Thursday, 31 May 2012

Unit 4 glossary

Link to Lawrence Low's excellent glossary of terms for Unit 4 
http://econsguide.blogspot.co.uk/2010/05/handy-definitions-glossary-for-unit-4.html

I have added to it - here it is:

UNIT 4 Glossary
1. Absolute advantage: Is when a country can produce more of a good using similar resource as in another country

2. Balance of payment: An account that summarises the financial transaction between one country and the rest of the world

3. Budget deficit: Where government expenditure exceeds tax revenue

4. Budget surplus: Where government tax revenue exceeds public spending

5. Comparative advantage: Is when a country can produce a good with lesser opportunity costs than the other and hence should specialise in the production of that good

6. Conditionality: The conditions imposed by the IMF on countries requesting financial assistance, usually the requirement to adopt free-market economic policies to reform the borrower’s economy and ensure the loan can be repaid. Can be controversial E.g. in Indonesia in 1997, the IMF required fuel subsidies to be scrapped, putting fuel prices up and causing hardship.

7. Current account: An account that measures the flow of money in and out of a country resulting from the visible and invisible trade

8. Capital account: An account that measures the flow of capital in and out of the country

9. Dumping: An act by manufacturer in one country exporting a good to another country at a price below what it charges in home market or even below production costs

10. EMU (Economics and Monetary Union): Refers to the currency union of EU members who have adopted euro as their sole legal tender

11. EU: Is an economic and political union of 27 member countries located primarily in Europe

12. Eurozone: A collective group of countries which use euro as their common currency

13. Economies of scale: Fall in the long the run average costs associated with an increase in output

14. Fiscal policy: Manipulation of government spending and level of taxation to influence movement of AD and overall economic activities
15. Fiscal Union: the idea that the Eurozone needs a common fiscal policy (tax rates and government budget) as well as monetary policy, as the problems in the Eurozone have partly been caused by countries with very different fiscal positions being locked into the same currency (so e.g. Spain can’t devalue to maintain competitiveness against Germany).

16. Fiscal Austerity: Cutting government spending and raising taxes in order to reduce budget deficits / generate a surplus and pay down government debt.

17. Fixed exchange rate: Is when a currency of a country has a set rate against the currency from another country and there will be no fluctuation
18. Floating exchange rate: Is when the exchange rate of a country against another is determined through the forces of demand and supply

19. FDI (Foreign Direct Investment): Refers to investment of foreign assets into domestic structures, equipments or organizations

20. Golden Rule: A guideline for the operation of fiscal policy set by Chancellor Gordon Brown, which mentions that over the economic cycle, government borrowing is only justified if it is meant for investment and not to fund current spending (payment onto pensions, benefits etc)

21. Globalisation: Refers to the freer movement of human, capital, goods and information

22. Hot money: Extremely volatile short term capital that moves on short notice to any countries that provide better return and is usually associated with investment onto stock market in another country

23. Import quotas: Limit onto the amount of goods that can be brought into a country

24. J-curve: The tendency for the fall in value of currency to worsen the balance of trade before improving it, owing to the contracts in place to import / export at fixed prices.

25. Laffer curve: A curve that shows that for any economy, there will be an optimal income tax rate which will help the government to maximize tax revenue

26. Monetary policy: Manipulation of interest rates to influence the movement of AD and overall level of economic activities

27. National debt: Total amount of money a government owes to private sectors and the purchasers of bonds

28. Progressive taxation: Tax rate that increases as the taxable base amount increases and as such is felt more by the rich

29. Protectionism: Steps taken by government to protect local industry from harmful foreign competition
30. Terms of trade: Refers to the average price of exports to the average price of imports and is a measurement of competitiveness

31. Regressive taxation: Tax burden that falls more heavily onto those people with low income such as sales tax and value added tax (VAT) since it tends to take up a bigger percentage of the budget of a person with low income

