Group items tagged

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 shows how the environment can influence the aggregate supply in the economy. The article states that heat stress from global warming may be having an impact on outdoor work productivity in hot regions like northern Australia, Southeast Asia and the southern US. And the calculation tells us thatin temperate regions, people work continuously, but in the hottest places, the working day is split between 80% work and 20% rest. Therefore, people and government should pay attention to the environment problems nowadays because it will lead to a change in nation's GDP. And economists also should consider environment as a determinant of aggregate supply.

This article talks about how global warming is causing a decrease in work productivity, which would lead to a decrease in production. It states that in the hottest months of the year, labour capacity decreases by around 10%. They estimate that by 2050 the temperature would have risen by 1.8 degrees. At this temperature labour capacity would decrease by 20%. So overall this could have huge effects on the economy as production will decrease, and therefore there will be over aggregate demand. this then would cause inflation.

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.

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

Apple, in the past, has been notorious for setting high prices for its products. Its beautiful, expensive products were, however, sought after by many, yet with it's new product, the iPad mini, Apple is starting to make products that are not only highly-desirable, but at the same time, less-expensive. Apple products are price elastic because it is not a necessity and there are a myriad of substitutes. Apple is well aware of this information, and as a result, is lowering its prices to take advantage of price elasticity and the law of demand. As the title states, "Its all about price elasticity" and the iPad mini, with its reduced price will be competitive in the tablet market.

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. .

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.

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."

House prices in the UK have fallen for the third month in a row. Although the government has supported in mortgage borrowing, but the consumer's uncertainty surrounding the economy and their ability to afford the houses still causes the decrease in price in the market. The increase in demand is believed to be driven by seasonal factors compounded by the Olympics. It is believed that the house prices will continue to decrease slowly over the remainder of the year. There is also the first decline in supply in September after seven months of growth. I think this article fits perfectly under the topic of demand. The basic law states that as price falls, the quantity demanded of the product will usually increase. However, this does not fall under the basic law behind the demand curve, but it indicates that price of houses have fallen as a result of an increase in demand. The Europe's economy isn't doing very well at the moment and it causes more hesitant in how they consumers choose to spend their money. Price may be low, but they may choose to spend their money elsewhere. This does, however, support the supply law. As price falls, the quantity supplied is dropped. Suppliers wouldn't want to produce or supply to any products that isn't very well demanded.

This article relates directly to the concept of income elasticity of demand and cross elasticity of demand . McDonald's monthly sales fall for the first time in almost 10 years. Its revenue fell by 1.8% last month. This happens because of the various reasons. One results from the unstable economy. People are more cautious about spending their money. A lot of people choose to "eat in", simply because they cannot afford it. This applies a lot to the younger consumers, who have been facing unemployment. The company has also been affected by Europe's economy since the market of Europe counts for 40% of the company's revenue. European economy has been facing recession. There has been a tremendous amount of unemployment, which means a decrease in the general population's income. This directly relates to income elasticity of demand. As income falls, the quantity demanded for products fall as well. In this case, people choose to eat at home to be more frugal. I believe this contradicts a little to the idea of inferior goods. McDonald's may be considered as "inferior goods" to the majority. It is often said that as income decreases, inferior goods will likely benefit from it. However, in this case, McDonald's do not. People choose other alternatives instead, which is eating in. So it is just not McDonald's that has been affected, but a lot of other restaurants and fast food chains too. Furthermore, fierce rivals have also came up with strategies to out compete its competitors. For example, Wendy's Co. has decided to upgrade their menus and offer discounts. This relates to cross elasticity of demand. Obviously, as other rivals offer discounts and as well as an upgrade on their menus, consumers will shift to consuming those products that are slightly cheaper.

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.

This is an article which states the drug is now under the price control of the government. But according to it, there would be non-price control for medicine/drug options as well. It also says that the task force will serve as a framework for the new drug pricing policy. Since the government thinks that price controlling system doesn't really work for this kind of product, the drug makes are really looking forward to the new pricing policy.

The government of India has decided to remove the price control that it had earlier set. They have come to the conclusion that having a price control will make the drug companies not sell non profitable products.

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!

This article talk about the maximum price in New York and New Jersey after the sandy huracane. The government has set new laws in order to reduce the price for the neccessity products. However those laws are causing shortages in New York and New Jersey. Government-imposed price controls are making the disaster worse a week after Sandy hit shore. The producers can´t increase the prices for goods considered neccesarie for the consumers.The businesses aren´t allowed to raise their prices more than 10 percent within 30 days of a declared state of emergency. If the businesses increase above the maximum prices they will have to pay penalties. When there is a situation of scarcity (shortage) the people will try to buy the products in the black for a higher price. When high prices are prohibited from serving their function the result is a shortage where there are more buyers than sellers. Buyers still compete with other buyers to try to get the scarce gas, but because price competition is illegal their competition takes less beneficial forms.

The author of this article, Dennis Dugan, brings up many valid points as to how Wal Mart is a market failiure and how they have many negative externalities. He says one of the negative externalities they have is that because of the low wages they pay their employees, this has increased the need for publicly funded social services. I found this article very intriguing.

I like this article about Wallmart due to me not knowing this about the firm and also it clearly states why Wallmart is a market failure by buy products at very low prices causing enviromental destruction and very low wages for the workers of their supplier. What Wallmart really should do is try to find a way where they benefit their suppliers and less enviromental damage. They could do this by buy their products a little bit more expensive resulting in them having less of a profit but helping the third parties affected.

This article basically analyzes the positive and negative externalities of the Gulf Oil Spill. It explains pretty clearly the externality concept and brings up some points which are the loss of the production and the gain for the third party as well. Also, the writer states the reason why the spill happened.

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.

"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.

It is a nice article about the central bank in my country Poland. The central bank in poland uses changes in interest rates to keep the inflation rate within the targeted range of 2.5% plus or minus 1%. This week the central bank has reduced the key rate by 25 basis points to 3 percent. As we know, a decrease in inflation will lead to the increase in consumption and investment. The consumption is the total spending of consumers in domestic products. With lower interest rates, consumers will borrow more money from the bank and they will spend more, so the AD curve will shift to the right. Investment is defined as the addition of capital stock to the economy. Lower interest rates will encourage the producers to spend more on investment. Another thing to take into consideration is that the decrease in inflation will make the exports from Poland more competitive in foreign countries where the inflation rate is much higher. Targeting inflation, whether explicitly or implicitly, is said to be beneficial as it results in a reduction in inflationary expectations. If the workers do not expect higher inflation then they will not make demands for increases in wages any higher than the expected rate of inflation and this will keep the costs of labour from rising excessively. Poland has enjoyed uninterrupted annual growth for the past two decades, and for a while after the financial crisis of 2008/9 the economy continued to defy the global downturn. However last year gross domestic product growth slowed to about two percent, less than half the pace in 2011, as infrastructure spending tailed off and the gloom from the euro zone started to filter through to previously bullish Polish consumers.

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.

This article talk about the price of a gallon of 95 octane will increase 22 cents to $4.54. The price of 91 octane will increase 20 cents to $4.16. Diesel prices will go up 15 cents to $4.08. I´ve found this article and I think that is related to our actual topic aggregate supply because an increase in the price of the natural gas will have an impact on all industries, as oil is widely used in a lot of production processes. This will lead to a shift of the aggregate supply curve because the factors of production will be more expensive and at higher level price the producer will reduce the total amount of goods and services