Beruflich Dokumente
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
The following is the course outline used for students entering UWC in Mostar in
September 2007. The First Year outline was completed during the 2007-08 academic
year. A copy of the syllabus can be found after this outline with the Higher sections
designated with an H in the numbering system.
• Section 2: Microeconomics
o Section 2.1: Markets
o Section 2.2: Elasticities
o Section 2.4: Market Failure
• Section 3: Macroeconomics
o Section 3.1: Measuring National Income
o Section 3.2: Introduction to Development
o Section 3.3: Macroeconomic Models
o Section 3.4: Demand-Side and Supply-Side Policies
• Section 3:
o Section 3.5: Unemployment and Inflation
o Section 3.6: Distribution of Income
Section 2: Microeconomics
The purpose of this section is to identify and explain the importance of markets and
the role played by demand and supply. The roles played by consumers, producers
and the government in different market structures are highlighted. The failures of a
market system are identified and possible solutions are examined.
The concepts learned here have links with other areas of the economics syllabus; for
example, elasticity has many applications in different areas of international trade and
development.
Demand
• Definition of demand: Law of demand with diagrammatic analysis
• Determinants of demand
• Fundamental distinction between a movement along a demand curve and a shift
of the demand curve
Supply
• Definition of supply: Law of supply with diagrammatic analysis
• Determinants of supply
• Effect of taxes and subsidies on supply
• Fundamental distinction between a movement along a supply curve and a shift of
the supply curve
Price controls
• Maximum price: causes and consequences
• Minimum price: causes and consequences
• Price support/buffer stock schemes
• Commodity agreements
2.2 Elasticities
• Definition
• Possible range of values
• Diagrams illustrating the range of values of elasticity
• Varying elasticity along a straight-line D curve
• Determinants of price elasticity of demand
Cost theory
• Types of costs: fixed costs, variable costs (distinction between short-run and
long-run)
• Total, average and marginal costs
• Accounting cost + opportunity cost = economic cost
Short-run
• Law of diminishing returns
• Total product, average product, marginal product
• Short-run cost curves
Long-run
• Economies of scale
• Diseconomies of scale
• Long-run cost curves
Profit
• Distinction between normal (zero) and supernormal (abnormal) profit
• Profit maximization in terms of total revenue and total costs, and in terms of
marginal revenue and marginal cost
• Profit maximization assumed to be the main goal of firms but other goals exist
(sales volume maximization, revenue maximization, environmental concerns)
Perfect competition
• Assumptions of the model
• Demand curve facing the industry and the firm in perfect competition
• Profit-maximizing level of output and price in the short-run and long-run
• The possibility of abnormal profits/losses in the short-run and normal profits in
the long-run
• Shut-down price, break-even price
• Definitions of allocative and productive (technical) efficiency
• Efficiency in perfect competition
Monopoly
• Assumptions of the model
• Sources of monopoly power/barriers to entry
• Natural monopoly
• Demand curve facing the monopolist
• Profit-maximizing level of output
• Advantages and disadvantages of monopoly in comparison with perfect
competition
• Efficiency in monopoly
Monopolistic competition
• Assumptions of the model
• Short-run and long-run equilibrium
• Product differentiation
• Efficiency in monopolistic competition
Oligopoly
• Assumptions of the model
• Collusive and non-collusive oligopoly
• Cartels
• Kinked demand curve as one model to describe interdependent behaviour
• Importance of non-price competition
• Theory of contestable markets
Price discrimination
• Definition
• Reasons for price discrimination
• Necessary conditions for the practice of price discrimination
• Possible advantages to either the producer or the consumer
UWC in Mostar: Blue Book Economics Notes, page 6
2.4 Market failure
Section 3: Macroeconomics
The purpose of this section is to provide students with the opportunity for a detailed
examination of the major macroeconomic issues facing countries' economic growth,
economic development, unemployment, inflation and income distribution.
Unemployment
• Full employment and underemployment
• Unemployment rate
• Costs of unemployment
• Types of unemployment
structural
frictional
seasonal
cyclical/demand-deficient
real wage
• Measures to deal with unemployment
Inflation
• Definitions of inflation and deflation
• Costs of inflation and deflation
• Causes of inflation
cost push
UWC in Mostar: Blue Book Economics Notes, page 8
demand pull
excess monetary growth
Types of protectionism
• Tariffs
• Quotas
• Subsidies
• Voluntary Export Restraints (VERs)
• Administrative obstacles
• Health and safety standards
• Environmental standards
Globalization
Trading blocs
• Free trade areas (FTAs)
• Customs unions
• Common markets
The main purpose of this section is to provide students with the opportunity to
understand the problems faced by developing countries, and to develop an
awareness of possible solutions to these problems.
Economics tends to focus on what is produced in society, how it is produced, and for
whom it is produced. Over time economists have observed the following aspects.
Specialization
• Until the agricultural revolution our ancestors were hunter gatherers and did
everything for themselves.
• Once agriculture developed and people were able to specialize in the things they
were best at doing, productivity increased dramatically.
• This created a surplus which could be traded for goods produced by people who
had specialized in other areas.
Trade
• Trading occurred in markets where people could buy things more cheaply than
they could make them.
• Originally, goods were traded through barter, but this required a simultaneity of
desire: you had to find someone who had what you wanted and at the same time
they had to want what you had to offer.
• Time was wasted trying to find satisfactory exchanges, and money was invented
eliminating the inconvenience of barter.
o This release of wasted time led to a further increase in the surplus.
Industrialization
• The industrial revolution introduced machinery allowing further specialization:
o Division of labour: workers specialized at tasks increasing productivity.
o Economies of scale: gains from bulk buying, large scale financing, and the use
of large scale machinery permitted even further gains in productivity:
We moved from labour intense production which uses relatively large
amounts of labour compared to other factors, to capital intense production
where relatively large amounts of capital are used compared to other
factors.
Economic Sectors
• The primary sector involves the extraction of resources: farming, fishing, forestry
and mining.
• The secondary sector involves the conversion of natural resources into goods:
manufacturing and construction.
• The tertiary sector involves the production of services: finance and tourism.
• In the public sector production is in public hands: owned and controlled by the
state which both buys and produces goods and services.
o We cannot assume that governments always act in a consistent manner.
o Various governments make laws, the courts interpret these laws and uphold
them.
o Any government measures that impose large costs with few obvious benefits
to the current generation are unlikely to be popular:
Long run benefits are sometimes ignored: the planting of trees will only be
enjoyed by future generations which do not have a vote today, therefore
government will not spend money on planting trees.
There is uncertainty about the future: it is hard to make decisions today
which may have long term consequences.
Microeconomics
• Microeconomics deals with individual consumers and firms, how they interact in
markets, and the role of government in overcoming market failure.
UWC in Mostar: Blue Book Economics Notes, page 15
• Although microeconomics examines the interactions between individual
consumers and producers, in actual fact economists only rarely look at individuals
and tend to focus on industries, markets or groups of consumers and producers
instead.
• The chief actors are:
o Consumers who demand goods and services and provide the factors of
production by which to earn a living.
o Producers who take those factors of production and combine them in such a
way as to produce the goods and services.
o Governments who intervene when the market fails to provide an efficient and
equitable solution to the basic economic problems of what, how and for
whom.
Macroeconomics
• Macroeconomics is concerned with the economy as a whole and the policies most
likely to help governments deal with major issues such as inflation,
unemployment, economic growth and equitable income distributions.
• The initial focus is on determining the national income for a nation. This is not as
simple as it may seem as there are problems deciding what can be measured and
what should or should not be included.
• Two other important measurements are for unemployment and inflation.
• Aggregate demand focuses on the relationship between national income and the
price level or rate of inflation.
o Keynesian economists focus on the policies most likely to increase aggregate
demand which can lead to an increase in national income and employment.
The problem is that it can also lead to inflation.
• Economic growth takes place when the quality and quantity of factors of
production are increased:
1.6 Scarcity
1.6.1 Factors of Production
• Natural resources include all the resources we use such as land, trees, water,
minerals.
• There is some controversy about how to include environmental resources such as
clean air, clean water, quietness etc.
o When these are polluted there is a cost, how should that be included, and
who should pay for it?
• Labour is simply the number of hours of physical and mental work put in by a
person.
• Capital is defined as man-made tools and machines used in the production of
goods and services and includes physical plant, machinery, equipment and
buildings. It is not the money that you invest in the stock market.
• Entrepreneurship: comes from the French word and means that someone or a
group of people undertake risk by buying and organizing factors of production in
such a way as to produce goods and services.
o It is estimated that 85% of small businesses go bankrupt during the first five
years. And 85% of those that survive go bankrupt in the next five years.
o There is a great scarcity of good management talent in the world.
Natural resources
• The payment for natural resources has traditionally had two names:
o In Europe, rent is the income paid for natural resources such as land
o In North America, rent is what is paid to rent an apartment and payments for
using natural resources are called natural resource costs or raw material
costs.
• Natural resources are either treated as an input that must be purchased, or
treated like capital if the firm owns them, in which case the same formula as for
capital is used as below.
Capital
• Capital can be rented but is often owned, a cost must be imputed (estimated) for
the capital services:
UWC in Mostar: Blue Book Economics Notes, page 18
PK *( r + δ )
where:
K refers to capital
PK refers to the cost of the capital,
r (sometimes “i” for interest rate), refers to the interest on the loan to buy
the capital or if the company owns the capital it is the opportunity cost
rate of return that could have been earned on the money tied up in the
capital (what they could have earned in the money market which is why is
it sometimes called “i”)
δ is the depreciation rate on the capital, where depreciation is the cost of
maintaining the tools and machinery.
o For example: if the cost of a piece of equipment is $100,000 and the interest
rate on the loan is 10% and the depreciation is 5% per year, the cost of
capital for a year is: $25,000 = $100,000*(10% + 5%)
o The return on capital is sometimes referred to as an accounting profit: it is
what must be earned in order to pay the interest on the money borrowed to
buy the capital (or the money not earned in the money market because you
invested in capital instead) plus the wear and tear (depreciation) of the capital
during the year.
o You can see that profit and ROI are very closely related. In real life, the
equation for ROI is much more complex as most projects last about 15 to 20
years and we discount back the revenues and costs over the whole period.
o Most firms maximize profits by trying to increase revenues through better
marketing, and decreasing costs through more efficient systems of
production.
o If firms do not maximize profits, they will either not grow anymore because
there are no profits to re-invest in the business, or they will be bought out by
someone who can force the company to earn a normal rate of return.
1.7 Choice
1.7.1 Utility
• Most people are assumed to be motivated by rational desires.
• Utility: most people derive enjoyment or utility from the goods and services they
consume, and most understand that the first amount of enjoyment from
consuming a good is often the highest.
o As more and more is consumed, the level of enjoyment starts to decrease.
This is referred to as the concept of diminishing marginal utility. The marginal
utility is the enjoyment received from the next unit of whatever is being
consumed, and it diminishes as more is consumed.
o Most people try to maximize total utility or enjoyment by consuming more
than one good: as the marginal utility from consuming one good starts to fall
from consuming more, you switch to another good where the marginal utility
is higher.
For example, we do not just eat one food such as meat, we get more
enjoyment from mixing it with other foods such as salad, potatoes and
vegetables.
Oranges
(PPB) or curve (PPC) illustrates the various B
combinations of two goods a country can produce A
within a specified time period and given the resources
and technology available during that time period.
• Point B on the PPF shows the maximum that can be Clothing
produced with existing resources and technology, it is a
point of productive efficiency.
• The negative slope of the PPF reflects basic scarcity: you cannot have more of
one good without sacrificing some of the other.
• If the PPF were a straight line, that would imply that the tradeoff or opportunity
cost of moving production from oranges to production of clothing would remain
constant.
• Diminishing returns:
o The use of greater and greater amounts of a variable resource with a given
amount of another resource leads to increasing production but at a
diminishing rate
o No matter how much fertilizer you add, you cannot grow the world’s wheat
supply in a flower pot!
• The law of diminishing returns implies a convex PPF: as resources are transferred
from one use to another, the increment in output becomes smaller and the
opportunity cost increases:
o Resources are being released in the wrong combination:
The amount of labour required to produce clothing per unit of land is
much larger than when growing oranges.
As resources are released from growing oranges, there is too much land
and not enough labour.
o The resources being released are less and less suited to the new use:
Farmers who like growing oranges will be the last to transfer to making
clothing.
The earliest labour transferred from orange production to clothing will be
those best suited to making clothing.
• Point A inside the frontier is productively inefficient: more of one good could be
produced without sacrificing any of the other:
o Note that the concept of opportunity cost or tradeoff is not applicable inside
the frontier: you can get more of both goods.
o Producing inside the PPF implies that either resources are:
Unemployed: not all resources are being fully utilized (typical of a market
system)
Inefficient: resources may be fully utilized but in an inefficient manner
(typical of central planning systems).
the A level.
A2
Enhancing Productivity (Q/L↑) Pa
A1
• Some economists believe that 50% to 70% of
growth in potential output can occur by
enhancing factor productivity. In this case the
Cb Ca Consumption Goods
investment takes place in public and/or merit
goods:
o Public goods are associated with infrastructure such as roads, bridges, dams,
canals, water and sewage systems, and electricity
o Merit goods are usually associated with education and healthcare.
• Once again, the PPF curve illustrates that investments in public and merit goods
can enhance the potential output so that the country can grow in the second
period to to point B2 instead of to point A2.
• Good governance:
o For many LDCs there is no point in trying to expand the PPF to the potential
PPF until they have at least achieved economic growth from point A to B
o Better government policies at both the micro and macro levels can make a
significant difference in achieving growth targets.
• Civil society:
o Businesses and governments are not the only institutions responsible for
fostering growth. It is important for citizens to “give back” to help those who
are poor because they are less skilled, disabled or disadvantaged for some
reason.
o This would imply that the best move is from B to D or from C to D: many
economists believe that investment in public and merit goods will not only
enhance economic development but also increase productivity which is a very
important factor for future economic growth.
1.8.2.1 Public
• Traditionally governments have always been a small proportion of the economy,
but with the agricultural revolution, governments started to play an increasingly
important role in the administration of cities, regions and nations. The Egyptian,
Mesopotamian, Greek and Roman civilizations are perfect examples.
• The advent of the industrial revolution led to much greater centralization of
economic resources and higher per capita incomes which could support greater
levels of taxation.
• However, even as recently as 1914, agriculture alone represented, directly and
indirectly, 60% of employment in most Western countries. Governments
represented less than 10% of employment and spending.
• The impact of the depression in the 1930s and the introduction of income taxes
to pay for the First and Second World Wars led to the rapid growth of
governments to the point that where they now represent more than 50% of the
spending in certain socialist countries like Sweden and the Netherlands.
• It would not be possible to manage a modern economy without the presence of
government. The following are very stylized definitions of the various degrees of
involvement:
o Socialism: the government may not own the means of production or the
resources but it does intervene in the market place to redress perceived social
and market failures resulting from private enterprise.
The private sector will tend to under-provide certain public and merit
goods while producing too much pollution and demerit goods such as
illegal drugs.
Governments are not so involved in questions of how things are to be
produced as they are in what should be produced and for whom.
o Fascism: the government does not own, but it does control the means of
production and natural resources.
Goods and services are produced by the private sector so the “how” is
determined by private businesses. But the what and the for whom is
determined largely by government.
• Public ownership: during the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s it became fashionable
for governments to nationalize private industries.
o This may have been partly a reaction against the fascism of the Second World
War or it may have been a result of over-enthusiastic socialist policies.
• From the mid 1970s to the present, the pendulum has swung back the other way
and many previously publicly owned industries have now been privatized.
o This was a reaction against the poor management of nationalized industries
which led to inefficiency on a large scale.
o Today we are more aware that some industries simply function better when
privately owned and run, while others are better when publicly owned and
managed.
1.8.2.2 Private
Traditional Economies
• Resources and production systems are owned by the community
• Production takes place using traditional technology
• Allocation is based on long established patterns of community sharing.
• The production possibility boundary tends to expand and contract slowly as
population grows, or when there are climatic changes, or when new tools are
introduced
• Advantages of traditional systems:
UWC in Mostar: Blue Book Economics Notes, page 26
o Resources are protected and the systems have proven to be sustainable over
long periods of time
o Losses and profits are shared by the whole community, peer pressure forces
decision makers to be careful
Free market
• Resources and production systems are owned by individuals and the allocation of
resources, what, how and for whom, is left to the forces of supply (production)
and demand (consumers) operating in a relatively free market.
• Producers attempt to maximize profits, but if they are poor at predicting:
o They produce too much (surpluses) and will lose money.
o They underestimate (shortages), will miss the potential profit and competitors
will make the profit instead.
o Only those firms which can predict most closely what consumers will want will
earn adequate money to stay in business.
• Economies in transition can also refer to countries where there is a shift from one
sector to another:
o The most well known is often referred to as the rural-urban migration where
people caught up in rural poverty move to an urban setting so they can
participate in the formal economy.
o Families are attracted to the cities because of the spending on public and
merit goods which were not available in their rural communities.
o Typically death rates fall at first, followed by lower birth rates. This can lead
to slower population growth.
• Real income: when income rises, more people can afford to buy cars and the
demand curve for cars shifts to the right for normal goods.
• Population: if the population grows there are more consumers and demand will
shift out to the right.
• Tastes: more people may want the product or service and demand shifts out.
• Advertising: the more effective the advertising the greater the demand, unless
the government uses negative advertising for things such as the dangers to
health from cigarette smoking.
• Credit: more credit means it is easier to borrow for durable goods like cars and
demand shifts right.
Movement along
Demand Curve
•
Price
A decrease in the price of a product
or service from P1 to P2 leads to
o An increase in the quantity P1 A
demanded from Q1 to Q2
o An expansion along Demand 1 De
from A to B De
m
an
m d
an 1
•
d
An increase in the price of a product 2
or service from P2 to P1 leads to P2
C
B
o A decrease in the quantity
demanded from Q2 to Q1
o A contraction along the demand
curve from B to A
Q1 Q3 Q2 Quantity
Shift of Demand
• A decrease in income, a decrease in the price of a substitute, a decrease in
population, an increase in advertising opposing this good or service, an increase
in interest rates (or reduction in availability of credit), an increase in the price of
a complement can all lead to the demand curve shifting in to the left from
Demand 1 to Demand 2
o At a price like P2, quantity demanded falls from Q2 to Q3.
• The income effect was more powerful than the substitution effect, and less was
bought as the price fell: the demand curve was positively sloped.
2.1.2 Supply
2.1.2.1 Definition of Supply
• The supply curve shows the amount of goods and services that producers are
willing to and able to produce and offer for sale.
Taxes
• An increase in taxes is like an increase in cost for producers. That means that the
supply curve will shift to the left: less is offered at each price as it is more
expensive to produce.
Subsidies
• A subsidy is a gift of money from the government to the producer. That means
the supply curve shifts out to the right: more is offered at each price as it is now
cheaper to produce.
Movement along
• When the price increases:
o It becomes more profitable to produce and sell more so more is offered for
sale at higher prices
o There is an expansion along the supply curve.
Shift in Supply
• A decrease in costs of production, a reduction in government taxes, an increase
in subsidies, a technological breakthrough, or firms entering the industry will all
lead to the supply curve shifting out.
o More will be supplied at the original market price.
• In some rural markets, fruits, vegetables and fish may be quite expensive in the
morning but be marked down drastically toward the end of the day, particularly if
there is no refrigerated storage available.
Price of Cars
10000
revenue and donations, and the non market 8000
goods and services are distributed to 6000 Demand
4000
households and firms.