32. Sustainable investment rule: A rule which requires debt to be kept at prudent level, which is below 40% of GDP in UK

33. Supply side policy: Policies to influence the movement of AS by increasing the productive capacity of an economy

34. Trade creation: Increased trade between member countries of trading bloc usually resulting from economies of scale due to enlargement of market or common external tariff

35. Trade diversion: Decreased in trade with the more efficient non-member countries which is replaced by the increased in trade with less efficient member due to formation of trading bloc

36. Trading bloc: A regional group of economies cooperating together by liberalising trade between one another

37. Tariffs: Taxes onto goods that are brought into a country
38. Tied aid: Aid given with the condition that the funds must be spent on goods / services produced by the donor country. E.g. UK gives aid to build a road, but the contractor must be British.

39. WTO (World Trade Organisation): An international agency set up to promote freer trade between member countries, administer global trade agreements and resolving trade disputes if they arise.

40. Absolute poverty: A level of poverty where only minimum level of food, clothing and shelter can be met

41. Bilateral aid: Aid given by one country directly to another. Sometimes Tied Aid.

42. Debt relief: Refers to the partial or total forgiveness of debt or the slowing down of debt growth

43. Development: The process of improving the quality of life within a country

44. Dependency ratio: A measure which shows the number of dependents (those aged 0-14 and above 65) to the number of economically active people (those who are in working age 15-64)

45. Gini coefficient: A measurement of income inequality ranging from 0 (absolute equality) to 1 (absolute inequality)

46. Growth: A sustained increase in real GDP/ increase in potential GDP

47. HDI (Human Development Index): A measurement of development which include real GDP per capita (PPP), life expectancy at birth and combined gross enrolment ratio in primary, secondary and tertiary education

48. HIPCs (Highly Indebted Poor Countries): Countries with extreme poverty and debt overhang which are eligible for special assistance from IMF and World Bank

49. Import-substitution effect: A policy to replace foreign goods with domestically produced one

50. IMF (International Monetary Fund): An organization set up in 1944 to lower trade barriers between countries, to stabilize currencies by monitoring the foreign exchange systems of member countries and lending money to developing nations. Deals direct with governments.

51. LDCs (Less Developed Countries): Countries which exhibit the very low HDI rating of all countries in the world

52. MDCs (More Developed Countries): Countries which exhibit very high HDI rating of all countries in the world and are usually referred to the Western economies

53. Multilateral aid: Aid is given to countries through an intermediary organization such as the World Bank, which pools donations from several countries’ government before distributing to recipients

54. MNC (multinational company): A company which has operations in more than one country
55. NGO (Non-Governmental Organisation): An organisation independent of any national government, usually an aid agency (disaster relief or development aid) or pressure group (human rights, development, education, health, disaster relief, environment etc).

56. NICs (Newly Industrialised Countries): Refer to countries whose economies yet to reach the First World status, but have in macroeconomic sense outpaced many other developing counterparts and is usually referring to countries like Brazil, China, India, Malaysia, Thailand and several others

57. Lorenz curve: A graph showing the difference between the country’s actual income distribution and perfect equality of income distribution

58. Relative poverty: Is when income is less than the average income of a nation by certain percentage

59. SAPs (Structural Adjustment Programs): A series of economic policies designed to promote free market and to reduce government intervention

60. World Bank: An international agency set up to assist countries with the process of development by providing loans, research and advice and was founded in 1940s to initially assist Western economies with capital after World War II


Monday, 16 April 2012

RES Economics Essay competition

Some disconnected thoughts and resources for those of you writing an answer for question 1 - Africa is well-placed to achieve rapid and sustainable development in the decade ahead. Do you agree?

* Is "Africa" a sensible unit of analysis? Is it useful to aggregate economies like South Africa and Sierra Leone, Nigeria and Malawi, Egypt and Congo? Might some countries grow rapidly and others slowly? Which countries and why (e.g. oil exporters vs importers)?

* How have the recently-industrialised Asian economies like S Korea, Singapore and Malaysia (or the BRIC) achieved their economic growth? Can Africa learn lessons?

