Readers Question: I keep reading about our country’s trade deficit which was £3bn in April. How does that work, if a country is spending more than it’s earning? Are we getting ourselves into more debt? I read that Germany has a trade surplus, which is not surprising but why can’t we do the same? There …
One feature of the past few years is the rapid rise in government borrowing. – not just a rise in real debt but a rise in debt to GDP. This means debt burdens are a bigger % of National Output. It’s not the first time this has happened. A rise in debt to GDP typically …
Discuss Economic Policies to Improve the Health of the Nation Can we use economics to improve the nation’s health? For many years rising living standards led to improved health and life expectancy. Greater national income enabled more to be spent on health care. Combined with improved medical technology, life expectancy rose. However, in many western …
What is an SME? · SME is a shorthand for Small Medium-sized Enterprises and fits into European Community definitions for support purposes. · SME’s have less than 250 employees, lower turnover and assets than €50 million. · Micro businesses have less than 5 employees but are also SME’s. · SME’s can be sole traders, partnerships, …
The UK credit rating is a measure of the UK government’s credit worthiness on the level of government borrowing. AAA rating implies that the government is liable to honour its debts and repay bonds and gilts in full. A- would indicate a small chance of default. BBB rating implies the investment is speculative with a …
The Co-operative movement has a long tradition of financial prudence and support for members. Parents and grandparents will remember saving the ‘Divi’ on food purchases or even opening a share account at the local Co-op. The Co-op has moved on with its own Co-operative Bank plc although it still retains much of what was good …
Definition of Compound Interest – Compound is defined in the Oxford concise dictionary as ‘….increase, complicate, …debt by partial payments…’ and whilst none of these definitions directly addresses the issue of compound interest you may begin to see where we are coming from. Compound Interest is the effect of ‘interest on interest’ and happens when …
Essay: To what extent is transport a contestable Market? A contestable market is a market where there is freedom of entry and exit. This implies there are low (or zero) sunk costs in the industry. A sunk cost is a cost which cannot be recovered on leaving the market (e.g. spending on advertising). Therefore, the …