2000
0
• Equilibrium occurs when quantity demanded 0 10 20 30 40 50 60
equals quantity supplied. Quantity of Cars
• Only at a price of $8,000 does quantity
demanded equal quantity supplied.
• Price below equilibrium: households will desire more but firms will not be
prepared to offer as much leading to excess demand.
o Inventories will be falling, and sellers can charge a higher price.
o The price will edge back up to $8,000 where the quantity supplied and
demanded will be equal to each other again.
Supply
overcrowding.
o In some countries medicine is free and again there Quantity of Roads
• A fall in demand: excess supply, inventories rise, price and quantity decrease.
• A rise in supply: excess supply, inventories rise, price falls and quantity rises.
• A fall in supply: excess demand, inventories fall, price rises and quantity falls.
UWC in Mostar: Blue Book Economics Notes, page 33
2.2 Elasticities
%∆q ∆q / q ∆q / ∆p
PED = = =
%∆p ∆p / p q/ p
Where: ∆ = change in.
• The term on the top is the slope of the demand curve, while the term on the
bottom is the slope of the ray from the origin to the point on the curve where
you are measuring elasticity.
• As price and quantity demanded are inversely related the equation is always
negative, but we tend to ignore the negative sign and report a whole number.
2.2.1.2 Definition
• Elasticity measures the sensitivity of demand (quantity demanded) to changes in
variables such as its own price.
• If the supply curve shifts because of government subsidies, it is useful to know
the impact on the price and the quantity demanded.
S2
o A subsidy leads to an outward shift in supply,
prices fall leading to a large increase in
quantity demanded (%∆q > %∆p). Demand
o If price fell by 10% and quantity demanded
rose by 50%, the elasticity would be equal to
5, an unusually high number for elasticity Quantity of Records
o Perfectly elastic (PED = ∞): infinite change in
quantity demanded (%∆q = ∞)
Price of Oil
quantity demanded (%∆q < %∆p) Supply 1
Supply 2
o If price fell by 10% and quantity demanded rose
by only 5%, elasticity is equal to 0.5.
o Perfectly inelastic (PED = 0): no change in
quantity demanded (%∆q = 0)
Quantity of Oil
• In the figure:
E1
o Below the midpoint of a straight line demand η=1
curve, E3, elasticity is less than one and the
firm wants to raise price to increase TR. E3 η=1
η<1
o Above the midpoint, E2, elasticity is greater Total
Revenue
than one and the firm wants to lower price to
increase TR. Quantity
F
o At the midpoint, E1, elasticity is equal to one.
• For the straight demand curve, the ranges of elasticity are given by the formula:
EF
PED =
CE
• For the curved demand curve, EF is the distance from the point where the
tangent intersects the x axis to the tangency point divided by the distance from
the tangency point to the intersection with the y axis.
o For a hyperbola, the point of tangency will always be the midpoint of a
straight line and therefore, the elasticity is always equal to one along the
curve.
• Where there are two straight line demand curves of the same slope, the one
furthest from the origin is less elastic at each price than the closer one.
• Where two demand curves of different slopes intersect, the elasticities are
different because the slopes are different at that point.
• Size of item in budget: if consumers spend only a small amount on the item
(such as matches for lighting candles) relative to their budget, it is likely to be
inelastic: not sensitive to price changes
• Addiction: some goods are habit forming and tend to be price inelastic: coffee.
• Substitute goods:
o Quantity demanded of one good falls when the price of the substitute falls.
o If the price of coffee rises, people tend to consume less coffee and more tea.
2.2.3.2 Formula
%∆q
YED =
%∆Y
Income
YED < 0
o For basic or necessity goods, 0 <
YED < 1, quantity demanded will Basic or
not increase much as income necessity goods
Normal goods
0 < YED < 1
increases (income elasticity for YED > 0
Price
responsiveness of the quantity
supplied to changes in price:
Elastic
Supply
2.2.4.2 Formula
pp stic
Su Ela
%∆q
ly
PES =
it
Un
%∆p
Capacity:
• Ease of entry: the fewer the barriers to entry, the easier for firms to enter the
industry to increase supply in response to an increase in price and supply is
elastic.
• Factor mobility: the easier it is to move resources into the industry, the more
elastic the supply curve.
• Ease of switching: if land and labour can be shifted easily from growing one crop
to another, the supply will be more elastic:
o Even if it is possible to shift inputs, if the cost of inputs rises production costs
will rise rapidly as output rises and supply will be inelastic.
• Obviously a direct tax on income means that all levels of expenditure will be
lower for the consumer
o Note that there is no relative shift in expenditure from one good or service to
another.
UWC in Mostar: Blue Book Economics Notes, page 39
• The problem with indirect taxes is that unless they are imposed on all goods and
services at the same rate, there is a tendency for people to shift from goods
which are taxed to goods which are not taxed.
o This is often referred to as the tax distortion: the market solution is distorted
by the tax and people will shift their expenditure from taxed goods and
services to untaxed ones.
o The more elastic the demand for taxed goods, the more substitutes there are
and the easier it is for consumers to shift expenditures to the substitutes
For example: if there were a 100% tax on Coke, everyone would shift to
Pepsi
o For this reason governments impose taxes uniformly on all goods within a
certain group
• Tax efficiency means that the tax imposed leads to very little shifting of
expenditure and very little distortion of the market allocation
o In order to be efficient, governments tend to impose taxes on goods which
are very inelastic as there are few substitutes and very little expenditure
shifting takes place
In the case of perfectly inelastic demand, no distortion would occur.
o The other reason is that if taxes are imposed on elastic goods, not much tax
revenue is earned as people simply switch to untaxed substitutes.
• In the longer term, new supplies of oil were found, and the real price of oil
declined as consumers switched to substitutes.
• For goods like energy it takes time to use up the stock of appliances and
machinery and switch to those using energy in a more efficient manner.
• As economies grow:
o Firms will plan on producing fewer inferior
goods. Supply + tax
o Production and purchasing of capital goods Supply
and other factors can be planned.
o Production for exports can be planned as
new markets open and close.
Quantity
Price
Ad Valorem Tax
• Indirect taxes are placed on suppliers and have the Supply + tax
effect of raising costs shifting the supply curve in:
o Ad valorem taxes add a percentage on to prices
o Specific or unit taxes adds a fixed amount on to Supply
costs.
Deadweight Loss
C
Monthly Rent
R1
• The original equilibrium was at point A. Consumer's
• If a city government placed a tax on rents: Ro
share
equilibrium at C.
• The landlord receives the rental price of R1, but
pays the tax equal to the difference between R1 and Rental Accommodation
R1-t.
o The landlord’s share of the burden is the difference between what they
originally received and what they receive now: Ro minus R1-t.
o The tenant’s share of the burden is the difference between what they used to
pay and what they pay now: R1 minus Ro.
UWC in Mostar: Blue Book Economics Notes, page 41
• The deadweight loss represents the loss in social net benefits that no-one
receives. It occurs because less is supplied than is socially optimal.
o If demand were perfectly inelastic, the tenant would bear the whole burden.
o If demand were perfectly elastic, the landlord would bear the whole burden.
o The deadweight loss is less the more inelastic the demand and supply.
• Often referred to as a distortion: the more quantity responds because the curves
are elastic, the more quantity will fall as taxes are imposed. This is referred to as
a tax distortion because it distorts the way demand and supply would normally
respond in a tax-free market.
Limited Liability
• The separation of management and ownership through limited liability 500 years
ago is the key to why firms have been able to grow so rapidly and to become so
large.
o In the US only 1000 companies account for 60% of the GDP, the remaining
40% is produced by 11 million businesses and other institutions. The large
firms are 17,000 times larger on average than the small firms.
• Limited liability allows companies to raise money easily, because individuals are
not so afraid of losing everything in the case of bankruptcy.
• A typical company pays out half its earnings in the form of dividends, the rest is
re-invested.
• Firms finance:
o Fixed capital (usually associated with K) by borrowing money from the bank
or by selling bonds in the bond market or through retained earnings,
o Risk capital (usually associated with the entrepreneurial input) by issuing
shares,
o Working capital (usually associated with the L and NR used in production)
from retained earnings or by short term loans from banks.
• Firms must profit maximize in order to earn at least the Opportunity Cost Rate of
Return, otherwise their share value will fall, and another firm will buy them out
and force them to earn at least the Opportunity Cost Rate of Return,
o Natural resources are either treated like capital if the firm owns them, or
treated as an input that must be purchased.
• Firms carry inventories which act as shock absorbers so production and sales
never need to stop,
o There are three types: raw materials, intermediate (semi-finished) goods, and
final goods
o Inventories must be financed by working capital and require storage space
• Accountants in the USA are now starting to take opportunity cost into account
which means that ROI in the stock market is not going to look as high once the
new system is utilized
o If opportunity costs are taken into account, then companies will appear to
earn less money than they did in the past: economic costs are higher than the
previous accounting costs.
o Indeed, economists believe that if economic costs are used then firms will be
earning a normal profit when economic profit is equal to zero
• In the long run capital can be varied, new plant and equipment can be built, old
ones destroyed or sold off.
• The vertical difference between AC and AVC is just the AFC, and gets narrower
as AFC gets smaller
o We never need to draw AFC again, as we know it is already on the diagram
between AC and AVC.
to
cr
s
ea
rn
o Increased opportunities for
sin cal
al t u
sc g re
g e
e
re
n
tu
si
to larger plant size: a bigger company
ea
rn
cr
st
De
o
• Firms are motivated to use less of factors that become scarcer to the economy
and more of the factors that become more plentiful.
• The same will be true for regions and nations: if a country has relatively more
land than labour, farming will tend to use the cheaper land more extensively
while economizing on the more expensive labour.
• In China where labour is abundant and K is scarce, a much less mechanized
method of production is appropriate.
• In both the long run and the short run a minimum achievable cost can be found
for each possible level of output, and a curve can be constructed called the long
run average cost curve (LRAC).
o Factor prices are assumed to be fixed. If factor prices rise, the whole LRAC
rises.
o Technology is assumed to be fixed.
• To move from one point on the LRAC to another is very different from the short
run AC: it requires an adjustment in all factors, a new plant must be built.
o All the possibilities are given by a variety of SRAC curves, one for each plant.
o The LRAC is the envelope of the SRACs, it is tangent at just that output where
K is optimal in the MP/P formula above.
o Note there is no long run marginal cost:
The reason is that the LRAC is actually a locus of points, it is not a
function.
That means that a new plant must be built at each point on the LRAC, so
there are no marginal costs only average costs.
Technical Innovation
• In the long run there is great potential to drop costs through technical
innovation. Indeed, sustainable growth in the future cannot come about through
greater and greater use of natural and environmental resources, it must come
from technological change.
• Loss of technical knowledge is very rare, thus technical change always causes the
LRAC curve to fall:
o Labour: through better health and education, productivity of labour inputs can
rise dramatically.
• Services: over the last 15 years there has been a massive shift over to the
service sector. We have moved from goods industries where increases in capital
UWC in Mostar: Blue Book Economics Notes, page 48
per worker led to enormous increases in productivity. The growth in productivity
does not appear to be as rapid for services as there are less opportunities to
substitute machines for people.
• Pollution: there has also been increasing pollution and environmental degradation
which has lowered the quality of life.
• Crowding out: government deficits have drained the savings from the private
sector which would normally have been invested in K and in R&D.
• The institutional climate has become very hostile to innovation. This is one of
the main reasons for the emphasis on deregulation.
2.3.4 Revenues
2.3.4.1 Total revenue
• Total Revenue is simply the price of the good times the number of units sold
TR = P * Q
2.3.5 Profit
2.3.5.1 Distinction between normal (zero) & supernormal (abnormal) profit
• Profit, sometimes also called net revenue, is the difference between total costs
and total revenues,
• If a salary is imputed for the owner, and a cost of capital imputed for the owner's
investment:
o One would expect there to be zero profits on average,
o If profit is greater than zero, the firm is earning supernormal or abnormal or
pure or economic profits.
• Return on investment (ROI) (in the US it is called IRR: internal rate of return):
o The net revenue is divided by the total investment in the firm,
o If there is no attempt to impute a salary and cost of capital for the owner:
The return on investment would be expected to be equal to the
Opportunity Cost Rate of Return, and firms will stay in the industry.
If it is greater than the opportunity cost rate of return, the firm is earning
a supernormal profit, this will become known and firms will attempt to
enter the industry.
If it is less than the opportunity cost rate of return, firms will leave the
industry.
• However, there are other goals that a firm can pursue in the short run.
o It may decide to maximize sales in order to try and capture a certain segment
of a market.
The firm will do this subject to earning some minimum level of profit,
otherwise larger firms may acquire the firm and force it to become profit
maximizing again.
If it is successful, the firm can carve out a larger market share which may
allow it to acquire some monopoly power which could allow it to earn
supernormal profit in the future.
o Alternatively the firm may pursue the goal of maximizing total revenue
This occurs at the point on the demand curve where elasticity is equal to
one.
The point of revenue maximization is very unlikely to coincide with the
point of minimum cost which means that the firm will not be maximizing
profit and will not be able to maintain this strategy for very long.
2.3.6.4 The possibility of abnormal profits or losses in the short run and
normal profits in the long run
• In the long run no input is fixed and firms are free to enter or exit from an
industry, and adjust capital investment by eliminating or adding plant.
• Normal profits are already included in the costs of production:
o The rental price of capital includes the opportunity cost of using money to
invest in capital.
o Management salaries are included in costs.
Cost of Output
it produce? then produce where P = MC
MC
o If it produces at q1, MC is greater than
MR which means the extra worker hired MC > MR
40
30
Price
20
10
0
Q1 Q2 Q1 + Q2
o At $10, only the first firm will be prepared to supply at that price and that is
the amount picked up for the industry.
o At a price of $20 we pick up output both from the first and from the second
firm. The sum of Q1 + Q2, gives us the industry supply curve.
Price
So representative firm AVC
S1 MC AC
Abnormal
B profit
b
Pb
Price
A C
Long Run Supply
a
Pa
Do D1
Q1 Q2
Quantity qa qb Quantity
• Long run supply curve: the locus of long run equilibrium points traced out when
the demand curve shifts around: the points where P = AC for each firm.
• Increasing cost industry: the long run supply curve is upward sloping
o When new firms enter or new plants are built by existing firms, there may be
a shortage of some critical factor inputs.
The price of factor inputs may rise.
The whole cost structure, including LRAC, will shift upward for each firm.
P = AC occurs at a higher price than the original long run equilibrium.
o When the points of equilibrium are connected it leads to an upward sloping
long run supply curve.
• Falling cost industry: the long run supply curve is downward sloping
o Each firm is already at the MES point, there cannot be a downward sloping
supply curve in a perfectly competitive industry.
o However, it is possible for the industry as a whole to experience external
economies.
Agglomeration economies: spatial location economies which lower the cost
of a certain input because the industry is larger.
o Because the long run supply is a locus and not a function, it is impossible to
move backward up the curve if demand should fall
Once innovations and improvement have been made, they will never be
reversed
What is being tracked is the chronological development of the industry, if
demand falls, we simply stay at the same costs so prices will not rise up
the long run supply curve.
Allocative Efficiency
• Allocative efficiency concerns the choice between alternative points on the
production possibility curve. When a particular combination is allocatively
efficient, we say the economy is Pareto Efficient.. At that point it is impossible to
produce a different combination of goods that makes one person better off
without making at least one other person worse off.
• Allocative efficiency occurs at the output where:
marginal social benefit = marginal social cost
• The allocation of resources is efficient when each producer’s price equals its
marginal cost of production in all industries simultaneously.
• In North America technical efficiency occurs when output is produced with the
minimum amount of resources, there is no waste. However, for the IB, technical
efficiency is defined to be the same as economic efficiency.
o There are a number of technically efficient ways to produce output, economic
efficiency means the firm uses that technique which produces a given level of
output at the lowest cost.
o This will occur under perfect competition because firms have to cut costs to
compete.
Sunset Industries
• Sunset industry: this is defined as an industry where the demand curve is
continually shifting to the left. Prices are falling and firms suffer losses.
o Firms will continue to operate capital equipment as long as P > AVC.
o As soon as price falls below AVC, the industry will start to break up.
2.3.7 Monopoly
2.3.7.1 Assumptions of the model
• Market demand is no different for a monopolist, but the firm is the industry and
faces the whole of the market demand which usually has a negative slope.
• This means that the average revenue is simply the demand curve, and because it
is downward sloping, the average revenue is now downward sloping as well.
D e nu
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v
an ge
R
•
al
• The operating zone of the demand curve: as MC is always greater than zero, the
monopolist produces where MR is greater than zero.
o By definition, the zone of the demand curve associated with MR > 0 is
associated with that part of the demand curve which is elastic.
o Where MR = 0, the demand curve has an elasticity equal to 1.
UWC in Mostar: Blue Book Economics Notes, page 58
o Thus the monopolist will never produce where the demand curve is inelastic.
• Profit: even if Q is set at the point where MC = MR, and price is set along the AR
curve above that Q, it does not guarantee that price is greater than AC.
o Short run: the monopolist will only produce if P > AVC.
o Long run: if price is persistently below AC, the monopolist will exit, he will
only stay in the industry if price is equal to or greater than AC.
Advantages
• Obviously with a natural monopoly there is an advantage for society when a firm
comes in and produces the goods and services needed at the bottom of the LRAC
curve
o These industries may be regulated by government to ensure prices are
lowered below the monopoly price although the prices seldom drop to the
level one would expect in perfect competition
o Typically regulators will set the price at the AC simply because it is too difficult
to determine the MC.
• Because monopolies earn supernormal profit, it was assumed for a long time that
they used those profits to invest in research and development (R&D) which is of
benefit to society compared to perfect competition where supernormal profits are
not available for investment in R&D
o However, several studies done in recent years indicate that monopolists do
not invest in innovation
Instead profits are used to erect even higher barriers to entry
Or profits are used to lobby government regulators to allow prices to rise
even higher each year.
The industry model where supernormal profits appear to be reinvested in
R&D is monopolistic competition: with no barriers to entry, firms focus on
innovation to attract consumers.
Disadvantages
• Remember that unit elasticity along the industry demand curve occurs at the
point where total revenue is at a maximum
o This will occur where MR is equal to zero
o That means that the monopolist will always operate to the left of the point
where unit elasticity occurs on the demand curve
If it operates to the right of the point where MR = 0, marginal cost will be
higher than marginal revenue and the second rule tells us that is not
possible.
The monopolist can maximize profit by cutting production back to the
point where MR = MC
• In perfect competition you may remember that the industry moves to the point
where AR = AC, the point where supernormal profit = 0, and the point where
MR = AR = MC = AC
o To earn supernormal profit the monopolist cuts production back to the point
where the downward sloping MR = MC, and sets price on the demand curve
above that point
o One of the greatest disadvantages of monopoly power is that prices are
higher and output is lower than in perfect competition
• Studies indicate that supernormal profits may allow monopolists to use predatory
practices
A monopolist in one market will enter another market or a similar market
in a foreign country, drop prices to drive out competition, and then raise
prices above historical levels in order to recoup losses and make
supernormal profits
A number of LDCs are very concerned that this may be happening through
globalization where MNCs earning supernormal profits displace local
businesses through predatory practices
Some countries such as Canada have introduced legislation which prohibits
predatory pricing practices on the part of MNCs.
• Monopsony power: if there is just one or a few major buyers, then consumer can
exert market power. This can occur where the government is the only
purchaser. It is possible for large users of a service such as a railway or airline to
force the supplier to offer a secret rebate. The consumer extracts part of the
producer surplus and may force the supplier to price discriminate.
