ZIS IB Year 2 - Maley

The global rise in food prices, caused by a drought in the US, has increased Brazil's inflation, along with the government trying to put a stop to the currency gains. Due to bad weather conditions, the tomato industry has been affected, and has lead to an increase in the price of tomatoes. With global prices on the rise, there is less want to import goods, but with inflation in Brazil, high food prices all around is hurting its economy. Currency gains are also having a negative affect which is hurting industrial competitiveness. Consumers are finding it difficult to cope with rising food prices and in the short run will mean that a lot of their earnings are being spent on necessities and not spending on luxuries. Low unemployment is pushing up wages, and with interest rates being cut, people will most likely try and save their money.

At the moment globally there has been a spike in food prices. One of the causes has been the severe droughts in the United states which have driven up the food prices. In response to this inflation the government of Brazil decided to reduce taxes on basic household goods to support an economic recovery. This action also leads to stabler prices, which is one of the macro-economic goals of a country. The tax break on household goods allows for a increase in consumption as consumers will feel wealthier and have an increase in purchasing power. As a result this will increase Brazil's GDP to a certain extent as Consumption is one of the factors that influence the gross national product. 

Iceland has been in a serious recession with great inflation rates for several years. To control the situation, the Central bank has started to raise interest rates with the hope to decrease inflation and bring prices back to normal levels. By increasing interest rates consumers will stop borrowing as much money which will cause a decrease in consumption. In addition it will become more expensive for firms to borrow money for their investments and they will decrease investments well. Overall these two factors will cause a decrease in aggregate demand in Iceland. This will push down prices and cause disinflation in the long run. Due to these decreasing prices goods and services from Iceland become more attractive to foreign consumers causing an increase in exports which may strengthen the currency. The article states that due to the increased interest rates inflation remained stable for the past months. This shows that households and firms are consuming/investing less which stops further inflation.

The increase of the inflation rate is due to a price rise in housing costs and air fares. As rents increased, the over all consumer price index rose "followed by alcohol and tobacco, food, restaurants, and leisure". Cost-push inflation is currently going on in the UK as wages are not rising as quickly as prices for goods and services. UK has frozen both council tax and fuel tax and reduced income tax. Bank of England but its groth forecast to zero. The Bank is cutting intrest rates to get consumers buying again. Lowering tax and intrest rates will help consumers have more money in their pockets and, therefore, more to spend

Over the past year, high inflation has pushed the UK economy into a recession. Inflation has been caused by prices of goods rising faster than wages, also known as cost-push inflation. The weakness of consumer demand has resulted in a decrease in investment from businesses. Specifically, higher food and oil prices has been the reason as to why disinflation has been occurring slower than anticipated by the Bank of England. The issue is that with rising prices, the spending power of consumers is being diminished. 

As we know, inflation is a rise in price levels. In India at the moment, there is a slide in the value of the rupee, and simultaneously food, fuel and manufactured items are raising in price, leading in a high inflation. This is an exmple of stagflation becuase it is a 'cost-push' inflation (inflation caused by rising costs of products).  In India, the inflation rate was expected to rise 6.7% (by economists) but it actually rose 7.23%.

The unemployment rate in Scotland has increased to 8.2 percent within the last three months. It is now worse than the UK unemployment rate, which is at about 8.1 percent.In order to fix the problem, the government has now decided to step in, in order to achieve economic growth and get people back into work. The government wants to do this by simplifying the business environment and reform the tax system for companies in order to help them create more jobs. By decreasing the costs of production, the government wants the SRAS curve to shift to the right and therefor increase aggregate supply. If costs of producing are lower, firms will higher more workers, which will result in less unemployment according to theory. 

As can be seen, there has been a drop in unemployment in the UK, falling to 2.58 million people and is shown visually on the graph. There has been a drastic change in the unemployment of 16 to 24 year olds, which will have positive outcomes in the long-run. With less young people being unemployed, they are gaining on vital years of learning that they would have previously missed out on if they had not been employed. In order to gain experience and be better workers in the future, they would need to be employed as soon as possible, and with this happening it will affect the workforce later on as they have developed useful skills to benefit their work.  Once older workers have retired, there will now be people to fill the roles of these workers. With the Olympic Games providing the boost to the economy that is greatly needed, employment is starting to rise again; however, there is the worry that this will only have an impact in the short-run, with there being temporary jobs for the unemployed that will soon no longer be needed. If this happens there could be a rise followed by a sudden drop in employment, so there is a question of whether it will benefit the unemployed at all.

Germany's unemployment rates have been rising as firms are dropping their demand for labor. In many cases, firms are not firing workers, but they are also not hiring new workers, which causes an increase in unemployment rates as the labor force increases. Although Germany's unemployment remains low (5.4%) compared to other members of the European Union, the rise in unemployment rates is worrying as it could lead to a fall in aggregate demand and lead to recession. Right now, Germany is still growing at a rate of over 1% per year, which is why the higher unemployment rates are considered seasonal, as mentioned in the article. However, if people start losing jobs and there is no labor demand in the long-run, this could trigger a recession and a permanent cyclical unemployment.