* Primary product dependency can be a problem. However, Saudi Arabia managed to create sustainable economic growth from its oil dependency by a system of centrally-planned five year plans that invested the proceeds of oil sales in infrastructure, industry and education. Can some African countries do the same?

* To what extent does economic growth depend on peace and political stability? What are the prospects?

* What role might Chinese investment in, and trading links with, Africa help (or hinder)?

* How important is a stable, transparent and effective legal framework? What about corruption and the informal sector?

* AIDS has seriously damaged some African countries' human capital. Will this improve?

* African productivity is very low - can productivity gains fuel sustainable growth?

Some resources .....

http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Whats_driving_Africas_growth_2601
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4985858.stm (quite old)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13984044
http://blogs.odi.org.uk/blogs/main/archive/2010/09/10/africa_economic_growth_state_business_relations.aspx

GOOD LUCK! Remember, the closing date is in two weeks time (Monday April 30th).

Use this link to apply:
https://tutor2u.wufoo.com/forms/res-young-economist-of-the-year-2012/

Tuesday, 6 March 2012

RES Economics Essay competition

HWK due Tues 13th Mar is to research question 1.
2,500 words by Monday 30th April ...
1.Africa is well-placed to achieve rapid and sustainable development in the decade ahead. Do you agree?
2.Over a million young people in the UK are unemployed. What should be done to address the problem?
3.A breakup of the euro provides the best hope for a durable recovery of the European economy. Discuss
4.To what extent can we use ideas drawn from behavioural economics to help address specific social and economic problems?
5.Manufacturing’s share of the UK economy shrank from 19% in 1998 to 12% by 2007. Does this matter and, if so, how could policy revitalise British manufacturing?
6.Is there a better way out of the debt crisis than austerity?

Tuesday, 28 February 2012

Feedback on EURO question + HWK 28/2/12

HWK due next week: Use my feedback below to write a perfect 30 mark answer to the question

The UK is a member of the European Union but has not adopted the euro as its currency. To what extent do the benefits of membership of a monetary union such as the Eurozone outweigh the costs?
(30 marks)

My general feedback on the essays you handed in last week is:

* Academic writing please, not journalism. No thoughts, feelings or emotions - no-one cares (sorry). Just points backed up by evidence, then explained and evaluated.

* Use current data to support your answers. Follow current economic data and keep track of it (UK vs Eurozone growth / deficit / debt % GDP, UK vs China vs India growth rates, unemployment, current account deficit etc)

* Answer the question. Lots of you wrote fascinating, well-researched paragraphs that got no marks because they didn't answer the question.

* Write balanced answers. The question required you to look at BOTH the pros and cons of Euro membership. "Evaluation" for this question means giving the other side of the question. 


* Answer structure. You MUST do a short bullet point plan before you write your answer. You can cross it out when you write your real answer. One paragraph per point. The answer format I've given you will help:



To achieve full marks, you needed 4 pros and 3 cons (or 3 pros and 4 cons). Other evaluation strategies could have included ranking the importance of your points, looking at short term vs. long term effects, or the type of country in question (small, large etc). Remember our list of generic evaluation strategies?

1. Opportunity cost
2. Short-run / long-run / time-lags
3. Magnitude of change
4. Quality / reliability of data
5. Which factor is most / least important? Why?
6. “Africa” / “Asia” / “S America” are not useful units of analysis – there’s a huge variation within them
7. Effect on different sectors of the economy (rich vs poor? Importers vs exporters? Manufacturers vs services?)
8. Trade-off between different macro-economic objectives (e.g. Phillips Curve – can’t cut inflation AND unemployment at the same time)
9. Keynesian vs Classical LR supply curve
10. Price / income elasticity of demand / supply

Saturday, 11 February 2012

Punk Economics

Joe Borland passed on this YouTube video explaining the European debt crisis (from an Irish perspective - a quite Irish perspective: relating it to Catholic and Protestant approaches to guilt and forgiveness?).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAR0VRLRGHE&sns=em