• In the short run, by differentiating their product, firms gain some inelasticity on
the demand curve facing their segment of the market
o They are then able to operate like a miniature monopolist and extract
supernormal profits
• In the long run, competitors will copy the differentiation and steal customers
away
o The result is that the demand curve will start shifting in to the left for the
original firm and supernormal profits will disappear.
o Firms will once again engage in R&D to differentiate the product for a new
round of short run supernormal profits
UWC in Mostar: Blue Book Economics Notes, page 61
o This is very different from a monopolist which may spend its supernormal
profits erecting ever higher entry barriers.
Monopolistic Competition: Short Run
2.3.8.2 Short Run and long run equilibrium
MC
• All firms charge the same price. If one firm ACmc
AC
• As rivals move in the demand is also likely to get more elastic because of the
presence of substitutes.
• In monopolistic competition firms operate to the left of the capacity point: there
is excess capacity in the industry. This is the price society pays for:
o The variety that comes with product differentiation.
o The great innovations which can help to drive out the PPF curve.
• If product differentiation is possible, each firm will face a demand curve that is
less than perfectly elastic.
o By differentiating products, each firm has carved out a small segment of the
market which allows it to behave somewhat like a monopolist.
2.3.9 Oligopoly
2.3.9.1 Assumptions of the model
• An oligopoly is characterized by a few firms which dominate an industry.
Typically one is larger than the rest such as General Motors in the US or Toyota
in Japan.
• The key is the way in which rivals react: the interdependence of firms helps to
explain why many product markets exhibit long periods of price stability.
• Fixed costs may be sufficiently great that there is only room for a few producers.
em ra e)
(A eve
rgin
an ge
R
• Assuming all firms in the industry have agreed to join the cartel, there are still
severe problems involved in keeping it together:
o Internal: it pays to cheat: the firm can reap the full benefit of all other firms'
restraint without having to cut their own production.
o External: its hard to prevent entry, particularly if super normal profits are
earned.
UWC in Mostar: Blue Book Economics Notes, page 63
2.3.9.4 Kinked Demand Curve
• Producers are afraid to increase prices as they know rivals will steal customers
away. If a firm tries to raise price, there will be a severe drop in sales, total
revenue will fall.
• If the firm lowers price, it will be exactly Oligopoly: Kinked Dem and Curve
• Small changes in cost leading to upward or downward shifts in the marginal cost
curve will have very little influence on output or price.
• Firms will think carefully before increasing prices even if costs have risen. The
result is an extremely stable industry where profit depends more on cost cutting
than on trying to increase revenues.
• Consumer surplus: demand curves have a negative slope because buyers are
prepared to pay different prices.
o The firm will try to sell each unit at its highest possible price.
o Perfect price discrimination occurs when the entire consumers surplus is
extracted by the firm: only two or three different prices is more common.
• Price discrimination is where the same good is sold at different prices to different
consumers even if the costs of production are the same. Producers use price
discrimination to extract the consumer surplus that would normally go to buyers.
• In the extreme case of perfect price discrimination, the MR curve becomes the
AR or demand curve.
o The monopolist goes to the point where P = MR = AR = AC and produces the
same quantity as in perfect competition.
o But profit will be equal to the whole area between the point of production on
the AC and the AR curve (demand curve): it gains the whole of consumer
surplus.
• Monopoly power:
o The firm must be able to prevent entry of other suppliers.
o The firm must control supply to each class or group of consumers so as to be
able to price discriminate between classes and to prevent resale amongst
consumers.
P1
• With electrical power, the AC curve is P2 AC
typically above the AR curve when a new P3
facility is built. The population is not yet
large enough to warrant the project but D = AR
will soon grow to the needed size.
Qm
• There is a short fall in revenue because Quantity
AC is above AR. In this case the
government allows the electrical utility to charge different prices such as P1 and
P2.
• The firm picks up the consumer surplus in the triangle, it is just enough to offset
the loss:
o Because the loss and the consumer surplus are about equal, the monopolist
only earns a normal rate of return.
o Eventually as the population grows, the demand curve will shift out, and price
discrimination could be eliminated.
Price
market.
• Community surplus is the sum of producer
and consumer surplus. Equilibrium Price &
• In perfect competition the market Quantity
Negative Externalities
Prices & Costs
Prices & Costs
Marginal Social Cost > Marginal Marginal Social Benefit < Marginal
Private Cost Private Benefit
PC
Tax = marginal MSC
M
external cost
=
SC
B
M
Pp2
MPC
B Tax = marginal
Pp2 Pp1 A external cost
Pp1 A
MPB
M
PB
=
M
SB
MSB
Qs Qp Quantity Qs Qp Quantity
• In production (pollution): if marginal social costs (MSC) are greater than marginal
private costs (MPC) there will be market failure as too much is produced at Qp
(point A) in the diagram on the left.
o Private producers may take excessive social risks if they do not suffer the
consequences of pollution.
o Common property problem: over crowding on highways, in cities and on
fishing grounds: people keep entering as long as the value they receive
exceeds operating costs, but it takes away from the value for others.
o The government can correct by applying a tax which raises MPC by the
amount of the externality until it equals MSC: called internalizing the
externality, and equilibrium now leads to production at Qp (point B)
o Sometimes firms treat the tax as a cost of doing business and refuse to abate
the pollution. Qp does not drop much and another policy such as jail
sentences for senior executives may be required.
Positive Externalities
MSC
A A
Pp1 Pp1
Subsidy = marginal
Pp2 external benefit
B
Pp2 B
M
PB
Subsidy = marginal
=
external benefit
M
MPB
SB
MSB
Qp Qs Quantity Qp Qs Quantity
• In production: if MSC is less than MPC there will be market failure as too little is
produced at Qp in the diagram on the left.
o The government can correct by applying a subsidy so that MPC + Subsidy =
MSC and the production increases to Qs in equilibrium at point B.
o Examples would include the training of workers who then leave for another
job or research and development which leads to increases in productivity in
the same or other industries (computer chips).
• In consumption: if MSB is greater than MSP there is market failure, the good is
called a merit good (examples: education or health care):
o Too little is consumed at Qp < Qs in the diagram on the right
o The government can correct by applying a subsidy which shifts supply out
until equilibrium is achieved at Qs (point B).
• Section 5.2.3 outlines the concept of the ecological footprint which is so closely
connected with the concept of sustainability.
o There are many definitions of sustainable development, perhaps the most
useful is the original one offered by the Bruntland commission:
Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the
present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet
their own needs.
o Consumers in MDC economies can only consume more by taking more and
more productive areas away from consumers in LDCs.
It is not a war for land, it is simply that the profitability of participating in
the process of globalization results in more and more areas of the world
becoming dedicated to servicing consumers in MDCs.
Not only can this not continue as some estimates indicate that we may be
over-utilizing the world’s productive resources by 20%, but the planet
simply cannot sustain rapid economic growth in the remaining LDCs
The only way that poverty can be eliminated in those LDCs while
maintaining the productive viability of the planet is for the ecological
footprint of MDCs to shrink: that means that consumers in those MDCs
must cut consumption.
• Standards are often set by engineers with no incentives for economizing on costs
while providing greater safety. Efficiency requires standards be expressed in
terms of some level of performance rather than mandated design and materials,
• Moral hazard:
o People will not clear snow from their sidewalk because private cost exceeds
private benefit if they are insured.
o Experts: if they benefit from lying, they may do so to get the business
o Insurance applicants: low risk will tend to underinsure (adverse selection)
o Government will make it mandatory: medical care to reduce adverse
selection.
Factor Mobility
• It is assumed in perfect competition that factors are free to move to the market
which offers the highest return. Because of such things as owning houses and
being raised in a community with family and friends, it is not always easy for
workers to move to the job with the highest salary.
• Market failure arises from:
o Lack of information: perhaps workers who lose a job in one region may not
be aware of job possibilities in other regions.
Rent Control
Rent Control: Long Run & Short Run
• An excellent example is Sshort run 3
the problem of a Sshort run 1 Slong run 1
Rent
• As govt. imposes rent control, rents drop from R1 to Rc, we move from point A to
B. In the short run: there will be excess demand equal to the distance between
the vertical short run supply and the quantity demanded at the new lower price
(H2 – H1).
• A black market appears: landlords will charge large deposits and entry fees up to
the box: R2DCRc, because R2 is the equilibrium rent at Sshort run 2
o Government will protect existing tenants through special laws
o Even with tenant laws preventing eviction, tenants lose as buildings are
allowed to deteriorate,
• To correct the market failure which arises from a shortage of housing, the
government builds public housing:
o The short run supply curve shifts out to Sshort run 3, and the ceiling price
becomes the new equilibrium price.
o The subsidy for building public housing is the striped box (it costs more to
build new houses as land is short in the city.
• Landlords can be subsidized and the long run supply curve shifts out to Slong run
2:
o Now it is cheaper for landlords to construct housing and short run supply will
shift out to Sshort run 3, the ceiling price becomes the new equilibrium price.
o Taxpayers now pay for the subsidy which will amount to the same as that
with public housing, the striped box.
2.4.2.3 Taxation
Price
Supply + tax
Supply + tax
Supply
Supply
Quantity Quantity
Price
S2
• Assume that govt. decides to raise B S1
Tax
taxes by taxing some good, called an Consumer
indirect tax share
C
• If producers try to raise prices by the P2
amount of the tax, from A to B, there Deadweight
will be excess supply, prices fall and a loss
P1 A
new equilibrium is found at C.
• The producer receives the price of P2 P2-t
Market
but must pay the tax equal to the Producer distortion
difference between P2 and P2-t. share
Deadweight Loss
• The deadweight loss represents the loss in Tax Burden
Price
government to both consumers and Producer S1
producers share Subsidy
• Governments provide a subsidy in P2+s
S2
order to divert more resources to the
production and consumption of certain A
P1 C
goods which are underproduced
because there are positive social
P2 B
externalities which cannot be captured Consumer
by producers and consumers. share
• Typically from an administrative point E
of view, it is easier to pay the D1
subsidies directly to a few producers.
The costs of paying subsidies to
individual consumers is too great.
Q1 Q2
• It is assumed that the subsidy is no Quantity
larger than the net social benefit that
derives from diverting resources to those goods and services being subsidized
o That is MSB ≥ MSC
o In many countries governments will subsidize basic food items such as milk
and bread.
o They may also subsidize primary and secondary schooling as well.
o The basic reason for doing so is because of the positive externalities
associated with better fed and better educated citizens and workers.
• The more inelastic is the demand, the more of the subsidy goes to the consumer.
• Governments are reluctant to subsidize goods and services with elastic demand
unless they want the subsidy to go to producers in order to promote research
and development into a new technology.
Cost of Abatement
o Pollution runs from the right to the
left so the maximum level is at the Marginal
Cost
origin
o Abatement runs from the origin to
the right.
Direct controls
• Emission standards are set but they lead to economic inefficiency:
o All producers forced to cut back the same amount, when low cost firms
should be cutting back more
o Regulatory boards are not motivated to be efficient in the choice of technique
o Monitoring and enforcing are expensive, fines and penalties often too lenient.
Emission Taxes
• Tax revenue is equal to tax times (Aopt – A1), where Aopt is the optimal level of
abatement determined above and A1 is the level the firm can afford to abate to:
o As long as MC is below the tax, it is worth abating pollution
o Once MC is greater than the tax, it is worth just paying the tax.
o Polluters are left to find the most efficient way to abate,
o Firms with high costs of abatement will not be able to afford to abate as much
as the low cost firms:
They will abate to point A1 and then pay a fine equal to Area A
They will save the abatement costs in Area B.
o Monitoring and enforcement are still expensive,
o There is still guess work in setting Aopt.
UWC in Mostar: Blue Book Economics Notes, page 76
Tradable Emission Permits:
• Standards are set and each firm is issued with a permit to pollute up to Aopt
(they abate back to Aopt and can pollute from the right up to the Aopt point).
• Firms are permitted to trade emission permits.
• Low cost firms abate beyond Aopt to A2 and sell the right to pollute to a high
cost firm.
o High cost firms will abate up to A1, then buy the right to pollute up to Aopt
o They will pay for the right if it costs less than the tax (the part of Area C they
pay for will be less than Area A that the government would charge).
Cost of abatement
abating beyond the
Marginal Cost Area B: money optimal level set by
for high cost saved by not law
abater abating to Aopt
Tax
Right to Right to
pollute pollute
• There are still problems in setting Aopt and in monitoring and enforcement,
• Alternatively government could auction off the rights to pollute rather than giving
them away:
o The government then earns the revenue from selling pollution rights. The
problem is that they typically do not use the money to abate the pollution.
o The rights to pollute can be reduced each year to lower the level of pollution.
• Firms object to paying for the rights to pollute, but the payment simply reflects
the fact that more efficient abaters are rewarded for having lower costs,
• The public objects to giving out rights to pollute:
o Experience has shown that self interest is the most efficient and effective way
to deal with environmental damage,
o More abatement takes place by letting lower cost producers do it.
• Although some international environmental treaties date back to early in the 20th
century, it was not until the 1960s that concern about environmental pollution
and the depletion of natural resources led to multilateral environmental
agreements.
o Earlier ones were single issue, use-oriented, mainly sectoral agreements and
legislation, primarily addressing allocation and exploitation of natural
resources such as wildlife, air and the marine environment
o Later agreements were more oriented toward ecosystems such as the Kyoto
Protocol.
Factor
Markets
en r
y m c to
ts
pa F a
$
Labour, capital &
$
In
co
natural resources Labour, capital &
m
natural resources
e
Govt.
Taxes Taxes
Import
Expenditures & Expenditures &
expenditures
Transfer payments Transfer payments
Import
expenditures Import
Foreign expenditures
Firms Export Households
countries
earnings
Interest Savings
Interest & dividends
Loans
re n
itu tio
$ ceip
pe um
institutions
ex ons
C
$
Markets
for Goods
& Services
• Households own the factors of production: labour, capital and natural resources.
They offer them to firms in return for wages, profit and rent.
• When consumers receive income:
o Leakage: they give some of it to government in the form of taxes
o Transfer payments: they receive subsidies from the government
o Leakage: they save some in financial institutions
o Injection: they receive interest on their savings and spend it
UWC in Mostar: Blue Book Economics Notes, page 80
o Leakage: they import goods and services from foreign countries
• If $100 worth of goods and services has been produced (output method) this
must have generated $100 worth of income (income method) for the various
factors of production and will lead to $100 worth of spending (expenditure
method).
• If spending by households is added up this will show the spending at market
prices. But this does not truly reflect income earned by factors because of
indirect (sales) taxes paid by firms to government and subsidies received by firms
from government Therefore:
• Investment includes:
o Circulating capital: inventories or stocks of raw materials, intermediate goods
and final goods.
o Capital equipment, machinery and buildings, and residential housing
o Gross investment consists of:
Net investment (new physical capital and stocks or inventories)
Depreciation or capital consumption: repair and maintenance to existing
stocks of capital or replacement of worn out capital.
Capital goods
factors of production are Potential PPF given K/L Faster economic growth but
E no economic development
the most common sources ratio and levels of
productivity (Q/L) in MDCs
of economic growth. C
o These can lead to an Greater spending on
outward shift in the Current PPF with
public and merit goods
leads to greater
PPF. good policies &
economic development
good business B
o However, an outward management
shift in the PPF does
not necessarily imply
A D
growth. If a country is Poor policies &
Greater economic
development but less
stuck inside the PPF, poor business growth in the future
management
then economic growth
has not taken place,
only the potential for
growth. Public & Merit Goods
• Growth can also take
place when a country is inside the PPF and through better policies is able to
move out to the PPF.
Economic Development
• Economic development occurs if
o There is a reduction in poverty, inequality, and unemployment
o When there has been spending on merit goods such as education and
healthcare
o Increased access to and the means to obtain improved food, shelter, health
and protection under law.
• If economic growth is 1%, it will take approximately 72 years for the value of the
economy to double.
• If the growth rate is 10% it will only take 7.2 years for the GDP to double.
• Future growth through capital goods: national income accounting does not
distinguish between the production of consumption and capital goods:
o Producing consumption goods leads to more today but less tomorrow.
o Production of capital goods involves less consumption today but higher future
growth and greater consumption in the future.
• While there have been attempts to expand GDP to include some of these
concepts and factors, the UN has moved ahead with two such measures:
o The Human Development Index (HDI) attempts to measure both the standard
of living as well as the quality of life by measuring life expectancy, educational
levels, and real per capital income adjusted by a PPP index.
o The Human Poverty Index (HPI-1) which attempts to measure that portion of
the population which does not benefit from a higher standard of living or
quality of life: the percentage of people expected to die before age 40, the
percentage of adults who are illiterate, and overall economic provisioning in
terms of the percentage of people without access to health services and safe
water and the percentage of under-weight children under five.
o A more recent index called HPI-2 which measures: the proportion of the
population which is likely to die before the age of 60, the percent of people
whose ability to read and write is not adequate, the percent of the population
with an income less than 50% of the median income for the country, the
percent of the labour force which has been unemployed for more than 12
months.
• The UN uses the HDI to classify countries into high, medium and low human
development
• The IMF classifies by industrial, developing and transitional economies
• Generally most economists classify countries as LDC, Newly Industrialized
Economies (NIE), and More Developed Countries (MDC):
o LDCs can also be divided into two groups:
Very poor LDCs may produce raw materials such as cotton and iron ore
and do not have the facilities for further processing. They are
characterized by having low per capita incomes, poor infrastructure and
dependence on the exports of low value added agricultural goods and raw
materials
Other LDCs are more sophisticated and can import the raw materials and
turn them into things like textiles from cotton and steel from iron ore.
Structural Change
• For most LDCs the critical change is from the primary to the secondary sector
UWC in Mostar: Blue Book Economics Notes, page 87
o Workers move from low value added agriculture, forestry and fishing to the
higher value added manufacturing and service (tourism) sectors
o The process of industrialization leads to:
A rapid increase in urban populations
Investment in infrastructure such as power and transportation
The diffusion of new technology which is enhanced through development
of education and employer organizations
Greater specialization and division of labour in the workplace
• At the same time as this process is occurring in the formal economy, typically an
informal or shadow economy is also formed
o These activities do not necessarily have to be illegal in nature, often they are
quite legitimate activities but they do not report income to avoid taxation and
they do not conform to environmental or labour rules and regulations
o The informal sector is often the place where many micro-enterprises and
small businesses are started because the risk of failure may be less
o Often the informal economy is the only place that uneducated workers from
rural areas can find work
o This leads to another form of dualism in the economy: a growing formal
sector which operates side by side with an informal sector. Often the formal
sector will subcontract out work to the informal sector because costs are
lower
o The disadvantage of the informal sector is that they do not pay taxes and can
contribute significantly to pollution and the unsafe exploitation of labour.
• (X - M) = Net Exports:
o As domestic income rises, people import more and net exports (X-M) fall.
o If world income rises, net exports (X-M) rise: X is a function of foreign
income.
o If domestic prices rise, exports fall and imports rise so net exports fall.
• If domestic prices rise relative to foreign prices, net exports tend to decline:
o Exports decline because foreigners find domestic goods more expensive.
o Domestic households find foreign goods relatively cheaper and will tend to
import more.
• Depreciation of the domestic currency means that it will buy less of foreign
goods, net exports tend to rise:
o Foreigners will find domestic goods cheaper
o Households will find foreign goods more expensive. Leakages and Injections
• There are three leakages from the system: savings (S), taxes T) and imports (M).
• There are three injections: investment, government expenditures and exports:
o There does not have to be equality between each pair (I = S, G = T, X = M).
o But there does have to be equality between all three injections and all three
leakages: (I + G + X) = (S + T + M) in equilibrium.