This article talks about the rise in the unemployment rate in France. Unemployment occurs when someone of working age who is willing and able to work and is looking for work is unable to find a job. The unemployment rate is that percentage of the total labor force in a country that is in this situation. This article states that unemployment in France has reached a 13-year high at 10.2%. There have been 3 consecutive quarters of zero growth. Youth unemployment has also risen with the unemployment rate amongst 15 to 24 year-olds now 22.7%. One of the possible solutions for the situation is to wait until the market fixes itself. Pressure on prices of factors of production is decreased due to the smaller number of workers present. Eventually, firms should start buying more factors of production, increasing the country's Real GDP. Since output will then have been increased, more workers will be needed and employment should rise. However, several large French companies have recently announced plans to lay off more workers. This shows that the natural process of getting output back to where it was before the recession is not occurring. France's government has therefore offered a solution: launching a scheme to create 150,000 state-subsidized jobs for young people.

The article describes how unemployment in Argentina has dropped below 7% for the first time in a long time. The decreased unemployment is due to an increase in the country's exports and an increase in national aggregate demand. Both of these things would cause an increase in aggregate supply, which in result would increase the aggregate supply of labor, causing the unemployment rate to decrease. However, this is only seen as a short term change, as the export are expected to decrease due to the economic crisis in Europe, and the increasing movement of production to china, and the growing competition from Chinese produced goods, because of the cheaper prices. This would cause aggregate demand in Argentina to decrease, which would cause a response from the short run aggregate supply, in the form or a decrease. This would again cause the aggregate supply of labor to fall back down again, resulting in the unemployment rate rising again.

The unemployment rate in South Africa falls from 25.2 % to 24.9 % in the second quarter of 2012. This is because the mine companies, the construction companies and the government are starting to hire people again because they have lowered their wages and therefore made it possible for them to increase their labor force and by that decreased the amount of people who are unemployed.

Unemployment is the condition of someone of working age (16-64) who is willing and able to work, actively seeking employment, but unable to find a job. The unemployment rate is the percentage of the total force in a nation that is unemployed. This article lists unemployment rates in various states of India, compares unemployment rates in rural and urban areas and also provides unemployment of women compared to men. The differences are extreme. India had a nation-wide unemployment rate of 3.8% (for June 2012) while the rate is as high as 17.9% in Goa. The lowest unemployment rate is in Gujarat at 1%. There are also large differences between male and female unemployment in India. While male unemployment stands at 2.9% female is at 6.9%. If we focus on a specific state in India, the female unemployment rate was highest in Goa at 46.2%. The unemployment rate is also very different between rural and urban areas. The article only provides figures for females. 28% of females were unemployed in rural areas compared to 17.9% in urban areas on a national level. The highest female unemployment rate in urban areas is in Sikkim at 51.1%. - Julieta Fischer

The article is about the stabilization of unemployment rate of Italy which is currently around 10.7 percent, however the youth unemployment rate in Italy is around 35.3 percent which has increased from 33.6 percent of last year. The unemployment has mostly been caused by the business cycle in Italy which is currently in a recession

The article discusses the increasing level of unemployment in Spain hitting record levels. Currently around 5.7 million Spanish are out of work. Traditionally this number decreased during the second quarter of the year during the tourist season however this year unemployment rose to 24.6% during that time. 53% of the unemployed are under 25. This may have great effects in the future once Spain's economy recovers. The younger generation will want to take over jobs of the older generation. However due to the lack of training they may not have the skills required. The amount of jobs has decreased so much that almost half of the unemployed have been out of work for more than a year. This is largely due to a cut in government, regional and municipal spending that has decreased the number of workers in the public sector by 5% in the past year. Because the number of unemployed is so high and is constantly increasing the government had to cut their unemployment benefits leaving only around 40% in certain areas receiving unemployment benefits. The reason causing the high unemployment is the recession that Spain is currently in. In the future crime rates may increase in Spain as many households have no income and are losing their unemployment benefits from the government. 

This article discusses the severe rising level of unemployment in Greece. Unemployment rates rose to approximately 24.4% this summer and 55% of young people aged 14 to 24 are unemployed. The reasons behind this high unemployment are that a high percentage of the Greek workforce is employed by the government (about 25%) and these employees receive large unreported subsidies and bonuses. Also, Greece suffers from a large amount of tax evasion, causing it to struggle to pay the high number of government workers. Consequently, Greece had to cut 100,000 government jobs, causing unemployment to rise. Unemployment was high in the first place because of the deep recession which started in 2007. The high unemployment in Greece has further knock on effects on its economy, particularly if the majority of those unemployed are of the younger generation. A young workforce with no jobs means that once the older generation retires, the younger generation will want to take over their jobs but they will not have the experience to do so. Also, they will lose incentive to work hard as they are used to not having jobs. 

1/4th of the labor force in Greece was being employed by the Greek government. However the government borrowed a lot of money and that means that the government workforce will end up decreasing dramatically sooner or later, and that happened.  Their economy has shrunk around 20% since 2008. The article also told us that 'Moody's Analytics predicts that the Greek economy won't start growin gagain until 2015, at the earliest". That is bad for Greece because it will take very long and be very hard for it to become a stable and strong economy again. 

The article discusses how the unemployment rate in Turkey increases unlike any other EU country. In March the Employment rate went from 10.8 percent in the previous year to 9.9 percent. The number of rural employment was 6.4 percent and the urban employment 11.6 percent. The total number of unemployment decreased 2.6 million and the number of employed people rose to 23.8 million. According to a Turkish economist, Gulay Elif Girgin, in future the unemployment rate will continue to rise and he does not anticipate any unexpected decreases.