there is a welfare lost from Q1 to the equilibrium point. I think that commons must be protected and to achieve it the government must intervene to save the atmosphere and the lakes because it is our planet and we must save it.
Benjamin D

WTO warns of trade slowdown due to protectionism - 2 views

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    Although this article focuses on protectionism, in my opinion trade barriers come along. The WTO has lately noticed of an economic and trade slowdown because ofprotectionism, the global trade growth is estimated to decline from 5% to 4.5% next year which is alarming due to the fact the world's economy needs to recover. The article also talks about how trade protectionism is becoming more difficult to fight because it is difficult to fight because of the complexity and because its coming in different ways that we are not used to (for example:tariffs and export subsidies), and more and more regulations are being imposed each day.
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    As my fellow peer said this article is a perfect example of why protection policies shouldnt be used in some cases. The article states that due to trade protectionism policies the estimated anual growth will decrease from 5% do 4.5%! What should really happen is that countries should decrease their protectionism policies, let the economy gain a bit a stamina,in order to recover from the recesion, and only then increase protectionism once the economy has recovered and is growing.
Jean Eric

Rio to focus on import substitution industry - 1 views

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    I have chosen this article because it is really related to our current topic of economic development. It is an article about how the change in the Indonesian law will allow the government to impose import substitution and thus reduce the reliance of the Indonesian economy on the imports from foreign countries. This may be very positive for the Indonesian economy because it will force domestic producers to be more efficient and employ more factors of production, what will probably lead to economic growth and decrease in unemployment.
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    With the implementation of the newly approved Industrial Law, Indonesia will have a strong legal base to promote import substitution as well as downstream industries in efforts to reduce the manufacturing sector's heavy reliance on imports of components and machinery. With the new industrial law the manufacturing sector was expected to grow by up to 6.8 percent and create 400,000 new jobs in 2014. The import substitution will have a profound effect and help the economy grow and develop.
Jean Eric

Tuna: The Hidden Cost of the World's Priciest Fish - 0 views

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    The tuna stocks around the world are being fish out an alarming rate, to fast for the tuna to reproduce and keep there numbers constant. This constant battle between the supply of the fish and the demand for them in Japan (75% of the tuna market) is devastating the tuna populations. The U.E. and other organzations have been trying to put quatos on the catcing of tuna but are being ignored by the fisheries and the tuna stocks are being continually fished. In a matter of years there will be no tuna to fish. As you can see this a problem of supply(where there aren't enought tuna) and demand(which is greater than the supply).
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    This article describes how the tuna stocks, around the world, are being fished out at an alarming rate. Too fast for them to recover naturally. Demand for tuna far exceeds the supply (what the sea can produce) without disturbing the natural order. So the WWF & ISSF have tried putting quotas but no one is obiding and the overall catch of tuna each year is increasing...
Caitlyn S

Shoppers of all incomes are changing habits - 0 views

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    According to this article, the recession has induced Americans to reevaluate their spending and adopt cost-saving strategies such as using coupons or taking advantage of sales. Many people have reduced the amount of money they spend, over the last couple of years, especially those who have incomes of under $45,000. "The consumer mindset has changed (…) they've become used to being careful about what they buy and where they buy it." However, while price is a major factor, consumers said that quality was still a top priority. The article indicates that there are certain items that consumers will not go without: The first item on the list was animal protein: 10 percent [of consumers] said they refuse to give up meat, poultry, fish and seafood. Also, 8 percent saying they would not forgo alcohol, tobacco; coffee, tea; milk, juice, or household and laundry supplies. As expected, "38 percent say they're purchasing less clothing and 20 percent said they're buying less expensive brands." Therefore, items such as proteins, alcohol, tobacco, coffee, tea, milk, juice, and household supplies are relatively inelastic goods with regard to income. On the other hand, clothing is an inelastic good during this recession.
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