• People have a goal for their wealth and will keep adding assets to their portfolio:
o People keep adding to wealth until the income flow from that wealth will allow
them to retire:
o If there is a temporary increase in income
People save it and add it to wealth.
Consumption increases only out of the income earned from that wealth.
• For example: if you receive an extra $10,000 worth of income, and you normally
consume 80% of your income:
o We would expect you to consume $8,000 out of that extra income.
o Instead, if the increase in income is only temporary, you add the extra
$10,000 to your wealth
o If those assets earn $1,000 at 10% interest, you would consume only $800 or
80% of the income earned on your assets
o This has important implications for governments interested in cutting taxes in
order to increase consumption.
• If the level of wealth is below the target, households will save toward the goal.
If the level of wealth is at the target, households no longer need to save.
• An unexpected rise in wealth will lead people to save less, and vice versa.
• If prices rise in the economy, the purchasing power of wealth declines:
o Households will attempt to save more to add back the wealth that has been
lost, this means that consumption will fall.
• Substitution effect: when the price level rises in the economy there are no
substitutes to switch to as in microeconomics. There are three possibilities:
o Real balance effect: as prices rise, the real value of wealth declines, people
tend to build the wealth back again by saving more and consuming less.
o Net export effect: as domestic prices rise relative to foreign prices, exports
become expensive and imports cheaper: thus exports fall and imports rise.
o Interest rate effect: people may try to borrow to maintain their spending,
interest rates rise which discourages durables consumption and investment.
Shifts in SRAS
• If the factors of production become more productive, the SRAS curve shifts out.
• For most countries, there is a slow but steady increase in productivity each year:
o Part of it comes from new investment in capital equipment, and part from
education and training of the work force.
o This increase in productivity causes the SRAS curve to shift steadily outward,
although at a slow rate
o Technology: as technological progress occurs, the SRAS curve shifts out.
Price level
depends on people’s expectations
Zone 3
(zone 3 of the SRAS is often (Monetarist or
interpreted as the LRAS): Neoclassical)
If people correctly anticipate
inflation, expected inflation will
equal actual
Unemployment only departs from Zone 2
the natural rate when inflation is Zone 1
not anticipated. (Keynesian)
The natural rate of unemployment
will change only if there are Real Income
changes in frictional, structural or
seasonal unemployment.
o An SRAS which is fairly flat (zone 1) until the GDP starts to approach the
natural rate of unemployment at which point it slopes up (zone 2). In zone 1:
The expected rate of inflation is constant
The natural rate of unemployment is constant.
LRAS
3.3.3 Full employment level of SRAS2
national income
SRAS1
• At Yfe the economy is at the full
SRAS3
employment level of income: in long run E3
equilibrium: E2
• The SRAS will shift in to the left because of upward pressure from the labour
market and the increased costs of capital.
• Short run equilibrium is associated with the following criteria:
o AD = SRAS; leakages = injections; and inventories are unchanging.
• Long run equilibrium requires all the above plus:
o %∆wages = %∆productivity; or real wages are unchanging.
• The cycles are not exact, and sometimes the mini-recession in the middle of the
decade is deeper than the recession at the end of the decade.
Re
ery
capacity. There is a negative output gap
ce
cov
ss
shortage of skilled
ion
Troughs are associated with Booms are associated with
Re
people and raw - low inflation, - inflation,
- high unemployment, - low unemployment,
materials. It is a - low interest rates Trough - high interest rates
period of excess - low ROI - high ROI
demand. Time
o Prices rise faster
than costs, profits are rising and investors are optimistic.
• The boom can turn into a slump if people decide they do not need to replace
capital equipment because this leads to a fall in spending.
Recessions
Job Creation & Unemployment
Labour Force
Trough
• A trough is associated with high unemployment of labour and unused productive
capacity (unemployed capital).
o Unemployment rises not because people are laid off, but because the job
creation rate is slower than the number of people entering the job market.
• A trough cannot last long because capital equipment wears out and both
households and businesses start to replace it.
o Spending picks up and we enter a recovery.
o As sales and profits pick up, investors become more optimistic.
Depression
• If the recession is particularly deep and long lasting, it is called a depression.
o Typically a depression results when there is a financial panic during a
recession.
o Better knowledge about the economy, stronger economic policies and the
steady growth resulting from industrialization and technological breakthroughs
appear to have prevented serious depressions in most western economies
since 1930.
• Central banks are also usually responsible for the money supply.
o If the Central Bank (CB) buys a bond from the public, the public receives the
cash in the form of a cheque from the CB and the CB receives the bond.
• Money is created through deposit creation rather than printing currency.
• Central banks are often responsible for bond and money markets.
o Bond markets refer to markets where debt instruments which mature in one
year or more are traded.
• Money markets: where debt instruments maturing within one year are traded.
o In most countries the most common form of money market instrument is the
treasury bill issued by a government
• The opportunity cost of holding money is the interest foregone on the bond that
could have been purchased instead.
• As GDP rises in the economy, people will spend more because consumption rises,
therefore the transactions balances will also rise.
Commercial Banks
• Commercial or chartered banks hold deposits for their customers and permit
certain deposits to be transferred by cheque from one account to another.
o They make loans to households and firms and buy government securities.
• With credit granting systems like Visa, banks form a group to spread the risk.
• Bank deposits are a medium of exchange only because they can be transferred
through the use of a cheque.
• Banks offer a safe place to store money and to earn a guaranteed return,
commercial bank liabilities are the deposits owed to the depositors.
• Banks attract deposits by offering a rate of interest and by providing services for
a small fee such as clearing cheques and providing regular monthly statements.
• Commercial bank assets are:
o The securities it buys which pay interest and dividends
o The loans it makes to its customers.
Banks expect that the loan will be repaid, and that they will make enough
money on the interest to pay for the paperwork and the risk of non-
payment.
• When the CB sells a bond to the public, it receives a cheque from the person and
sends it to the commercial bank for payment.
o The commercial bank sends the money to the CB and there is a contraction of
the money supply through the relending chain operating backwards.
o Rather than calling in loans which can lead to bankruptcy, the commercial
bank typically does not make any new loans until its reserves have recovered.
• When the CB sells bonds in the market, there are two effects:
o The reserve effect is that money now leaves the system and is put in the CB
leading to a contraction of the money supply.
o At the same time, when the CB sells bonds, the price of bonds falls and
interest rates rise leading to a contraction of investment and the AD curve.
• Thus inflationary gaps are self correcting as long as the money supply is not
increased, but the process is frustrated if the money supply is increased.
o With inflation of 15%, if the money supply increases 15%, people do not sell
bonds to obtain cash, interest rates do not rise to choke off real expenditure.
UWC in Mostar: Blue Book Economics Notes, page 98
Closing an Inflationary Gap: Monetary Policy
• Monetary policy could close the gap more quickly by decreasing the money
supply, leading to a rise in interest rates, a fall in investment: AD shifts left.
• If the central bank wants to raise interest rates:
o They will sell bonds, the money supply will contract
o There will be an excess demand for money
o Households will sell bonds, and the price of bonds will fall
o This leads to an increase in interest rates in the market
• As wages are sticky down, however, the SRAS shifts slowly to the right, and the
fall in prices and the monetary adjustment mechanism operates very slowly.
• Monetary policy could close the gap more quickly by increasing the money
supply, interest rates fall, investment rises and AD shifts out.
• If the central bank wants to reduce interest rates:
o They will buy bonds, the money supply increases
o People will buy bonds with the excess and the price of bonds will rise
o Interest rates will fall, and there is less incentive to hold bonds and eventually
there will no longer be an excess demand for bonds.
• Short term fluctuations are dampened by the automatic stabilizers even when it
is difficult to recognize when gaps appear and to apply policy.
UWC in Mostar: Blue Book Economics Notes, page 99
• Automatic stabilizers impose fiscal drag during recoveries:
o As the economy recovers G falls and T rises which slows recovery.
• Supply side policies attempt to shift the LRAS to the right far enough to reduce
inflationary pressures:
o By focusing on incentives:
Taxes and subsidies are reduced to encourage work, risk taking and
investment
Unemployment benefits are reduced, raising the opportunity cost of not
working.
• In Germany students in high school try out careers in sunrise industries to reduce
the numbers of students graduating in a redundant career,
UWC in Mostar: Blue Book Economics Notes, page 100
o About 60% of high school students in Germany participate in a work coop
program where they work from 1 to 5 afternoons a week in a firm or
occupation they are interested in entering.
o Students are allowed to change once a year, and employers are permitted to
ask students to leave if they have problems.
o Because students are exposed only to jobs and careers where there are
openings, training for sunset industries is avoided.
o Because both students and firms have a chance to assess each other, by the
end of high school firms are happy to hire students and students are happy to
go to work in familiar firms.
US Approach
• The US government is reluctant to become involved in directing people into
training and careers and has depended on tax cuts to bring about supply side
changes.
• Reducing taxes will increase supplies of labour and capital:
o Lower taxes would increase the return on investment (ROI) and provide an
incentive to invest in capital, thus increasing K/L.
o Lower taxes would also increase the return on research and development
(R&D), leading to investment in even more productive capital.
o People who were already employed would work harder if they could keep
more income after taxes, and those who were unemployed would be brought
into the work force by the boost in income.
• Tax revenue would remain constant, even though tax rates had been cut:
o The increases in productive capacity (capital) and in productivity (labour)
would shift LRAS to the right increasing the taxes collected.
Lags
• Discretionary policy often runs into problems with lags:
o Recognition lag: it takes some time before a gap is recognized.
o Legislative lag: it takes time to decide what to do and if it requires a change
in taxes or borrowing, it takes time to get approval from parliament.
o Implementation lag: it takes more time to put the policy into effect.
• The result is that stabilization policy or demand management policy has often
done more to encourage fluctuations than to remove them.
Reversibility
• Another problem is that policies put into effect may be very difficult to reverse:
o If there were a recessionary gap, the government may decide to cut
corporate taxes:
o After the usual lag, businesses start to increase investment.
o By the time the investment shifts out the AD curve, the economy may already
have recovered and the shift in AD may open an inflationary gap.
o The problem then becomes one of trying to reverse the policy. It is extremely
unpopular to raise taxes when businesses have become used to lower taxes.
• To overcome this problem it has been suggested that policies be made short run:
o The government announces that the tax cuts will only last for two years.
o This may help with investment, but many consumers will simply absorb the
increased income into savings as a result of the wealth effect.
• If the money supply is increased, and the AD curve shifts out to the right,
workers anticipate that increasing the money supply will lead to higher prices and
they will demand higher wages right away:
o The general expectation of an x percent inflation creates pressures for wages
to rise by x percent and hence for unit costs and the SRAS curve to shift in by
x percent.
o As AD shifts to the right, the SRAS shifts to the left.
• While it is unlikely that the effects are completely offset, expectations are yet
another reason why monetary policy may not be very effective.
• Lags are long and unpredictable increasing the risk that using monetary policy
could lead to destabilizing effects.
• The poor record of monetary policy as a short term stabilizer has led to the
introduction of a monetary rule approach where the money supply would only be
increased by a set amount.
o Some countries chose the rate as equal to the population growth rate plus the
growth rate in productivity.
o Experience since then shows that there have been quite sudden shifts in the
liquidity preference function, also known as the demand for money, which has
made the monetary rule approach less stable than had been hoped.
• Most economists now believe that fiscal policy must be used to restore the
economy to full employment during a serious recession or depression:
o The labour market experiences sticky wages which means wages fall too
slowly
o Weaknesses in the monetary transmission mechanism plus lags mean that
monetary policy is unpredictable.
e
in
relationship between income and consumption.
Consumption
L
e
• The 45 degree line indicates the transfers of re 0.8
g
C=
e
MP
D
n ct
4
n Fu
tio
another. nsu
mp
• C o
The consumption function cuts the 45 degree
line at the point where consumption equals
income of $40,000: $40,000
Expenditures
effect and results from the respending 80 B AE1
chain: 60
o People receiving the payment from 40
A
the increase in AE will have to pay 20
taxes on it, will save some, and will 0
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180
then consume domestic and foreign
Real National Income
goods with what is left.
o The leakage into savings, taxes and imports means there will be less money
to be respent at the next link in the respending chain: the higher the
leakages, the shorter the respending chain.
• The simple multiplier in a closed economy (no trade) and no government taxation
is given by:
∆Y 1 1
k= = ⇒
∆AE 1 − MPC MPS
where:
MPC = marginal propensity to consume;
MPS = marginal propensity to save.
• The multiplier in a closed economy (no trade), and with a government sector
which both spends and taxes is given by:
∆Y 1
k= =
∆AE 1 − (1 − t ) MPC
where:
t = the marginal tax rate
• The multiplier in an open economy (with trade) and with a government sector
which both spends and taxes is given by:
∆Y 1
k= =
∆AE 1 − (1 − t )( MPC − MPM )
where:
MPM = marginal propensity to import
Price level
the multiplier has been reduced so income
does not increase to A but to point E2: there Zone 3
(Monetarist or
have been price induced leakages into savings Neoclassical)
and imports.
• Zone 3: on the right hand vertical section of
the SRAS curve, typically associated with a
boom in the economy, income is at or above Zone 2
the full employment point: Zone 1
o The multiplier is reduced in effect: there (Keynesian)
are virtually no skilled people left to hire,
and no un-utilized efficient capital Real Income
o Unit costs rise, prices rise, and there are price induced leakages into savings
and imports.
• The capital output ratio indicates the amount that must be invested in K in order
to get a flow of value output, the average ratio for most firms is 5:
o To increase production of a particular good so that an extra $10 is added to
net revenue, it is necessary to invest in $50 worth of capital.
Accelerator Example
Sales $ 1,000 $ 1,100 $ 1,200 $ 1,200 $ 1,100
Capital 10 11 12 12 11
Depreciation 1 1 1 1 0
Net Investment 0 1 1 0 0
Gross Investment 1 2 2 1 0
• A company has 10 machines each worth $500 which produce $100 worth of
output each year: 10 machines, total sales of $1,000:
o Depreciation is one machine a year
o Gross investment = depreciation plus net investment: 1 machine per year.
• Many economists believe that business cycles come from changes in gross
investment which depend on the multiplier and the accelerator:
o Sales have to be rising in order to prompt a higher level of investment.
o Even though sales settle down at a new higher level, investment falls back.
o If sales actually fall, as they do in a recession:
Net investment will go to zero
Gross investment may also fall to zero: one of the new machines which is
no longer needed because of the fall in sales will replace the old machine.
• The accelerator and multiplier working together can lead to business cycles:
o Coming out of a recession, when aggregate expenditure rises, the multiplier
boosts income.
o If business people feel the change is permanent they buy capital at the rate
of 5 times as much as the increase in sales because of the capital output
ratio.
o The rise in investment leads to another increase in aggregate expenditure and
the multiplier boosts income yet again.
o They can expand the money supply (government borrows from the central
bank equivalent to printing money) and use the money to finance the
increase in G, but this leads to inflation.
• The attempt to use fiscal policy to fine tune the economy is no longer accepted
as a valid stabilization tool. Only where there are large persistent gaps,
particularly gaps associated with recessions or depressions, is it generally agreed
that fiscal policy does have a role to play in restoring the economy to full
employment.
where:
o Using the International Labour Organization (ILO) definitions:
Employees: people who regard themselves as paid employees. People with
two or more jobs are counted only once.
Self-employed: people who regard themselves as self-employed, that is,
who in their main employment work on their own account, whether or not
they have employees.
In employment: employees, self-employed and participants in government
training schemes and people doing unpaid family work.
Unemployed: those who are without a job, are available to start work in
the next two weeks, who want a job and have been seeking a job in the
last four weeks or are waiting to start a job already obtained.
Labour Force also defined as economically active: those in employment
plus ILO unemployed.
Economically inactive: people who are neither in employment or
unemployment. This includes those looking after a home or retired or
permanently unable to work.
• Full employment: there is no output gap, we are at potential income. There are
no people unemployed for cyclical reasons, but unemployment occurs:
o Search (or frictional): those who are in transition, they have finished studying
and are entering the work force for the first time, or moving between jobs.
o Structural: those who have the wrong skills or are in the wrong location.
There may be job openings but there is a mismatch between the skills
required and the skills of the people looking for work
People are not prepared to move communities to take the jobs for which
they have the skills but which are located in other communities.
• There is a large opportunity cost in terms of the lost output that could have been
produced if the worker had been employed.
• There is the lost tax revenue which governments could have earned both in
terms of direct taxes on income as well as indirect taxes on the increased
expenditures coming from spending out of income rather than out of benefits.
• Having a significant section of the population unemployed leads to greater
income inequality
• The alienation and frustration that set in with unemployment weakens social
cohesion and can lead to greater crime and social unrest.
• Typically there are two types of structurally unemployed workers:
o Those who are unemployed for only a short time: their industry may have
shut down but they have the qualifications and experience to obtain a job in
one of the new, emerging industries
o “Hard core unemployed”: people who refuse to learn new skills and engage in
the newer industries. Frustration and disappointment can lead to crime or to
self inflicted damage such as alcoholism, drug abuse or domestic violence.
• Female participation: the rapid increase in female participation has made it very
difficult for markets to respond adequately.
• The inflow of women in the labour force exceeded the speed of new job creation
for women, creating a higher unemployment rate for women.
o As this rate has slowed down, the female unemployment rate has fallen.
o The discrepancy between men and women has narrowed considerably as
women have received training in areas formerly dominated by men.
UWC in Mostar: Blue Book Economics Notes, page 110
3.5.1.4.1 Structural Unemployment
• There is a mismatch between the structure of the labour force in terms of skills,
industries and location, and the types or places where jobs are available.
o Non-Market services: are paid for out of taxes, they contribute to human
capital and economic infrastructure, and include:
Health, education and public administration.
• Much of this displacement has come about because of competition from imports
from regions where workers are more productive or wages are lower.
o Again it could be thought of as technological unemployment where steady
improvements in technology have led to greater productivity in the
manufacturing sector of certain regions.
• Unskilled service jobs: the growth in this sector has more than compensated for
the loss of unskilled jobs in the manufacturing and construction industries.
• Jobs do not pay well, are often part time, and do not provide job security.
• They provide work for those who cannot find jobs elsewhere, they offer part time
employment for those looking for such work, and they often provide the first job
experience for young people who are completing their education and looking to
enter the work force.
• The costs of searching are lowered if the household has another source of
income or if there is unemployment insurance available: this makes it easier for
the unemployed to spend longer searching for a better job.
o More recently the huge growth in tourism in both MDCs and LDCs has once
again increased the proportion of workers who are subject to seasonal layoffs:
In countries which cater to winter skiing tourism, the workers have little to
do in the summer.
UWC in Mostar: Blue Book Economics Notes, page 112
For countries which offer summer vacations, the workers are layed off in
the winter time.
Inflation
• Inflation is defined as a sustained rise in the price level: prices are rising, and the
purchasing power or value of money is falling
o The purchasing power of money measures the real value of money in terms
of the goods and services that can be purchased with a given amount of
money.
• In most western countries the index most closely watched is the consumer price
index usually called the retail price index in the EU.
o Remember that GDP consists of more than consumption, so a more general
price index is referred to as the GDP implicit price deflator which takes into
account inflation for consumers, investors, government expenditures, imports,
(exports are usually ignored because they do not affect the internal rate of
inflation in a country).
