What does it mean to talk of labour market slack? And how is it measured? Essentially labour market slack is the shortfall between the volume of work desired by workers and the actual volume of work available. Labour market slack also determines the difficulty or ease of employing more workers. When there is labour market …
In recent years, many advanced (high-income) economies have seen a marked fall in unemployment but only very slow or even negative real wage growth. This phenomenon of slow wage growth, despite falling unemployment, is marked in countries such as the UK, Japan and the US. Reasons to explain this slow growth of wages include Low …
In the run-up to the 2016 referendum, Brexit supporting economist Professor Minford wrote: “Over time, if we left the EU [hard Brexit model], it seems likely that we would mostly eliminate manufacturing , leaving mainly industries such as design, marketing and hi-tech. But this shouldn’t scare us.”(Source) In 2012 Mr Minford said “It’s perfectly true …
A ‘no deal Brexit’ would involve a departure from the EU, the single market and the EU Customs union. Brexiteers have suggested the UK would adopt WTO rules for trade. This means, in the absence of any trade deal, it would lead to higher export tariffs and trade disruption from non-tariff barriers – the WTO …
Readers question: Are subsidies more effective than minimum prices when supporting farmers? Subsidies involve governments giving money direct to farmers. A minimum price is when the government ensures a legal price that prices cannot fall below that level. Minimum prices will increase incomes for farmers. Farming can see volatile prices because supply can vary and …
The World Bank publishes several measures of global poverty, which measure poverty by different levels of income. The most common is the percentage of the population who live on less than $1.90 a day. This is a measure of absolute poverty. There are also measures of relative poverty which compare income against the national average. …
Price skimming is a business strategy to set a high price on entry to the market and then reduce the price over time. The logic of price skimming is to take advantage of customers who have inelastic demand and are willing to pay the high price. When these consumers have bought the good, the firm …
Readers Question: Discuss the impact of a decrease in government spending? If the UK government cut government spending, it would have a significant impact on both aggregate demand (AD) and the supply side of the economy – depending on which areas of public spending were cut. Firstly, government spending (G) is a component of Aggregate …