In an attempt to impede on music and film piracy, the Dutch government will implement a tax on smartphones, laptops, and mp3 players (among other devices) as of January 1st, 2013. The tax will be based on the storage capacity of devices, allowing anything from empty CD-ROMs to set-top boxes to be taxed. A maximum fixed levy of five Euros will be placed on devices, some only with a fixed levy of one or two Euros. Thus, the producers and consumers of smaller, less expensive devices will feel the effect of these fixed levies more than those of laptop and smartphone producers for example, as the fixed levies will be a larger proportion of the price for cheaper products. The tax revenues will be distributed among the affected industries. 

This article is acquainting us with China's plan to increase its supply of meat. Today, consumers in China are eating ten percent more meat than they did five years ago, so demand is increasing. However, the supply is lagging behind. Thus, Chinese officials have decided to buy millions of U.S. livestock and import it into China. This is a good example of how government intervention affects supply. By importing the U.S. livestock the cost of producing meat in China will be much less, whereas the quality will be much higher. However, critics from the U.S. are skeptic of this ordeal, as the cost of meat production is rising in the U.S. So the livestock exports to China would be increasing supply in China but they might decrease supply in the U.S. and lead to a future loss of a key U.S. export. 

Evidently, the reason for China's attempt to increase its supply of meat, is that there is an increase in the demand of meat. This means that meat has become scarcer. From a consumer perspective, the incentive now is to ration the amount of meat that is being consumed. Another consumer incentive might be to switch the consumption of meat with the consumption of a substitute good such as fish. From a producer perspective, an incentive is to produce more because the price is higher now. Therefore a producer is able to make a greater profit from the production of meat. There will also be a greater allocation of resources into the production of meat, as it is a more lucrative business.

We see in the chart that in developing countries arms are considered a normal good. This is apparent as the number of sales is at its lowest in 2007, 2008, and 2009 - the time period of the late financial crisis. Incomes decreased and therefore also government expenditure. So since the governments had a reduced budget, they were forced to purchase fewer arms. However, once the global economy started to recover from the crisis, incomes rose again. Thus, governments were able to spend more on arms again (which we see in 2010 and 2011). This is a good example of how income, a non-price determinant of demand, can influence the demand on a good. Another non-price determinant of demand is government policy. The article states that Saudi Arabia was the developing world's biggest arms buyer in 2011, with deliveries of $2.8 billion - an unusually high number. Therefore, there must have been a change in Saudi Arabia's government policy; otherwise they would not suddenly be buying more arms. So now we see how government policy influences demand on arms.