• The rate of inflation is the percent change in the price index being used:
Disinflation
• Disinflation takes place when the rate of inflation falls:
o There is still inflation, prices are still rising, but at a slower rate
Deflation
• Deflation is defined as a sustained fall in the price level
Costs of Inflation
• Inflation reduces the real value of anything with a price fixed in money terms. If
people do not anticipate inflation, there will be winners and losers:
o The winners include
People who owe money to others: the real value of the amount owed will
decline
Employers will gain as the real value of the wages they have contracted to
pay declines during the life of the contract
Importers who buy cheaper goods and services from other countries.
o Losers include:
People on fixed incomes
Wage earners who fall behind in real wage terms
People who lend money
Exporters who have to sell more highly priced goods in international
markets
The economy because investors are uncertain how to value future prices
The economy as relative prices become distorted: firms will be able to
raise prices quickly in some industries and more slowly in others leading to
a misallocation of resources
The extra transaction costs involved in people making more frequent trips
to the bank as the opportunity cost for holding cash increases
Retailers who have to change prices more frequently.
o The good kind of deflation is where productivity is rising rapidly which lowers
costs of production:
ROI does not fall, it actually increases as costs are falling
There is a steady downward drift in prices but not because of the
competition arising from overcapacity but from the lower costs due to
higher productivity
Firms remain economically viable and bankruptcy remains low.
SRAS1
used to shift both the SRAS in the short run
and the LRAS in the long run out to the right LRAS1 LRAS2
SRAS2
o Equilibrium moves from E1 to E2 AD1
o Real GDP is higher, employment is higher
and inflation is lower AD2
•
E1
One of the problems of deflation from a macro
point of view is that as consumers anticipate
E2
prices will fall, they postpone consumption. Yfe1 Y1 Yfe2 Real GDP
o The AD curve shifts into the left from AD1 E3
• Using fiscal policy appears to be ineffective as well as the stimulus does not lead
to further spending rounds because the savings rate is so high in anticipation of
even lower prices in the future.
• It means the economy can get stuck at point E3, this appears to be what has
happened to Japan during the last 11 years.
• What has assisted Japan recently is the very sizable increase in exports to Japan
which has helped to shift the AD curve from AD2 to AD1
UWC in Mostar: Blue Book Economics Notes, page 117
3.5.2.3 Causes of Inflation
Cost Push
• Inflationary shock: any event that tends to drive the price level upward. Supply
shocks arise from:
o Raw materials: increases in price such as the oil shock. Increases in the price
of imported raw materials such as oil are usually isolated and not persistent.
o Labour: continued wage cost push is an example of repeated supply shocks.
• Keynesians believe that waiting for cost deflation to restore full employment
forces the economy to suffer through an extended slump because wages are
sticky down and productivity grows very slowly in a recession.
Demand Pull
• A rightward shift in AD can only come about either because of an increase in an
autonomous element or an increase in the money supply:
o An inflationary gap opens up and wages and other costs rise leading to a
leftward shift of the SRAS.
o The rise in the price level induces changes leading to a movement back along
the AD curve to the full employment point. This leads to even more inflation.
Sticky Wages
• There is a tendency for employers to smooth out the income of employees by
paying steady wages and letting profits and layoffs do the adjusting to the shocks
in the economy.
• Productivity rises as a worker gains experience but falls off as the worker gets
older.
• With wages rising with seniority and layoffs done by seniority, workers and
employers are bound to each other.
• Employers know that self policing is the best policy. If workers feel they are
unfairly treated they will cut productivity, which is one reason why employers are
so reluctant to lower wages.
• It is also a reason why employers tend to pay more than the market wage. They
know that working is better than being laid off, and workers will work hard
without the need for monitoring if they are paid slightly more than the market
wage.
• If the CB accommodates the new supply shock, costs and prices will rise leading
to a wage price spiral:
o This can only be halted if the CB stops accommodating the supply shocks.
o The longer the CB waits to do so, the more entrenched will be the
expectations.
Employers expect prices to rise and grant wage increases.
Workers push for higher wages as they see prices rising.
o Once accommodation stops, stagflation sets in: rising prices combined with
rising unemployment.
• If income is held above potential income, the price level will be rising. This can
only happen if the CB is accommodating the increase in wages.
• When the SRAS and the AD curves are shifting up at the same speed, the
inflationary gap remains unchanged. Eventually people will believe that
monetary validation (accommodation) and hence inflation will continue:
o The SRAS will begin to shift up even faster:
If the CB is told to accommodate in order to hold the level of output
constant, it must increase the rate at which the money supply is increased.
The rate of inflation will start to increase which fuels expectations of
increased inflation leading to accelerating or entrenched inflation.
Eo
• Even if the CB does not accommodate
completely, the negative demand effect of a AD1
E2
E1
AD1
Y2 Yfe
Where:
The quantities used are from the most recent year
o Or the Laspeyres index:
Where:
The quantities used are from the previous year
• The Laspeyres index is the most commonly used and is based on the concept of
a basket of goods
o Based on surveys of consumers, a range of goods is chosen for the CPI or RPI
which reflects the typical “basket” of goods that consumers buy during the
year.
• Prices are surveyed once a month to see how they have changed for each item in
the basket
• The summation of all the weighted prices is then set equal to 100 in the base
year. If the following year the sum adds up to 104, then we know there has
been 4% inflation since the base year
• Note that the basket of good is only changed every five years in most MDCs and
every 10 years in LDCs as it requires extensive surveying to discover how
people’s tastes in goods have changed.
o One problem that arises is that consumption patterns change over time, and
the weights on various items change steadily as people's tastes switch to
different products.
o Another problem is that the basket may not be truly representative of the
whole population, only averages are used which may disguise massive
changes which may be taking place.
o Closely related is the concept of weighting: how do we know the range of
importance assigned to each of the items in the basket: education costs may
be more important to the young while housing costs and healthcare costs
may be more important for people who have retired.
o It is quicker and easier to measure CPI or RPI as it is much easier to survey
and get information back. It takes much more time to calculate the GDP
implicit price deflator and yet it is a much more accurate indicator of changes
in general prices:
In actual fact, studies have shown that turning points are much the same
for CPI (RPI) and the GDP implicit price deflator, it is only the magnitude
of the change that differs.
o Perhaps the most serious problem associated with measuring inflation has
been the difficulty in adjusting for increases in quality:
The most famous example is the cost of light: the price of lumens has
dropped dramatically in the last 100 years since the advent of electricity
and fluorescent light tubes
The cars that we buy today are much better quality and yet prices have
risen and it appears they are more expensive to buy when in fact studies
show the real price has actually fallen.
The same is true of healthcare and housing.
o Attempts have been made to adjust inflation for increases in quality, but a
number of economists claim the inflation rate has been much smaller than
what is reported.
UWC in Mostar: Blue Book Economics Notes, page 122
3.5.H.3 Phillips curve
• The Phillips curve attempts to answer the following questions:
o Why do wages rise more quickly than productivity during boom times and yet
do not fall very fast when there is unemployment during a recession?
o Has the rate of wage inflation on the vertical axis (this contrasts with the price
level for the SRAS curve)?
• The Phillips curve indicates the direction in which SRAS shifts and how fast the
SRAS curve is shifting when actual income does not equal potential or full
employment income (when we are not in long run equilibrium).
Short run
• When equilibrium Y is equal to potential or full employment income (Yfe):
o Demand for labour equals supply (only frictional or structural unemployment)
o There is neither upward or downward pressure on wages.
o The Phillips curve cuts the axis at potential income, Yfe, at the corresponding
level of unemployment Unat (the natural rate of unemployment).
15
by the annual increase in labour costs.
• As the SRAS shifts to the left, eventually 10
Long Run
• We have assumed that it is rational for everyone to incorporate expectations of
inflation into their behaviour.
• This will lead to shifts in the Phillips curve:
o There is a difference between the long run and the short run Phillips curves.
% rate of change in
Long Run Phillips Curve
tradeoff.
Wages or Prices
o If the government attempts to Phillips Curve
short run 3
reduce unemployment below Phillips Curve
long run
the natural level, it will just Phillips Curve
short run 2
inflation rate:
As we move from point A to C
point B, unemployment E
• There may be a tradeoff between inflation and unemployment in the short run,
but in the long run the Phillips curve is vertical, and there is no tradeoff.
• NAIRU: is defined as the non-accelerating rate inflation rate of unemployment.
This means that we do not have to be where %∆wages = 0. As long as the
%∆wages stays the same, we are at the NAIRU point.
• During recessions the natural rate of unemployment falls (search). During the
recovery from recessions, the natural rate of unemployment starts to rise again:
o During recessions, people will take a job more quickly, and less time is spent
in searching for the perfect job (search or frictional unemployment falls).
o During boom times, workers are willing to take longer to find a job.
• NAIRU rose steadily until 1979, the year when most developed nations agreed to
stop accommodating inflation in an attempt to control inflation.
• Indirect taxes are less likely to distort behaviour than income taxes:
o High income taxes may lead some to choose leisure over work..
o With indirect taxes some rich people may choose to save and invest.
Taxes Paid
Progressive
• As income rises, the proportion of direct tax system
Definition Topt
B
• By getting rid of excessively high marginal tax rates through using a flat tax
system, more tax revenues could be collected..
• US supply side policies attempted to shift the LRAS curve to the right by reducing
taxes. As this would cause SRAS to shift right:
o Inflation would be reduced, real output increased, and unemployment
reduced.
o If the US was to the right of topt, reductions in taxes would lead back to topt:
Eventually, the boost in productivity and numbers employed would lead to
higher Y and higher tax revenues to compensate the tax cuts.
o Lower taxes would stimulate incentives to work, save, invest, innovate and
accept entrepreneurial risk.
UWC in Mostar: Blue Book Economics Notes, page 127
o This would also shift the LRAS to the right, permanently reduce
unemployment and lead to an increased tax base leading to greater tax
revenues.
• Full employment and a low, stable inflation rate appear to be compatible in the
long run: as long as the SRAS shifts only because of random shock effects.
• Cost-push inflation can return once the fear of unemployment has disappeared.
This is the problem with governments being committed to a full employment
policy, much of the discipline of the market tends to be removed from wage
bargaining.
• If the goal were a stable price level rather than full employment, the government
might make the maintenance of something close to full employment much more
likely.
o This is why the goal of price stability comes before the goal of full
employment.
equ
ct line
• We generally divide the f
rfe e
pe gre
o d e
population into quintiles (20%) Li
ne 45
• It is impossible for the Lorenz curve to rise above the line of perfect equality, or
sink below the line of perfect inequality, which means the curve must always be
increasing (it is below the line of perfect equality).
• In the diagram you can see that the bottom 20% of the population only receives
10% of the income if the Lorenz curve has this shape:
o The greater the distance between the 45 degree line and the Lorenz curve,
the greater the inequality in the country.
Gini Coefficient
• The Gini coefficient provides a measure of inequality and is usually expressed as
a number between 0 and 1:
o Where 0 means perfect equality (everyone has the same income)
o Where 1 means perfect inequality (one person has all the income, everyone
else has nothing).
• The Lorenz curve can provide us with a useful way of calculating the Gini
coeffient:
o Take the area between the Lorenz curve and the line of perfect equality (AB
along the 45o line)
o Divide this by the triangular area: ABC
o If there is perfect equality, the area between the line of perfect equality and
the Lorenz curve would be equal to zero and the calculation would yield 0.
o If there was perfect inequality, the area between the Lorenz curve and the
line of perfect equality would be exactly equal to the triangle ABC and the
calculation would yield 1.
• Typically we express the Gini coefficient either as a decimal between 0 and 1 or
as a percentage.
• At the same time there is usually a significant increase in variety as the goods
and services from other countries are different from those which are domestically
produced
• International competition also ensures better quality goods.
o Perhaps the greatest example is the impact of Japanese cars on the domestic
car market in most countries.
According to Consumer Reports, the reliability, safety and repair record for
Japanese cars is substantially better than for domestically produced cars.
This competition has actually forced European and North American car
companies to increase the quality of their products.
Economies of Scale
• Unit costs of production usually fall over some range of production as the scale
increases, because some types of K are simply more efficient in large scale
production.
• For smaller countries, the domestic market
Economies of Scale
is simply too small to make it worthwhile
building large plants. Trade allows these 100
smaller countries to specialize in producing 80 a Long run
Unit Costs
Cost
a limited range of commodities at high 60 b
enough levels of output that they will reap 40
the available economies of scale. 20
• Free trade leads to differentiated products 0
q1 q2
with different countries specializing in
Ouput per Year
different sub product lines.
LRAC2
60 a
The whole cost curve actually falls.
40
• It is particularly important in knowledge
20 b
intensive, high tech industries: costs fall
0
as the total of all cumulative past output
rises (the Σq rather than the level of q). Ouput per Year
• The higher a firm's output, the faster unit costs will fall. This confers large
advantages on firms which are first into the market with a new product or
service, and benefits firms that have large domestic markets to support an initial
high rate of output.
4.1.4 Political
• Comparative advantages can be altered. Through education and investment,
countries can develop new comparative advantages.
o Misguided education policies, tax policies that discourage investment and risk
taking can lead to a rapid erosion of a country's comparative advantage.
• New view: new industries depend as much on human capital which is developed
through training and learning by doing, conferring a new type of comparative
advantage.
o Private entrepreneurial activity plus government intervention to promote
education and investment can alter comparative advantage. The question is
whether government intervention can accomplish the task and at what cost.
• In the very odd example where the ratios between wheat and cloth are the same
for both countries, there can be no gains from trade as there is no comparative
advantage.
• If opportunity costs where all the same, no country would have a comparative
advantage and there would be no gains from trade.
• If the trading terms of trade were 1:1, then both would gain:
o India’s internal terms of trade are 0.6:1.67 but with the international terms of
trade they can now buy cloth for one bushel of wheat instead of 1.67
o Kenya would be able to buy wheat for one metre of cloth instead of 2.0
• Prices in reality are considerably distorted by firms who are often price makers.
Government can distort prices by applying indirect taxes and subsidies. And
prices rarely reflect true social costs and benefits.
• Who truly gains from trade?
o In many LDCs, exports are produced by foreign owned subsidiaries of TNCs
and a large proportion of the gains may be sent to the shareowners in MDCs
(called repatriation of profits).
• The model assumes there is full employment, and yet in many LDCs,
unemployment and under-employment are high.
o Increased domestic production may well be gained at low opportunity cost
while providing jobs for the rural poor.
o Protection may be required during the period of transition: referred to as the
infant industry argument.
Price
Pb (la
(small)
Sd +f
collecting income taxes, tariffs remain Pa
(small)
A
a very important source of revenue.
• Example: the domestic price before
Mb
trade is Po producing at Qdo.
Ma
o After trade, which leads to a
shifting out of the supply curve, the
Qda Qdb Qdo Qb Qa
price falls to the world level of Pa, Quantity
quantity consumed is Qa, of which
only Qda is produced domestically.
o Domestic producers are not happy as they have lost production and revenue
has fallen to Pa*Qda.
• If a tariff is imposed by a large country, the analysis is virtually the same except
that the new supply curve is upward sloping Sd+f+t.(large) to reflect the influence
on world prices of the buying power of a large country.
4.2.2.2 Quotas
• An import quota is a restriction on the amount that can be imported (Qb - Qdb).
o The situation is the same for domestic producers as with the tariff.
o But importers now receive the revenue the government used to receive.
Price
have taken place along the foreign supply Pb
4.2.2.3 Subsidies Mb
Ma
• There are a number of policies used by
governments to promote exports:
Qda Qdb Qdo Qb Qa
o Financial incentives to export producers, Quantity
usually referred to as subsidies, to lower
production costs and in order to shift the domestic supply curve to the right.
o Export credit and guarantees, operation of overseas export promotion
agencies, establishment of Free Trade Zones, Exchange rate manipulation.
country.
o Protection can increase
Research &
the chances of research Development Period
- Investment costs
and development
Time
leading to a new
product and the
establishment of profitable industry.
o The larger the potential market, the lower the price these firms can set in
order to recover their costs.
o There is a great deal of risk that these products may fail, and with the product
life cycle, the window in time may be fairly narrow before a great deal of
competition enters.
o A few firms, early in the game may make a great deal of profit. Those firms
that are able to establish themselves may be dominant in the future.
• If the government subsidizes the industry, the profits may be so substantial that
they more than repay the costs of the subsidy through increased future tax
revenue.
• Protection through tariffs is another alternative which reduces the need for
subsidies for a government which is short of money.
• The Japanese protect a new industry, restrict the number of companies in the
industry, promote domestic competition to stop inefficiency problems associated
with infant industries, and eventually open the sector up to international
competition. Often the Japanese firms are the strongest in the world.
• Other countries will retaliate because they will lose key industries and product
manufacturing to countries that have pursued these trade policies. This could
trigger a trade war.
Learning by Doing
• Protection allows workers and managers to learn by producing, a comparative
advantage can be created and the whole LRAC falls.
• It also allows for a rural urban shift to take place in which rural workers move to
the cities and learn new industrial skills.
• Problems with this type of protection:
o Government is usually no good at deciding who the winners will be.
o Protected industries may lose the ability to adapt to competition: they often
grow so weak that they need continued protection in order to survive.
4.2.3.7 Anti-Dumping
• To prevent foreign industries from gaining an advantage through unfair trade
practices, the WTO permits countries to impose two types of tariffs: anti-dumping
and countervailing duties
• Anti-dumping duties are imposed to prevent foreign firms from selling goods at
prices below production costs for the exporter in the foreign country.
o Dumping occurs when a country wants to get rid of surpluses or as predatory
techniques for destroying the industry in another country.
o The allowance of anti-dumping duties under GATT has helped to redress this
unfair trading practice.
o However, tariffs have often stayed in place permanently:
Producer prices in the domestic market become a minimum price, any
attempt to sell below that price is met with an anti-dumping tariff to raise
it back to the producer price level.
• The use of subsidies in many countries allows exporters to sell into foreign
markets at prices below the costs of production.
o In retaliation, the importing country government is permitted to impose
countervailing duties up to the amount of the subsidy.
• “Exports raise national income while imports lower it”. Counter argument:
o If more goods are sent abroad than are received at home, the total goods
available for domestic consumption must fall.
o The gains from trade only come about from the increased consumption of
foreign goods at lower than domestic prices.
Production Networks
• Production chains are linked sequences of functions where each stage adds value
to the process of production. There are four basic elements:
o Inputs of materials and services
o Transformation of inputs into intermediate or final goods and services
o Distribution of goods and services
o Consumption of goods and services
• Technology plays a critical role at each stage, the financial system provides
investment and operating capital, and management is required to coordinate,
regulate and control.
• Services have come to play a critical role because they provide geographical
connections and help to integrate and coordinate all the parts of the global
system.
Market Economy
Government Policy
Corporate Restructuring Restructuring
Productivity Greater reliance on the market :
- Ship to rail to truck to airplane - Dismantle welfare state
- Manual labour to machines - Privatization & deregulation
- Human to machine intelligence Reduce deficits
Re-Engineering - Less spending, more tax revenues
- Hierarchy to networking Education
- Consumer pull processing - Reduction in unskilled jobs
Downsizing - Great need for knowledge workers
- Outsourcing & resequencing - University- corporate partnerships
- Capital surplus, talent shortage - Vast Internet connection
- Parents will demand voucher system
Nanotechnology
- Micromachines Reducing Poverty
- Miniature sensors - Rural & urban development
- Miniature repairs - From foreign aid to micro-credit:
- Quantum computers - Micro enterprise training
- Desktop production - Peer group lending
• All elements are regulated within some political structure whose basic unit is the
nation state but which includes international agencies such as the WTO
• TNCs attempt to take advantage of national differences in regulatory regimes,
whereas states attempt to minimize regulatory differences:
o This can lead to conflict whether private enterprise, government, a local
community or individual, and these conflicts have to be resolved.
o There are forces for both concentration and dispersal, but with a strong
tendency toward agglomeration into larger centres.
• The economy can get locked into a pattern because of historical precedent.
