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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.

This article talks about Ireland having the highest tobacco pricesses in Europe. The european commision is stating that the Irish government "is against EU law, distorts competition and keeps tobacco company profits high." The Irish government says that by keeping the prices high on tobacco its a good way to control smoking in the country and that its policy of high prices is with the World Wide Health Organisations regulation policy. what the European comission is trying to do acoording to this article is to encourage Ireland to take off the price controls. but they refused and are going to court against the EU regulations in Luxemburg.

LISBON: The Portuguese economy is set to contract by 2.3 per cent this year due to a sharp fall in domestic demand and disappointing export growth

This article basically talks about the decreasing growth of the Portuguese economy. It states that the Portuguese economy will contract by 2.3% this year due to a steep fall in aggregate demand and exports. This can only lead to negative consequences as the firms will start to sell less/produce less and therefore earn less of a profit or no profit at all. SO what these firms will start to do is cut costs of FOP which basically means lay off workers, raising unemloyment, further worsening the economy, because then the people laid off will buy less from other firms and the same process will occur over and over again untill you get to the economic situation of Greece.

Royal Mail doubled its operating profit in the first half of the year but parcels growth slowed as customers switched to rival operators in anticipation of a threatened strike. The newly privatised postal operator on Wednesday reported operating

In this article it explains why we, the consumer, are unable to influence gas prices. The article suggests 3 main reasons: 1) for oil companies it is more profitable to set a higher price and then let the price adjust to the demand. Simply, instead of letting the price adjust upwards, the price is set a higher level to let it adjust downwards. 2)The increasing price over the past two years has not created a drop in demand. Rather, the increasing price is accompanied by increasing demand. 3)For countries, the increase of price and demand are signs of prosperity, so a positive thing. This is an example of where it is hard to achiever a price equilibrium.

I found this article interesting because it shows us that demand and supply is not the only factor in determining gas prices. As we know, gas prices are on the rise. But this article tells us that it is not just demand and supply that causes this and that we need to take other factors into consideration.

i thought that this article was really interesting because before i actually thought that the oil companies raised the price of oil randomly just to make a profit but now i realise that there are many other reasons why they bring up the price, for example there economy.

In 2009 there was a sharp appearance of the virus H1N1. South America was seriously affected by this virus. That led to sudden demand for vaccine. But some people usually try to get a profit from everything even from someone's misfortune. So that happened in South America too, prices for vaccines went up, but people needed a cure and some of them didn't have so much money for that. Therefore government was compelled to put price ceiling on the vaccine to make it available for infected. "(We) establish a commitment to not buy individually, above the prices set by the Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO) ... to prevent commercial interests from taking advantage of pandemic panic," she said, summarizing the conclusions of a meeting of the region's health ministries, called to map out a strategy to fight the pandemic.

A ruling has been passed leaving medial device makers stuck with an excise tax on sales of replacement hips, implantable defibrillators and other FDA-approved devices. This tax is intended to help finance the health law's board expansion of insurance coverage and is expected to raise $20 billion by 2019. The tax, which will commence January 1st 2013, has already affected some manufactures. Few companies will be able to pass all or even a small amount of the tax onto hospitals or distributors, resulting in many companies to begin putting cost-cutting plans in place. It is expected that smaller companies will take the worst hits, small device makers could see earnings per share fall by 10%. Because the tax is on total sales, rather than profits, companies with the smallest margins, such as unprofitable start-ups, will face the deepest impact. The tax looms at a difficult time for the industry, as patients will then delay elective procedures. Unlike other health-care sectors, analysts don't expect device makers to benefit much from the expected flood of newly insured patients because they depend largely on older patients who are already covered by Medicare.

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.

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 explains how liquor outlets have negative externalities of production - on average the number of serious violent crimes doubled once you got within 900m of a liquor outlet. The more liquor stores an area had, the more likely it was to have a higher rate of serious violent crimes, regardless of poverty and other factors. This poses serious risks to citizens as they could be subjected to harm and danger. Many people have now said communities should have fewer stores that are licensed to sell alcohol. This would not benefit store owner as they make major profits from selling alcoholic beverages but it could possibly aid to ensure safety in a neighborhood.

This article describes how the recession, the fall of GDP growth in the business cycle, affects not only the economy of one country, but also external economies will be affected and leads to negative externalities.

This article is about how the current recession is affecting the business cycle. It has had a toll on not only firms and businesses, but also on non profit organizations such as charities working in Africa. Currently, I would say that the business cycle is in one of the 'trough' points. This is because of the ensuing recession. However due to this, funds going to charities are now being cut off.

I think this is a very interesting article because you do not often hear about charities threatened by recession.

This article talks of the increase in macroeconomic activity in Pakistan, particularly in agriculture and the service sector. Recently stable weather conditions have greatly helped the agricultural sector of the country especially in rice and cotton crops. The banking sector has greatly improved too. Statistics have shown that the budget deficit has dropped down to 2.5% of the GDP in 2011-12 lesser than it was in 2012-13.

This article talks about how the government is trying to Real GDP of the country by lowering the taxes on exporting oil prices. By doing this the governmnet has enevitably increased the Real GDP because siince the oil firms FOP cost less they can now supply more oil, also the price will rise from 42$ per barrel to 70$ per barrel meaning that the oil firms will even make more of a profit. Again since the taxes have decreased it will cause foreign investments in the oil industry of Argentina since they just discovered that Argentina is setting on one of the biggest oil deposits. so overall, the long term aggregate will shift to the right, an increase in the real GDp

Argentina has devised a new system of export taxes on oil shipments that will cut taxes, as the government seeks to encourage investments to revive production. The change means energy companies will receive $70 per barrel of exported oil, up from $42 previously. Argentina controls the price of oil exports in order to guarantee domestic supply. The reform means that the state will only retain the difference between the market prices, meaning increased revenue for oil companies that export crude. The long run aggregate supply is expected to shift the right, an increase in the real GDP.

This is a perfect example of how a Latin American bloc that includes Colombia, Mexico, Peru and Chile on Thursday agreed to eliminate tariffs on most goods to promote free trade between the countries and increase exports to Asia. This is what the actual purpose of trade blocs are meant to achieve, an increase in the GDP of the country that will encourage better living standards and ways of life. The presidents of the four countries decided to remove tariffs on 90% of all goods and to eliminate duties on the remaing 10%. Increasing profits consequently leading to growth.