There is an interesting article in the Economist about immigration and the impact on the Irish economy. Immigration tends to encourage a range of emotive responses, but, its impact on the flexibility of labour markets is worth considering. In the boom years, Ireland was growing by up to 5% a year or more. Growth was …
Readers question: Should the Government intervene to deal with the problem of Oil Shortages or is it better to leave it to a free market? As oil runs out, supply will shift to the left and the price will increase. Because demand is inelastic, oil firms will make increased profits. This creates an incentive for …
The price of oil reached another record high yesterday – $125 Brent Crude oil reached $126 US light crude oil reached $128 before setting back to $127 This means that, even adjusted for inflation, oil is now close to the all time high, last reached in the 1970s. What are the reasons behind the Recent …
Readers Question: “the only viable solution to the problem of global warming is an international agreement that sets a ceiling to the world’s production of carbon emissions, by allocating a quota to each country. The sum of the quotas being set equal to the agreed global maximum. countries should then be permitted to buy and …
Readers Question: when will oil run out? It is difficult to say. Firstly on the demand side, demand for oil is rising faster than many expected. This is largely being driven by rising growth in developing economies such as India and China. Today we consume an average of 85 million barrels daily. According to the …
Readers Question Am I correct in assuming that electricity is an inelastic supply? Oil is in short demand, there are not many green/low emission replenishable supplies and in the short run this would explain the continued increase in prices for the consumer. I think that in the short term electricity supply is quite inelastic. When …
I asked my Economics students to conduct a questionnaire, asking people in the street various questions about Economics. One Question was: What do You consider to be the Most Serious economic problem Facing the UK at the moment. These are the most popular responses to far. House Prices (50% of responses) Government Debt Ignorance because …
Already since the start of the year the FTSE-100 has fallen 7%. Yesterday, the stock market fell 3% of 190 points on fears related to the growing credit crunch. In particular, American bank Citibank wrote off $18billion from its mortgage defaults. It hopes this will draw a line under the losses in the derivatives market. …