• Globalization therefore links together the activities and functions in a production
network which is based on geographic or local centres of economic activity.
• Even with renewable resources such as fisheries, they will become exhausted
unless managed in a sustainable manner
• With non-renewable resources, the more we use today, the less will be available
tomorrow unless there is a massive technological breakthrough.
• Global warming is certainly the most serious of the environmental externalities
which may have very serious consequences for future generations, not the least
because it may be irreversible.
• The environmental problems inherent in globalized production systems raise
serious questions about the sustainability of economy and society.
• Trade restrictions between member states are removed but each state retains
the right to use trade policy against non-member states.
• The world has evolved into three major trading blocks: the EU, NAFTA and the
Japanese dominated investment/subcontracting trading area in the Asia Pacific.
• In 1989 the US and Canada signed a free trade agreement. In 1994 this was
expanded to include Mexico. In 2001 agreement was concluded amongst 34
countries in the Americas to establish a free trade area of the Americas.
• There are a number of smaller trading blocks including:
o ASEAN: the association of South East Asian Nations, currently the group is
considering a free trade area with China, South Korea and Taiwan.
o LAFTA: the Latin American free trade agreement
o CAFTA: Central American free trade agreement
o CARICOM: the Caribbean community
o Mercosur: involving Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay.
• For LDCs economic development often involves the production and export of
basic commodity items usually involving natural resources in a sequence
beginning with the ones with the greatest comparative advantage.
o LDCs put tariffs on imports to encourage the creation of a manufacturing
sector.
o As they become more integrated into world trading systems, growth increases
and employment opportunities increase because of the gains from trade.
• Both industrialized countries and NIEs have done well out of GATT regulated
trade. This has not been the case for LDCs which are very poor or for those
which have specialized in primary products.
• The WTO predicts that by 2005 there may be as many as 250 regional trading
agreements covering more than 50% of trade. Such regional arrangements could
damage the rules based multi-lateral trading arrangement fostered by WTO.
Trade in Services
• Future growth in trade will be dominated by services.
o At most, trade in goods will double over the next century.
o Trade in services is larger than trade in goods, and growth will be much
faster.
UWC in Mostar: Blue Book Economics Notes, page 145
o In order for there to be free trade in services, each country must extend the
principle of right of establishment and national treatment to the other
country's firms that sell services.
• Firms selling services in one country have the right to establish in the other
country and be treated the same as local service firms.
• Negotiations continue in WTO to complete an international agreement on
financial services which would move it to a rules based multi-lateral system as for
trade in goods. An interim arrangements was reached in 1995 which covered
banking securities and insurance.
• Under WTO average tariffs amongst member countries are less than 4%. Thus
free trade agreements do very little to remove tariff barriers. Instead what they
do is allow countries to specialize in producing those products where they can
achieve minimum efficient scale (where full economies of scale are realized).
• Most states in the agreement continue to produce most products, but there are
fewer product lines.
o Exports increase in certain product lines and imports increase in others.
• International protest groups oppose the WTO, the World Bank and the IMF as
they feel they are dominated by leading industrialized countries, particularly the
US.
• The most difficult areas facing the WTO in the future will be:
o The reduction of agricultural subsidies in all industrialized countries which
should open these markets to LDCs
o The establishment of a trade in services agreement
o The integration of China which will strain trading systems as well as impose
new obligations on China to conform to WTO rules.
o The development of a more equitable world trading system where the power
of developed countries is not imposed on LDCs through various kinds of
conditionality and trade-opening requirements.
Developed countries must operate a fairer system of access to their own
markets for poorer countries.
o Imports
Merchandise
Traded Services
Investment income paid
For developing countries, this section is usually negative: more is paid
out to foreign investors than is received as interest and dividends
For industrialized countries like the US and Japan, this account is
typically positive because of the large amount earned on foreign
investments.
o Unilateral Transfers:
One way payments or receipts of money for nothing in return such as:
remittances or gifts, foreign aid and grants.
• Capital Account
o Foreign Direct Investment (FDI)
o Portfolio Investment
Equity Securities
Debt Securities: both short term (money market) and long term bonds
o Other Investment transactions (currency, bank deposits, trade credits)
o Statistical discrepancies
• Those items which lead to Europeans receiving money from abroad are counted
as positive items in the current account:
o A more technical definition: those items which lead to more Euros being
purchased are counted as a positive item.
• When financial capital flows into a country, that country is exporting a security to
the foreigner.
o The security can consist of a money market instrument, a bond, a stock or a
joint venture agreement or some kind of contractual arrangement.
o When those securities are exported, financial capital flows into the domestic
economy and counts as a plus in the Balance of payments.
• If the Japanese invest in US treasury bills, it is the US that gets the money, and
the Japanese that get the TB's:
o It counts as negative on the Japanese balance of payments (and their GDP).
o This is how the balance of payments is always balanced:
If there are negatives on the current account, they must be balanced by a
plus on the capital account.
Official Reserves
• If we include official reserves, the balance of payments is always in balance.
• One of the easiest ways to think about it is to ask who gets the money.
o Current account: if Japan imports apples from China, the Chinese get the
money, the Japanese get the apples. It counts as a minus in the Japanese
balance of payments (and for the GDP).
o If the Chinese buy cars from Japan, the Chinese get the cars and the
Japanese get the money: a plus on Japan’s balance of payments.
o For services: if the Japanese go skiing in Switzerland, the Swiss get the
money, and the Japanese get the tourism experience. It enters as a negative
on the Japanese balance of payments.
• A trade weighted exchange rate index measures the value of the Euro in terms of
a basket of currencies which are weighted by the proportion of trade between
those countries and Europe.
• The effective exchange rate examines how much trade Europe has with the other
country and the extent to which Europe competes with these other countries in
terms of trade.
• The real exchange rate takes into account the effects of inflation. If the Euro
falls by 5% against the Yen but there is 5% inflation in Europe, the real
exchange rate is assumed to be unchanged.
• If Europeans sell software and the Japanese sell cars:
o Europeans who want to import Japanese cars will need Japanese ¥, and they
provide the demand for Japanese ¥ and the supply of Euros.
o Japanese who want to buy European software need Euros and they provide
the demand for Euros and the supply of Japanese ¥.
• From 1944 to 1972, most countries pegged or fixed their currencies to the US
dollar.
o In the face of short term fluctuations, the central banks of each country would
intervene in the market and buy and sell US$.
Dollars/UK pound
Adjustable Peg Exchange Rate
greater inflation outside Britain, the demand S1
for British pounds shifts out (from Do to D1)
because greater foreign inflation has led to an B
S2
• If there is more inflation in Britain, the demand curve for British exports will shift
in from D1 to Do.
o There will be downward pressure on the exchange rate and the British pound
will depreciate.
With flexible exchange rates, the domestic currency would do exactly that
o However with a fixed exchange rate, the Bank of England would intervene
and start buying British pounds shifting the demand curve from Do to D1 and
raising the exchange rate back to the fixed level at point C.
o There is a limit to the amount of gold, SDRs or foreign exchange a country
can use from its own reserves to purchase its own currency before it is forced
to borrow internationally.
• If the exchange rate is falling and approaches the lower bound, the Central Bank
will increase interest rates
o This leads to an inflow of short term capital: the demand curve for British
pounds shifts out and the currency will appreciate.
o Domestic citizens stop buying foreign money market instruments, and the
supply curve for British pounds will shift in which reinforces the upward
pressure on the exchange rate
o Higher interest rates have macro effects: a decrease in aggregate demand
which may not be appropriate if the economy is trying to recover from a
recession.
• Effectively the central bank in the US, called the Federal Reserve Board, is the
central bank for the world.
o There have been calls for a return to the gold standard, but there is a
shortage of gold which would lead to further crises.
• If these policies do not work, the government will tell the Central Bank to devalue
the currency which may lead to competitive devaluations by other countries.
Price of Currency
and Da and an exchange rate of Pa. Adjustable Peg System
Sa
(Yen/Euro)
• If the exchange rate falls below Pa, there
will be excess demand for European Euros
Sb
o Exports of software start to rise as it
becomes relatively less expensive X
o Imports of Japanese cars will fall as Pa
A
C
they become relatively more expensive
Db
o Traders who need Euros will start B
bidding up the price:
o As the supply curve is upward sloping, Da
the quantity supplied of Euros will rise.
The extent of the increase will depend
on the elasticity of supply.
o As the demand curve is downward Quantity of Euros
sloping, the quantity demanded of Euros will fall. The extent of the fall will
depend on the elasticity of demand.
• Rather than managing a single currency, for several years the EU has attempted
fixed exchange rates amongst its member countries but a managed external float
as a block against the US$ and the Yen.
o This broke down in the fall of 1992 and was replaced in 1999 by the
European Monetary Union which consists of 11 member countries.
• If interest rates rise in Canada, investors from Britain will buy Can$ money
market instruments until the appreciation in the value of the Can$ which results
is just equal to the differential in the interest rates.
• The expected future depreciation of the Can$ is just enough to bring Canadian
interest rates back down to the international equivalent.
o If interest rates are 5% higher in Canada, investors will keep on investing
until the exchange rate has fallen by 5% (Can$ has appreciated by 5%).
o The extra 5% interest earned is enough to offset the 5% future depreciation
of the Can$.
o The appreciation puts export and import competing industries at a competitive
disadvantage.
• Under a fixed or adjustable peg system, rates are set every day by the central
bank but are periodically adjusted:
o If the Central Bank devalues the currency it is equivalent to a depreciation in
the currency or an decrease in the exchange rate:
It costs more domestic currency to buy foreign currency.
D
D
trade point of equilibrium is O with
eu
eu
ur
r+
r+
D
no exports. Se
Ja
eu
Ja
pa
pb
r
• Deur +Japa represents the domestic
European demand plus the A
Price of Software
Pa
Japanese demand for European
Pb B
software. Total European
O
production is Qa of which Qda is
consumed in Europe and Xa is
exported to Japan.
• If the Euro appreciates, the
Xb
foreign price of European software
Xa
will rise:
o Japanese demand will fall to
Japb Qda Qdb Qb Qa
o Exports will fall to Xb Software
o Price will fall from Pa to Pb.
o Domestic consumption rises from Qda to Qdb.
o Exports decrease to Xb.
+
produced in Europe and Ma is A ur
Pa Se
imported from Japan. B
Pb
• If the Euro appreciates, less Euros
must be paid to obtain the
required amount of Japanese ¥.
Ma
The European price of Japanese
cars will fall: Mb
o The supply curve shifts out
from Seur +Japa to Seur +Jap b. Qdb Qda Qa Qb
o Domestic production of cars Cars
falls from Qda to Qdb.
o Imports of Japanese cars rise to Mb.
D
D
eu
eu
ur
r
with no exports.
r+
De
+J
Se
Ja
•
ap
ur
Deur +Japa represents the domestic
pa
b
European demand plus the
Japanese demand for European B
Price of Software
Pb
software. Total European A
Pa
production is Qa of which Qda is O
consumed in Europe and Xa is
exported to Japan.
• If the Euro depreciates, the
foreign price of European Xa
software will fall: Xb
o Japanese demand will rise to
Japb
o Exports will rise to Xb Qdb Qda Qa Qb
o Price will rise from Pa to Pb. Software
o Domestic consumption falls from Qda to Qdb.
o Exports increase to Xb.
J
B u r+
produced in Europe and Ma is Pb Se
imported from Japan. A
Pa
• If the Euro depreciates, more Euros
must be paid to obtain the required
amount of Japanese ¥. The
Mb
European price of Japanese cars will
rise: Ma
o The supply curve shifts in from
Seur +Japa to Seur +Jap b. Qda Qdb Qb Qa
o Domestic production of cars Cars
rises from Qda to Qdb.
o Imports of Japanese cars fall to Mb.
4.6.5.3 Inflation
• If there is inflation in Europe but not in Japan, Japanese cars will appear to be
relatively cheaper, and more cars will be sold in Europe, more Euros will be
offered for sale for Yen.
• For example if If %∆PEU > %∆PJapan ⇒ Px/Pm↑ ⇒ XEU↓ and MEU↑ ⇒ S€ shifts out,
D€ shifts in, €↓
• If inflation is greater in Europe than in Japan, Japanese cars will appear to be
relatively cheaper, and more cars will be sold in Europe, more Euros will be
offered for sale for Yen.
o The supply of Euros will shift out, and the Euro will depreciate in value.
• At the same time, European software will be relatively more expensive in Japan,
o The demand for Euros will shift in to the left, and the Euro will depreciate.
• If both countries have the same amount of inflation, the two sets of shifts offset
each other.
UWC in Mostar: Blue Book Economics Notes, page 157
• The country experiencing a more rapid rate of inflation will experience a steady
depreciation of its currency.
4.6.5.4 Speculation
• Speculation about exchange rates can also lead to short term capital movements:
o If the Euro is expected to appreciate, Japanese investors will buy European
money market instruments in anticipation.
o The increase in the supply of Japanese ¥, equivalent to an increase in the
demand for Euros will force the exchange rate up and lead to an appreciation
of the Euro.
This is an example of self realizing expectations.
• Fixed exchange rates can create much greater stability. Indeed, whenever we
enter a period of floating exchange rates with much volatility, global dispersion of
production and trade tends to fall.
• Most smaller countries have adopted a system of pegging their exchange rates
close to major ones such as the dollar, Euro or Yen. This reduces uncertainty for
TNCs and fosters FDI.
• Fiscal policy tends to be stronger:
o If the government is closing a recessionary gap they will shift AD out to the
right by borrowing
o The rise in interest rates needed to finance the deficit stimulates an inflow of
capital moving the capital account toward a surplus.
o At the same time, rising aggregate demand increases imports which moves
the current account toward deficit.
o If the former is larger than the latter, the whole balance of payments will
move toward surplus.
o To stop the exchange rate from rising (appreciation of the domestic
currency), the central bank intervenes and buys foreign currency from the
commercial banks with Euros.
o This increases the money supply and increases aggregate demand.
• Over time as equilibrium rates drift away from the fixed rate, there is more and
more intense speculation as investors try to buy currencies which are expected to
be revalued and sell currencies which are expected to be devalued.
o This drains foreign reserves even more quickly and forces a major adjustment
in the value of the currency.
o This is what eventually destroyed the Bretton Woods system.
• Because of its fixed exchange nature, the adjustable peg system may affect the
domestic economy adversely as domestic policies must be adjusted to maintain
external equilibrium.
• Monetary policy is weakened. If there is a recessionary gap and interest rates are
lowered to shift AD out:
o Investment increases domestically and aggregate demand shifts out
o Lower interest rates lead to capital outflows and the capital account moves
toward deficit.
o At the same time, with rising aggregate demand, imports increase and the
trade balance also moves toward deficit.
o To maintain the fixed exchange rate, the central bank buys domestic
currency. Euros leave the commercial banks and enter official reserves at the
Central Bank reducing the money supply and offsetting the original policy
• It was expected that speculators would stabilize rates close to their PPP normal
exchange rate equivalents.
o In fact, speculators seem no better at predicting than anyone else and there
have been some destabilizing speculations take place.
• Exchange rates have been over and under shooting their PPP normal exchange
rate equivalent often because of interest rate policies and the movement of short
term capital.
o When there has been overshooting, the result has been disruption in
production because of the severe competitive pressures.
Monetary Integration
• Monetary integration occurs when countries fix their currencies against each
other but let the group of currencies float against all other currencies. This is
referred to as a currency block.
o Only if all members agree that there is a fundamental mis-alignment of
currencies can one country make adjustments in its monetary policy.
• The PPP rate adjusts for the relative changes in the two countries' price levels. If
the Can$ price of the basket of goods rises to Can$25, then the PPP (normal
exchange rate equivalent) will rise to
o Can$25/£12 = 2.08.
o This is similar to an increase in the exchange rate or a depreciation of the
Can$.
• Thus the PPP (normal exchange rate equivalent) keeps the relative price of the
two nation's goods constant when measured in the same currency.
o As long as the exchange rate remains equal to the PPP rate, the competitive
position of the two nations' producers will not have changed.
o Deviations from the PPP can be substantial in the short run, but over the long
run exchange rates tend toward the PPP.
o It was assumed under the flexible exchange rate system that as speculators
could calculate the PPP, they would work to keep exchange rates equivalent
to their PPP:
Experience has shown that speculators have tended to overshoot or
undershoot the correct PPP.
One of the main reasons for this has been the influence of interest rates
on flows of short term capital.
UWC in Mostar: Blue Book Economics Notes, page 162
4.7 Balance Of Payments Problems
4.7.1 Consequences of a current account deficit or surplus
• If we define the current account as C, the capital account as K, and the official
reserves account as F. We will find that:
CR + K R + FR = CP + K P + FP
where
R = receipts (received from foreign country, credit item)
P = payments (paid to foreign country, debit item)
• The sum of all transactions, payments and receipts must be equal. There must
be a zero balance left over otherwise the currency will appreciate or depreciate.
• There does not have to be a balance within an account or between any two
accounts. But there must be balance amongst all three accounts.
• There may be bilateral imbalances between countries, but each country must
have a zero multilateral payments balance with the rest of the world.
Merchandise Account
• If imports of goods exceed exports, we get a deficit on merchandise account.
• This may be offset by a surplus on invisibles.
• If invisibles are in deficit, the current account as a whole will be in deficit.
• In some countries a deficit on the merchandise account is considered to be a bad
thing and is referred to as an unfavourable balance of payments.
o But for developing countries it may be necessary to import machinery and
other capital equipment in order to develop. In the short run there is a deficit
but in the long run the new production may lead to a surplus.
Current Account
• A deficit on the current account can be offset by a surplus on capital account.
o Exports of securities means the country is a net importer of capital (remember
who gets the money), usually associated with a LDC which may experience a
great deal of foreign investment.
• If there is a surplus on the current account, this means there is more foreign
currency being earned than domestic currency being paid out.
o The people who hold this money must do something with it, and presumably
they will hold the foreign currency in the money market in the foreign country
(thus importing financial securities).
o A surplus on the current account is offset by a deficit on the capital.
• A group of countries started meeting in 1975 consisting of: France, the United
States, Britain, Germany, Japan and Italy. Canada joined in 1976 and the EU
joined in 1977. Since 1991 Russia has participated in the discussions but did not
have full rights to participate until 1998. Hence the right to vote. Hence it is
called the G8.
o The main topics of discussion have focused on macro policy, international
trade and development of LDCs.
o While the G8 does not have the power to set exchange rates, policy measures
taken by the members can reduce short term fluctuations by trying to keep
currencies closer to the PPP normal exchange rate equivalence.
• There have also been suggestions that the flow of capital be restricted or slowed
down through heavy taxes on unproductive (that is, speculative) capital flows.
o Problem: how does a central bank identify unproductive from productive flows
of capital?
Inevitably, black markets would form which would allow capital flows to
avoid being tracked for tax purposes.
• Perhaps the most important feature has been the increased international
cooperation which has allowed the international financial system to survive and
weather the temporary crises which inevitably occur every few years. This is why
institutions like the IMF and the G7 are so important for stability.
• External balance is achieved when a target level associated with the external
sector is achieved.
o If the target is a zero trade balance (merchandise (visibles) account and the
services account combined), when it is achieved there is external balance
(this is the target assumed in the examples below).
o If the country is running a surplus in the capital account, the target may be a
certain level of deficit in the trade balance. As long as this deficit is being
achieved, there is external balance.
Case 1: A trade deficit combined with a recessionary gap (Yo < Y*).
• As fiscal or monetary policy are used to move aggregate demand to the right to
close the gap, imports will rise making the trade deficit worse.
• Internal balance is achieved at the cost of moving even further away from
external balance.
