At the start of the academic year, I always feel a little pressure to justify the study of economics. Students come up asking things like, should they do economics or history? It’s hard to know what to say, but to get people excited about economics it’s good to try and think how economics can be …
Definition of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). FDI is the net transfer of funds to purchase and acquire physical capital, such as factories and machines, e.g. Nissan, a Japanese firm, building a car factory in the UK. In recent years, foreign direct investment has also widened to include the purchase of assets and shares which give …
‘Beggar my neighbour’ is a term used to describe an economic policy, where you seek to gain an economic advantage by making other countries lose out. Cutting corporation tax is an effort to take away investment from countries with higher corporation tax. It creates an incentive for countries to keep cutting to see who has …
Labour productivity measures the output per worker in a period of time. Labour productivity is an important factor in determining the long-run trend rate of economic growth; tax revenues, inflation and real wages. Since the start of the great recession in early 2008, UK labour productivity growth has remained very low – well below the …
In the past two decades, the UK has experienced a steady flow of net migrants into the economy. The 2016 Brexit vote has led to a sharp fall in net EU migration, but to a large extent this has been offset by a rise in non-EU migration. This net migration has had a wide-ranging impact …
Premium decoy pricing is when a firm set the price of one good deliberately high in order to make other goods appear good value and attractive. For example, a clothes shop may have a few jackets priced at £300. This gives the impression that the clothing brand is high quality. Then they may offer a …
Economic development implies an improvement in economic welfare through higher real incomes and other welfare indices such as improved literacy, better infrastructure, reduced poverty and better health care. Economic development requires a degree of political stability, investment and mixture of public and private initiatives to increase economic potential. The main factors affecting economic development include …
Investment is expenditure on capital goods – for example, new machines, offices, new technology. Investment is a component of Aggregate Demand (AD) and also influences the capital stock and productive capacity of the economy (long-run aggregate supply) Summary – Investment levels are influenced by: Interest rates (the cost of borrowing) Economic growth (changes in demand) Confidence/expectations …