love of money

part 1: The Bank that bust the world

part 2: The age of Risk

part 3: Back from the Brink

fiscal policy and inequality

globalist discusses impact of fiscal policy

technology and costs question

Explain how technological change can affect a firm's costs of production and its methods of production? 15 marks

what do we mean by technological change?

• invention + innovation leads to new products and new ways of doing things usually stimulated by R&D expenditure
• quality and quantity of capital influencing productive capacity
• new opportunities in product markets or dismantling of barriers to entry

two areas of discussion

1. affect on costs
2. affect on methods of production

costs

• definition: payments made to factors employed
• technology reduces costs?
• perhaps technology raises productivity of labour (output per worker reducing variable cost or raises value of output per worker)
• could lower productivity? facebook at work (bbc)
• illustrate lower cost
• may raise fixed costs due to investment costs

methods of production

• technology encorporated into capital
• capital intensive v labour intensive
• knowledge intensive labour (highly skilled and high training requirements) or
• deskilling?
• possibility of scale and scope economies
• 24 hour production 365 days a year
• weakening unions

links

• tutor2u economics blog on technology
• tutor2u notes on technology

principle agent problem

peston investigates lehmans collapse (24/09/09)

lehmans chain reacton

lehman on capitol hill

Enron:
smartest guys in the room (trailer)
smartest guys in the room (film in sections)

objective of firms

objective reviewed (holden)

perfect competition

perfect competition video (holden)

revenue curves perfect v imperfect (Holden)

public spending -the guardian

public spending interactive

public spending 2008-9

audio description

newsnight - credit crunch

Aftershock - Impact on UK

Aftershock - Impact on World

Aftershock - Ideology shift?

keynes relevant?

discussion

guardian datablog

guardian datablog - economics

inflation ivestigation

The Guardian 15092009 article

Interactive Graphic 2006-2010

datablog inflation since 1948

Krugman on GDP

Krugman on GDP (Guardian)

krugman on gdp (FT)

France adopts measure of happiness (FT)

telgraph eu review

article 140909 - lisbon treaty

contributions graphic

timeline history of EU

econ news qiz tutor2u

new quiz 14 sept

credit crunch impact in South West

Credit Crunch in South West (UoB)

faces of the crisis

imf video and audio putting a face on the global crisis

housing market forecasts

housing market forecast september 2009

cambridge v chicago

keynes v friedman (channel 4)

krugman "how did economists get it so wrong?" (NYT) 6/09/2009

Revenue Curves Holden

PJ Holden Video on Revenue Curves in different Market Structures

costs and revenues

PJ Holden Video on Cost Curve Relationships

revenue video

unemployment - third wave of crisis

IMF reports rising unemployment world wide as the delayed (lagged) effects of the global downturn hits jobs

article

Changing business environment

Orange TMobile (BBC)

Orange TMobile (Channel 4)

government clears orange t mobile deal (ft 05/03/10)

alcohol marketing ban

costs and revenues online mcq

online mcq costs and revenue

calulation exercises

A2 Economics 2009-2010

This entry marks the start of blogging for the 2009-2010 academic year. Students can look back on the previous year as a guide to their progress, but remember the specifiaction this year is NEW. Thus there may be some subtile differences in content and focus between ECN3 and ECON 2 and of course ECN6 and ECON 4.