Trade Account
LRAS
than inflation, and a trade deficit as
a more serious problem than a
surplus, this case is considered the
most serious and is referred to as a
N
et
E
xp
balance of payments constraint on
or
ts
1
domestic stabilization policy.
• In the long term, to prevent an Yo Yfe Real National Income
Trade Account
domestic economy in order to reduce LRAS
import spending.
N
et
Ex
po
rts
Case 2: A trade account surplus
1
together with an inflationary gap (Yo >
Y*).
• As fiscal and monetary policy are Yfe Yo Real National Income
(expenditure reducing).
LRAS
• As fiscal and monetary policy are used to
increase aggregate demand the gap is
N
et
recessionary gap.
N
et
Ex
N
po
r ts
Ex
2
po
r ts
appropriate.
1
Yo
o What is needed is a switch away from Yfe Real National Income
Trade Account
together with an inflationary gap LRAS
N
et
Ex
o What is needed is a switch in
po
Ne
rts
tE
1
expenditure away from domestic goods
xp
or
ts
2
toward foreign goods which reduces the
trade surplus. Yfe Yo Real National Income
• The most important problem with expenditure switching policies is that trading
partners are likely to retaliate with such things as exchange rate depreciation or
the imposition of tariffs or quotas.
• If we now expand the definition of external balance to include the whole of the
balance of payments, then a deficit in the current account will be matched by a
surplus on the capital account.
• If there is a temporary deficit in the balance of payments, the exchange rate will
fall (depreciation) which will automatically lead to lower imports and greater
exports.
• If the central bank does not want the depreciation to occur, it will intervene and
purchase the domestic currency (the demand curve for Euros shifts out: the
supply of Yen also shifts out).
o The central bank will pay for this by cheques drawn on the commercial banks,
thus there will be a contraction of the money supply.
o Euros leave the commercial banks and enter official reserves at the Central
Bank.
o Interest rates will rise and capital will flow in, the exchange rate will rise
(appreciates) again.
o If the central bank intervenes by increasing the money supply through open
market purchases of bonds, interest rates will remain the same.
The external effect is sterilized and the domestic money supply is
insulated from the external effect.
Px ↓ ∗Qx ↑↑ − Pm ↑ ∗Qm ↓↓ ⇒ B of T ⇑
That is: export revenues will rise while import expenditures fall, therefore
the Balance of trade improves.
Px ↓ ∗Q x ↑ − Pm ↑ ∗Qm ↓ ⇒ B of T ⇓
That is: export revenues will fall while import expenditures will rise,
therefore the Balance of trade deteriorates.
o The intermediate case is where one curve is elastic while the other one is
inelastic, and the Balance of trade will:
Improve if the sum of the elasticities is greater than 1
Deteriorate if the sum of the elasticities is less than 1
J Curve
4.7.H.2 J Curve
• This is just another variation of the
Marshall Lerner condition:
Surplus
• The terms of trade change as the exchange rate changes, and the exchange rate
changes as domestic prices change.
o If foreign inflation is higher, export prices will rise more slowly than import
prices and the terms of trade worsen.
o Countries with higher productivity will produce lower cost goods and their
export prices will rise less quickly than for other countries leading to a
worsening of the terms of trade.
• Alternatively a group of sellers can form a cartel and force prices higher through
the use of monopoly power. The best example is OPEC.
• Typically as LDCs develop, they tend to specialize in areas where they have
experience: mainly agriculture and primary processing
o The result is that too many countries export food, cotton, textiles, iron ore,
steel, and the supply curve keeps shifting out to the right as more and more
LDCs join the world trading community
o Obviously this puts continuous downward pressure on prices.
Poduction PossibiltyBoundary
• Consumption gains from trade:
we assume production is not
changed but the terms of trade d Original Terms of trade Terms of
allow the country to export ac Trade
and import cb. Consumers have
Wheat
o In the long run, as products reach the end of their life cycle, international
competition has driven the price down and income elasticities are positive but
less than one.
For these goods terms of trade deteriorate.
Production for such goods is often shifted to LDCs which means that it
cannot help to offset the deterioration of terms of trade resulting from
primary goods exports.
• While there is still land to be developed, the bulk of land available to most
populations is limited in size.
• Irrigation, drainage, the use of chemicals for fertilizing, pest and weed control,
and the use of machinery can increase productivity dramatically.
• The green revolution is an example of this.
o The problem is that the damage to the soil can be so extensive, that the
increase in productivity may only last 70 years before the soil is destroyed.
o Already India is starting to seriously question the use of irrigation, machinery
and chemicals as soil degradation is very serious.
Finance
Industrialization
Banking
Mobilize Savings
Entrepreneurs -Safety of capital
-Pay interest on savings
Small stay in community
-Project evaluation
Facilitate Lending:
-Accept risk
-Project evaluation
-Economies of scale
-Keep lending rate low
-Learning by doing
-Reduce risk by diversifying
-Management training
-Geographic, sectoral, industrial
-Backward & forward links
Export Promotion
-Tariffs fall, exports rise
-Backward & forward links
-Rapid growth
-Government facilitates:
-Infrastructure & marketing
-Strategic trade policy
• 85% of the scientists working in research and development live in the US, Japan,
and Germany. The new ideas and inventions which are applied through the new
technology and capital are dominated by MDC thinking.
• Only modest amounts are invested in research and development in LDCs.
• Higher productivity does not require high tech solutions:
o Billions of dollars in aid for large scale, high tech projects has only increased
dependency for the poor rather than increasing productivity.
o What is needed is technology appropriate for the poor which will allow them
to help themselves.
o Appropriate technology uses local materials, and local labour skills, and capital
that can easily be repaired locally:
Simple clay stoves, pipe wells, pipe latrines, micro hydro power
transformers, better harnesses for oxen etc.
Entrepreneurs
• Before investing, entrepreneurs analyse the various opportunities available and
rank projects according to the expected rates of return.
o They borrow as long as the project rate of return covers the bank charges
o They can often earn considerably more, but need it to cover the risks of
failure which can be very high for certain projects:
Primary sector projects may find no oil or minerals, manufacturing projects
may face competition from new products or lower cost imports,
The product life cycle may be near exhaustion, or new technology may
render a project obsolete.
• Entrepreneurs earn more because they are prepared to accept the risk of failure
and the consequences of going bankrupt.
UWC in Mostar: Blue Book Economics Notes, page 178
• They are willing to take new technology and apply it to a new product, or to
invest in innovative locations or new product areas. Their reward is the high rate
of return.
• Those countries which force the banking system to become entrepreneurs
transfer the risk from the entrepreneur to the banking system:
o The resulting project failures can lead to bank failures.
o People will remove their savings from banks and either send the money
overseas (capital flight) or hide it around their homes.
• The highest ROI from society’s point of view comes from investment in primary
education.
• Remember that the UN definition of literacy is not reached until a person has had
9 years of schooling. Thus the ROI on investment in secondary education is also
high.
o This leads to increased productivity of workers
o Greater productivity leads to greater savings and a wider and deeper tax base
o The correlation between education and health is also strong which means that
people will take better care of themselves and there is less likelihood of
diseases being transmitted because of immunization.
o Fewer children are born to better educated families, and those children that
are born are allowed to go to school and achieve higher levels of education
and productivity.
o Greater levels of political stability are achieved in countries with greater levels
of education.
• It is interesting that the ROI for individuals rises steadily as years of schooling
increase, while the ROI for society actually falls steadily.
o From society’s point of view investment in post secondary education often has
an ROI which is less than the borrowing cost, but for an individual it is very
high.
• Spending on community nurses has a much higher ROI from society’s point of
view than investment in sophisticated hospitals and expensive surgical routines.
o Community nurses can help reduce infant mortality and can educate and
check regularly to minimize TB, Malaria, Hepatitis, and the spread of HIV.
5.1.4.4 Infrastructure
• Generally this refers to public or government regulated private goods and
services and includes:
o Physical
Transportation: roads, bridges, railways, harbours, airports, canals and
dams
Telecommunications: phone systems, TV networks, IT services,
Utilities: water, sewage, electricity, gas pipelines
o Social
Education: primary, secondary, and post secondary
Healthcare: systems of community nursing, hospitals, university research
and medical training centers
• Even in MDCs such as the US, it is estimated that the ROI on investment in
infrastructure is significantly higher than the ROI on investment in private
projects.
• Investment in infrastructure in LDCs can play a critical role in promoting both
economic growth and development:
o Markets open up for more remote communities
o Technology transfer or diffusion is accelerated which enhances productivity
o Health care is improved as community nurses can travel more easily and
there is better access to clean water, sewage is handled more effectively and
health care facilities are more available and accessible.
o Students find it easier to attend school and larger numbers will graduate
o Irrigation resulting from dams and canals can enhance crop production which
leads to better food production, healthier populations and less dependence on
imported food.
• Stable government reduces risks for local investors, encourages investment, and
reduces capital flight
• Most pollution such as depletion of the ozone layer and the greenhouse gasses
which are causing global warming are a result of industrialization.
• The question becomes: how can we develop indicators which can be used to
adjust national income accounting to alert us when there is a problem and
provide a way of evaluating attempts to reverse the degradation?
o Valuing natural and environmental resources is not simple:
Market values can be subtracted from the flow of income generated by a
country; while not ideal this does provide an indicator
It is usually very difficult to measure changes in quality rather than simple
market values of quantities consumed.
• This means that the benefits of growth may be experienced by the more wealthy
individuals in society: the ones with education and money to invest.
Income Inequality
• In many countries the bottom 20% of income earners are classified as poor.
o This is a relative concept as the bottom 20% in a Western European country
may live far better than the bottom 20% in an LDC.
5.2.3 Sustainability
Ecological Footprint
• Population densities are very low in most African and South American countries,
and are very high in many developed countries.
• If MDC populations are adjusted to include their ecological footprint, the real
populations and population densities are even higher:
o The US with 6% of the population in the world uses 40% of the world’s
resources
Adjusting for 6.7 times the world average of resources per person, the
actual population of the US would be 1,900 million people not 280 million
o India with 17% of the population uses 4% of the world’s resources
Adjusting for 0.25 times the world average of resources per person, the
actual population would be 212 million people not 1 billion
Malthusian approach
The law of diminishing returns suggests that the world will run out of resources in
the face of the rapid increase in population.
• Demographers find that the big increase in population is over. While the long
term effects will lead to increased populations in the future, the growth rate has
already started to stabilize and will reach replacement level by the year 2050.
• While resources have been fixed, the gains from specialization, economies of
scale and learning by doing have more than outweighed diminishing returns in
the last 100 years.
• While there does appear to be an inverse relation between per capita income and
birth rates, death rates have fallen quite independently of incomes.
• It appears that a more equitable distribution of income, greater literacy for
women, and more job opportunities for women results in a lower population
growth rate.
Limits to Growth
• In the 1960s and 1970s some scientists predicted the end of the world based on
physical limits on resources which would restrain economic growth.
• In the 1980s many prominent studies were published which changed the focus:
o The world’s resources are indeed sufficient to meet long term human needs.
o The uneven spatial distribution of the human population relative to the natural
carrying capacity of the environment is of much greater concern.
o There is inefficient and irrational use of natural resources.
o The ability to pollute the world to the point where it is unlivable is likely to
happen far more quickly than the exhaustion of natural resources.
UWC in Mostar: Blue Book Economics Notes, page 183
• In the 1990s interest has shifted to applying the knowledge accumulated in the
natural sciences to the economic process:
o The scale and rate of throughput, energy and matter passing through
economic systems, is subject to entropy, the second law of thermodynamics:
Entropy: materials that get used in the economy tend to get dissipated
and it requires energy inputs to make these materials useful again.
Sometimes it is not worthwhile recycling: the cost of transportation
required to bring all the used materials together and the energy required
to return them to a useful state may cost more than the original materials.
• Problems with social legitimacy of the governments which can come from:
o A colonial past which organized the country to suit the colonial power but
which did not take into consideration the needs of the country
o Many LDCs have not had enough time to adapt to modern concepts such as
science, individualism, economic mobility, and the work ethic.
o Political instability within the country due to tribal, ethnic or religious
differences
o Large minority groups which perform essential functions but tend to dominate
financial and investment sectors of the economy:
These groups offer expertise in commerce, finance and trade.
• Problems with trade: the terms of trade have moved steadily against the LDCs
because they export mainly raw materials with little value added.
o LDCs have little scope to develop new products or techniques of production,
the expertise in the MDCs is overwhelming: most R&D is concentrated in
MDCs.
• Population:
o Populations are much larger, population densities greater, and education
levels lower than they were for MDCs during their period of industrialization.
o This has acted to reduce per capita incomes as populations grew rapidly with
better health care and more nutrition
o This problem is declining in importance with the reduction in birth rates in
most countries.
• Financial institutions
o Domestic banking systems which are corrupt and do not mobilize savings
o Debt owed to international institutions such as the IMF and the WB as well as
commercial banks: so much money flows out to repay the debt that very little
is left over for investment in infrastructure, education and health care.
• Poverty: many countries or regions within countries are caught in the poverty
cycle where income is low because of low productivity but leads to a lack of
savings which means that very little investment is taking place which is essential
if productivity and incomes are to be raised.
• The UNDP reports that most poor people live in 10 countries, with the
proportions falling below the poverty line in brackets: Bangladesh (80%),
Ethiopia (60%), Vietnam (55%), Philippines (54%), Brazil (49%), India (40%),
Nigeria (40%), Pakistan (29%), Indonesia (24%) and China (10%).
• A characteristic of most LDCs is the unequal distribution of income.
o What is interesting is the middle income LDCs appear to have greater income
inequality than very poor or high income countries.
o Income inequality tends to be greatest in Latin American countries.
Rural Poverty
• Most poor people are found in rural areas. Farmers with small holdings, landless
peasants, artisans, fishermen, nomads and indigenous people. The poor are not
idle, they work hard.
• Those with a traditional way of life are not necessarily poor. For thousands of
years they adequately sustained themselves. It is only recently that they have
become poor due to policies which have deprived them of the means of earning a
living (land, fisheries, hunting ranges, forests).
• Poverty in city slums is highly correlated with poverty in the countryside and is
linked through migration.
• Women are often the poorest of the poor. Men control most of the land, capital
and technology, and receive a better education in most countries. This can have
a major impact on population control.
• Investments in infrastructure, social services, and technology in rural areas can
go a long way to helping these people.
Poverty Cycle
• This concept is based on the idea of inadequate savings:
o Low savings mean low investment
o Low investment means low productivity and thus low income
o Low income means low savings and the cycle of poverty is perpetuated
• This is one of the motivations for Aid programs: by plugging the savings gap it is
hoped that productivity and incomes can be increased to the point where
countries and regions can break out of the poverty cycle and growth can start to
be self-generating.
Reducing Poverty
• The trickle down theory is associated with the concept that inequity is inevitably
a part of economic growth, but after a period of rapid growth, greater equity and
poverty reduction will occur.
o Studies have shown that income distribution does appear to worsen at first.
o However, the evidence indicates that rapid growth does not appear to have
eradicated poverty which is surely the aim of growth in the first place.
o Furthermore, as income rises for the few who are lucky, their consumption
pattern tends to dominate the location on the production possibility curve,
more luxury goods rather than necessities are produced.
• A number of conclusions can be drawn when the data is collected and studied
across many countries. In countries with more economic freedom:
o Per capita incomes are substantially higher
o Economic growth rates are significantly higher
o Life expectancy rates are 20 years longer than for countries with the least
amount of economic freedom
o Income earned by the poorest 10% in the country is much greater
o Adult literacy is much higher
o Infant mortality is substantially lower
o The incidence of child labour is virtually insignificant
o Access to clean drinking water is substantially greater
o The HDI is much higher
o The opportunities for corruption are substantially lower
o The size of the shadow or parallel economy is significantly lower
• The result is low investment both internally and from external private sources.
o This results in lower productivity growth and slower growth
o The lower tax base and the spending on military means less investment in
infrastructure including education and healthcare
o Often countries will go deeply into debt to pay for the weapons to engage in
armed conflict which reduces the capacity to borrow in the future
o Poverty and political instability persist and economic development is delayed.
5.3.2.4 Corruption
• As noted in Section 5.3.2 above, the greater the economic freedom in a country
the lower the level of corruption.
o Economic freedom means fewer regulations, taxes and tariffs. Thus there are
fewer opportunities for corruption on the part of public officials.
• Corruption does not have to involve money, but it often does as it is usually
market driven: how much is this favour worth to the recipient?
• It can involve bribery to obtain foreign exchange, licenses for exports or imports
or both, licenses to invest in a country, production licenses and tax avoidance.
• Corruption distorts economic signals:
o Inefficient firms can remain in business
o Governments can pursue policies which may be damaging to the environment
or the economy
o Small entrepreneurs who cannot engage in the political game become
discouraged
o Economic growth slows down.
• Typically the more state regulations and the slower the system for obtaining
justice through the courts or through bureaucratic systems, the greater the
potential for corruption.
• Political corruption can also include the non-economic aspects in society such as
vote-rigging, the purchase of votes, and the distorting of election results.
• Other theories which have found that increasing productivity through greater
economic development is significantly more important than simply increasing
capital investment, have suggested that an unequal distribution of income can
actually slow down economic growth.
o Research on the available data do indicate that unless economic development
takes place first and the income disparity gap is closed, economic growth is
much slower and the subsequent closing of the income disparity gap takes
much longer.
• One of the problems with measuring income distribution is the lack of good data.
o Often studies are done on small sectors or representatives groups or selected
regions of a country.
o There are very few studies in LDCs which actually measure the income
distribution for the whole population.
o In many cases the Gini coefficient is lower for rural rather than urban
households and yet most of the studies are done using urban data because it
is easier to collect.
o Furthermore, the data are not adjusted for PPP, nor are all sources of income
included in the survey.
The WB has found that this factor alone overstates the Gini coefficient by
as much as 15% for many LDCs because of home production systems.
• Economic freedom studies discussed in Section 5.3.2 above indicate that the
share of income earned by the poorest 10% of the population is unrelated to the
degree of economic freedom in a nation.
o As economic growth rates are positively correlated with economic freedom,
this research indicates that there is no correlation between economic growth
and the income of the lowest 10% of income earners.
• As would be expected from the economic freedom study outlined in Section 5.3.2
above, the more the regulations, the more the time involved, and the more
roadblocks thrown up, the greater the size of the informal market.
• The disappointing results of Aid programs and the poor performance of most LDC
governments have emphasized the following need for change:
o It is the private sector that will have to build the infrastructure which will
mean
Providing a good investment climate to ensure there is no fear of
nationalization
Building a good regulatory climate to regulate the monopolies which will
result
o Infrastructure services must be targeted towards the poor
Roads, water, sewage, electricity and health care have all been identified
by the poorest groups in LDCs as being in critical shortage
• Trade protection: MDCs have increased trade protection and subsidies to their
own farmers, effectively blocking imports of food from LDCs.
• Worsening terms of trade: prices of primary goods has fallen relative to the price
of manufactured goods and services, lowering the gains from trade for the
poorest countries which do not have the means to produce anything but raw
materials.
• Risk of permanently slower growth: specialization may lock the LDCs into low
skilled, labour intense production while MDCs benefit from high tech production.
• Prices may not reflect opportunity cost but simply manipulation by government
and firms.
o Taxes, subsidies and the lack of recognition of true social costs (pollution for
example) can lead to serious price distortions.
• Barriers to trade: LDCs may find that MDCs have already achieved economies of
scale, and protect their home industries through export subsidies or import tariffs
and quotas thus effectively blocking imports from LDCs.
o Many LDCs have turned to other LDCs for trade opportunities.
• Restructuring simply extends the length of the repayment problem, it does not
eliminate the debt:
o LDCs simply lack the exports needed to earn the foreign exchange required to
service the debt.
o The only hope of getting out of debt is for MDC economies to expand rapidly
leading to major increases in imports from LDCs.
o Most of the debtor nations are faced with years of economic deprivation in
order to meet their debt obligations,
o Domestic policies that lead to overvalued currencies encourage imports and
discourage exports creating strong pressures to seek more loans to support
the country until the next crisis
UWC in Mostar: Blue Book Economics Notes, page 194
o If the money had been invested in projects which earned a rate of return
which could have paid the interest plus repaid the principal, there would have
been few problems.
• For this reason the IMF imposes SAP conditions on a country. While the list of
conditions is different for each country, they fall into several general categories:
o Cutting government expenditures
This is done to ensure the government no longer runs a deficit budget and
it can use any surplus to repay the loan
Typically it is the economic development programs such as education and
health that get cut first
Often a requirement is that the government must run a balanced budget
Monetary policy is to be tightened, many LDCs with poor systems of
taxation try to pay for things by borrowing from the Central Bank which
leads to inflation. The problem is that this causes interest rates to rise
which can create a recession.
o Export promotion
As most of the countries are LDCs the focus tends to be on the extraction
of natural resources for export to provide the revenue needed to repay the
loan
All export and import tariffs and restrictions are to be removed
• Because of the negative effects of the SAP programs, the IMF now requires
countries to develop Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers which are like self-
imposed SAP programs.
• Since 1935 most industrialized countries have been off the gold standard.
• Governments started inflating in the early 1960s until 1976 when inflation rates
reached high levels in the MDCs:
o Loanable funds were available at low interest rates to lend around the world.
o LDCs were accustomed to ‘soft’ loans from international agencies such as the
World Bank which lent at low rates of interest.
Commercial banks charged full market rates on ‘hard’ loans
• Some of these social and cultural factors can act as barriers to integration into
the world economy and faster economic growth:
o Many traditional societies place great emphasis on the collective good
whereas western society places greater emphasis on the individual and
private property
o The way women are treated in western societies causes many problems in
some cultures
• Social cohesion refers to the ability of a society to work together to promote the
common good including developing greater cooperation and trust amongst its
members.
• For social cohesion to be effective it depends on social capital
o This is the system or network of social values and trust that enables
individuals to work together and includes:
Organizations, usually businesses, to produce what is required by
members of society
Institutions which can provide public benefits from economic activity
through banking, regulation of monopoly, and political parties
The development of dispute resolution mechanisms such as courts
o Members of society who are excluded will not have full access to certain
economic activities including education
This has certainly been the case for women in certain societies such as
India where the illiteracy rate amonst women is substantially higher than
for men.
Exclusion means that these individuals cannot contribute productivity to
economic growth which can hamper the rate of development.
Another group are those who have been marginalized to the point where
they live in the informal economy and participate only sporadically in the
formal economy.
• Birth rates in the LDCs are much higher than they were in the MDCs during the
comparable period of development: a larger proportion of women marry and they
do so at a younger age.
• For many developing countries the birth rate remains high while the death rate
falls. Studies suggest that developing countries today are moving through this
phase more rapidly than the MDCs
• Eventually the birth rate also declines, until low birth and death rates lead to low
and stable population growth again.
o For MDCs population growth rate is 0.5% (below the replacement rate) and
for LDCs it is 2% (the replacement rate is 2.1% per year).
UWC in Mostar: Blue Book Economics Notes, page 198
o Studies indicate that more even income distribution contributes to a more
rapid fall in the birth rate.
o In LDCs with high poverty levels, birth rates have remained much higher than
for MDCs: there is a correlation between high birth rates and low GDP per
capita.
• Death rates: as countries develop the death rate drops very quickly due to:
o Sanitation: there is a reduction in infant mortality due to better sanitation,
cleaner water and basic health knowledge,
o Health care: there is a reduction in mortality from disease because of better
health care systems
o Agricultural production: as food production increases deaths resulting directly
or indirectly from malnutrition fall
• Survival rate: as the survival rate for children increases there is a rapid increase
in children as a proportion of the population, savings and investment rates fall:
o This increases dependency rates within families, per capita income falls as
unproductive children are housed and fed,
o Children under 15 form 25% of MDC population and 50% of the LDC
population which leads to a high dependency ratio of non-workers to workers.
Because of the young population, fertility rates are very high
Even though birth rates may have fallen, the large numbers of fertile
women inevitably leads to a second round of population increase
This is particularly so with economic development as healthier, better fed
women have a greater capacity to give birth to a healthy child.
• Although population control policies have been very popular in the last 25 years,
they are no longer a pressing issue:
o After the last ice age, 13,000 years ago, the world population was estimated
to have been 100 million.
o By 1790 this had increased to 1.7 billion, and current estimates place world
population at 6 billion.
o The latest findings show a very rapid decrease in population growth rates to
the point where it is now expected that population will stabilize at about 8
billion by 2050, much lower than the original estimates of 12 billion by the
year 2100.
Optimal Population
Optimal Population Levels
100
•
Per Capita Income
5.3.5.1 Religion
• Family and religious beliefs are some of the strongest motivators in life for most
people as noted in Section 5.3.5 above.
o Religious values can cause resistance to changes which are necessary to the
mobilization of resources for growth
o Alternatively religious beliefs can accelerate the growth process
During the Reformation in the Christian church it became a value to earn
money and promote trade and commerce.
The resulting rapid increase in economic growth has led to the European
and North American economies of today.
5.3.5.2 Culture
• In a similar way to religion, culture has a major impact on the “accepted” way in
which societies operate: this is outlined in Section 5.3.5 above.
• While heavily influenced by religion, culture refers more to the way in which
people learn to cooperate together and learn to trust each other.
o One of the best examples is the way in which financial districts operate: huge
amounts of trust are required as millions of dollars worth of securities are
bought and sold on the word of dealers and clients
o Honesty in dealings is fundamental to social cohesion, without it people and
businesses would spend all their time in court fighting for fair trade and
justice.
o Section 5.3.2.4 above discusses corruption and the important link between
the difficulty of executing transactions
The more procedures required and the more time required to follow
procedures, the greater the temptation to cheat
At the same time, a framework of laws and systems which recognize
property rights are essential to the efficient functioning of the market
system.
• Thus there is a dynamic tension at all times between the freedom to operate and
the need for regulation and procedures to ensure justice takes place in the
functioning of the economic system.
o See Section 5.3.2.2 for a discussion of property rights
o See Section 5.3.2 for a discussion about economic freedom.
5.3.5.3 Tradition
• Typically associated with agriculture, fisheries and primitive forestry, this sector
uses traditional methods for harvesting natural resources.
• Often there is common land ownership which can lead to common property
problems which impose externalities on society.
o However, the density of population is often low enough that environmental
damage is minimal.
o Dualism can result if modern commercial farms, fisheries companies and
forestry companies exists side by side the traditional, community based
system.
• Traditional sectors can also exist in urban environments in another type of dual
economy which means that traditional manufacturing, such as food preparation
and clothes tailoring, exist alongside modern manufacturing facilities.
o Many economists label these activities as being part of the informal economy.
• Often referred to as the savings gap, the ‘s’ tells planners how much they need
to borrow internationally after deducting what the nation saves domestically.
• Technological change and learning by doing can play important roles. Both can
contribute to increased productivity of all factors of production.
• Richer nations like the US, Japan and Norway tend to have higher capital output
ratios because capital is less expensive relative to labour than in LDCs.
Benefits of Industrialization
• Industrialization allows economies of scale (EOS) to be reached in production:
o Exports: access to larger markets allows minimum efficient scale to be
reached more rapidly
o Research and development: costs are more spread out
o Heavy industries: economies of scale are important for steels and chemicals
o Cost savings: size confers concessions and discounts through bulk buying,
and lower interest rates when borrowing money.
o Some economists believe that EOS contribute only 10% to cost reductions.
Limitations of Industrialization
• Studies indicate that increases in productivity or efficiency account for a much
higher proportion of growth than was believed to be the case.
o Between 50% and 70% of growth can be attributed to increases in factor
productivity, including mobilization and improvement in the quality of labour
• Industrialization which results from increases in the capital stock frequently
account for much less than half of the increase in output, particularly in rapidly
growing countries.
o This does not mean we can ignore capital investment: capital tends to play a
larger role in growth in today's developing countries.
o Many of the increases in efficiency or productivity involve advances in
technology that is embodied in capital equipment: you cannot have
productivity increases without the capital to work with.
• The whole idea behind unbalanced growth is that the market responds to clearly
defined price signals:
o Then comes the actual fabrication of the parts and the assembly of the parts
into the product
o After the product is complete there are several subsequent stages:
There must be marketing to ensure the product can be sold
There must be physical distribution of the product to stores and
consumers
There must be a system of financing all the stages in the production
process.
• Both forward and backward linkages set up pressures that lead to the creation of
new industries, all operating through the profit driven investment process.
• Governments build the infrastructure necessary to service the expanding
industry: roads, railways, harbours, airports, electricity, water and sewage.
• Linkage pressures will eventually lead to balanced growth, provided:
o Free market pricing is permitted to allow the proper signalling to occur to
reflect enhanced profit opportunities,
o A stable banking system is instituted to allow the process of saving and
investing to proceed with low risk,
Price Distortions
• Prices are often distorted due to subsidies or a strong union sector which is able
to extract high wages from foreign multi-nationals.
o A return to market prices is essential so that correct signals can be sent to
allocate resources according to true scarcity: for example, lower wages would
lead to greater employment.
o Government subsidizes capital through tax breaks, grants and low foreign
exchange. This lowers the price of capital artificially and leads to substitution
of capital for labour.
Wurb
Wrural
Wsubst D3
D2
D1
D1
Rural Labour Urban Labour
o Industry only has to pay slightly more than subsistence level to attract labour
to manufacturing jobs in the cities,
o These provide a stark contrast to rural areas where marginal productivity of
workers is very low
UWC in Mostar: Blue Book Economics Notes, page 207
o Rural workers will then migrate into the cities in search of work
The supply curve of workers will shift out in the urban area, from S1 to S3
The supply curve of workers will shift left in rural areas: from S1 to S3
o The outward shift of the supply of labour in urban areas tends to prevent
manufacturing wages from rising too rapidly even though demand for workers
is increasing steadily from D1 to D3
This encourages FDI and domestic investment in manufacturing industries
which are producing for export
There is pressure on governments to subsidize food, housing and
infrastructure costs in urban areas despite the huge influx of immigrants.
This will hold down the upward pressure on wages in order to maintain
international competitiveness.
Wages will remain at Wurb
• Eventually the supply of rural labour will have shifted in so far, to S4, that wages
will rise to Wrural.
o The supply curve of labour to industry is elastic up to the point at which the
withdrawal of labour can no longer be accomplished without a decline in
agricultural productivity: all the surplus labour has been removed.
o Because China has such a large surplus of rural labour, the rural wages are
not likely to rise for some time. But this has led to rioting in rural areas and
governments have responded by dropping income taxes in rural areas
(demand for labour shifts out).
o In the Pearl River Basin region in southern China, rural populations have been
migrating to the industrial areas for so long that rural wages have started to
increase and manufacturing businesses in this region of China are finding it
increasingly difficult to hire cheap labour and they are starting to lose their
international competitiveness.
• As surplus labour migrates into the urban areas and rural wages rise to equality
with urban wages, the migration process will stop and sectoral change is
complete
• Often investment has been capital intensive (labour saving) which means there
are few jobs available, particularly for the unskilled rural worker.
• Even if there is only a 20% chance of getting work, or if there is only part time
work available for 20% of the year, young people are still attracted to the city if
the urban wage is five times the rural wage.
• If a rural area suffers from drought every few years, the lifetime income
expected from staying on a farm could be less despite the prospect of many
years of being only partially employed in the city.
• Studies indicate that most migrants do find work within 2 months of reaching the
city: most are young with better education which enhances the prospect of
finding employment in the city.
• Concessional loans are referred to as Aid because the loans are given at much
lower interest rates and for longer periods of time than commercial banks are
prepared to consider.
o The World Bank lent $3.5 billion in 2003: their total loan portfolio is over $20
billion as the WB has been lending money for a long time
o Regional development banks lent $1.7 billion
• LDCs with large populations have received less because donors have a greater
impact by donating to smaller countries which then become more dependent.
• It is estimated that less than 10% of aid goes directly to programs to help the
poor such as health care, basic literacy education, clean water and sanitation.
Unofficial Aid
• NGOs donated $10 billion
o Unlike bilateral grants and multilateral grants which tend to be top down, aid
through NGOs tends to be bottom up.
• Large donor countries also tend to dominate the IMF (also created at the Bretton
Woods conference in 1945).
o The IMF is designed to support the system of international currencies
o It only gives loans to countries experiencing balance of payments difficulties,
o The loans are conditional on the imposition of a structural adjustment
program (SAP) which often requires: reductions in government budget
deficits, a slower rate of money expansion (lower inflation), and devaluation.
• The first aid plan was the Marshall Plan (no longer available) provided by the US
which was motivated by a combination of national security fears, economic
interests and humanitarian concerns.
o This aid was available to European countries with acceptable development
plans for physical capital investment,
• The success of the Marshall Plan led to the formation of the development
assistance committee of the OECD (25% US) which provided money for:
o Capital and human capital investment (education),
o Improving health and sanitation,
o Relieving poverty through rural regeneration, and assistance to women.
•
through Import
Import competing domestic investment
replacement
industries are hurt: domestic
production is displaced and Expansion
through
unemployment rises. foreign direct
investment
• Costs for intermediate goods fall
leading to an increase in exports and
a fall in unemployment in the
external sector. Foreign direct investment
• Countries specialize in the sectors in Foreign or export sector
which they have a comparative
advantage.
o The poor gain little, the major beneficiaries are the wealthy and the MNCs
operating behind tariff walls.
o Govt . tends to subsidize capital, and currencies are held artificially high to
encourage the use of imported capital and intermediate goods:
Industry becomes less labour intense, leading to unemployment.
Exporters of primary goods (the poor) are hurt: because LDCs face
perfectly elastic demand, they have to lower their prices to compensate for
the higher currency value.
The elite benefit from importing luxury goods more cheaply.
• Governments that have borrowed from foreign commercial banks find that the
interest rates are higher and the terms and conditions much more difficult to
meet than on loans available through the World Bank.
• Fair trade organizations (FTO) are groups of wholesalers, retailers, and producers
who try to avoid transfer pricing by committing themselves to providing fair
wages to farmers and fair returns to small and home based manufacturing firms
selling their products internationally.
o Of $3.6 trillion of all goods exchanged globally, fair trade accounts for only
.01% or about $400 million.
o Fair trade businesses return 1/3 to 1/4 of profits back to producers in
developing countries.
o Sales for Ten Thousand Villages, the largest fair trade organization in the US
and Canada, amounted to more than $15 million which represents the
creation of the equivalent of 12,500 full-time jobs for disadvantaged artisans
and farmers
Micro-enterprise
• There needs to be investment in small scale, labour intense industries in both
urban and rural areas to provide alternatives to low paid farm jobs, and scarce
industrial jobs in cities.
• Small scale businesses in both urban and rural areas have certain characteristics
o People perform all sorts of services and fashion all sorts of products from
recycled materials.
o Capital is scarce, human labour abundant, so production is labour intensive.
o Usually employ 5 workers or less, and yet can account for 30% of the work
force
o Are a wonderful way to flush out entrepreneurial talent,
• National gaps in savings, foreign exchange, taxes, technology and human skills
can all be filled by MNCs:
o Labour: they can create jobs, develop managerial skills, and provide technical
education of labour,
o Capital: they can transfer technology and provide needed physical capital
o Tax revenue can be earned on the exports of natural resources which can be
used to fund construction of much needed infrastructure.
o Foreign currency flows in from the MNC investments, and from the private
earnings on the exports.
• But should economic growth and development have priority over the
environment?
o Without adequate environmental protection, development is undermined.
Without development, resources will be inadequate for needed
investments, and environmental protection will fail.
o Poor people have a high marginal propensity to consume compared to rich
people who have a high marginal propensity to save.
Should we reduce poverty by spreading limited resources thinly and see
them used more rapidly?
Should we allow the rich to accumulate assets knowing they might invest
in and take better care of them?
• Aid contributes in direct proportion to the increase in capital investment, but aid
does not appear to have accelerated the growth rates of recipient countries:
o There is a lack of complementary inputs: human technical skills,
administrative capacity, infrastructure, financial institutions, and political
stability,
o The introduction of hard currency inflows may also lead to increases in
consumption rather than just investment:
Supply bottlenecks may discourage investment in physical capital
Rising incomes for the poor may lead to increased consumption rather
than increased saving.
• Famine is often not a result of a lack of food but of the inability to earn enough
to pay for the food:
o Distributing cash instead of food can stimulate the local market:
Local traders know best how to transport supplies
They are often able to reach inaccessible places to provide food.
o Long term food production and employment can increase through investment.
Market Led
• Most economists are impressed with the way free and open markets lead to
productive and allocative efficiency
• For poor countries efficiency is extremely important as it can lead to higher
growth rates and produce a surplus which can be taxed and spent on merit
goods and infrastructure to enhance the process even more.
• Past experience with market planning in the former communist countries and
many socialist countries in Africa and India indicates quite clearly that
government intervention has not worked.
o The intervention does not only have to be socialist, it can also be of the
military dictator type experienced in some Latin American countries.
• This intervention contrasts with the more free market approach of many
southeast Asian countries which have experienced remarkable growth and
development over the last 50 years.
• The Washington Consensus has emerged as a set of principles supported by the
IMF, the WB and most MDCs to replace intervention with a market structure
which will lead to growth and development through unbalanced growth:
o Good governance at the macro level:
Balanced budgets for governments
No more printing money which leads to inflation
o Prices must be free to adjust
All subsidies, price controls and government regulations must be dropped
Privatization of state owned enterprises will lead to lower prices for
essential services such as communications, electricity and transportation
o Free trade:
Eliminating all hindrances to trade
Moving to a floating exchange rate system with minimal government
intervention
Allowing freedom of movement for capital flows and not imposing
restrictions on FDI
• Advocates of the market approach are aware of market failure and do advocate
government intervention in order to correct such failures, but the emphasis
should be on property rights and other means which will allow the market to
operate more effectively.
• At the same time, there is also ample evidence that while the market may help
those at the top and possibly some in the middle income level, lower income
level groups do not participate effectively in economic growth and development
o The persistence of poverty even in countries with rapid economic growth
indicates quite clearly that the “trickle down” effect does not really operate.
o The diffusion of the benefits of economic growth seems to take place more
effectively in countries with higher levels of education and better healthcare
which indicate the need for government spending on merit goods and
infrastructure.
• However, many studies have indicated that governments are generally not very
good at picking winners, indeed they often seem to support losing industries.
• At the same time, governments can provide a very supportive role in a number of
useful directions:
o By supporting research institutes and universities, technology can be better
understood and applied in the context of that particular country and culture
Perhaps the most powerful examples have been the agricultural extension
and technology extension systems developed by the US, Japan and
Germany.
• Market led growth based on the Washington consensus can lead to a number of
problems:
o SAP programs have indicated clearly that imposing fiscal austerity usually
leads to governments cutting expenditures on merit goods such as education
and healthcare
o Liberalizing trade can lead to
A painful transition period while import competing domestic industries
close down and workers and capital transfer to more internationally
competitive sectors and industries
Large inflows of FDI can displace local businesses and force the domestic
linkage adjustment to be export oriented rather than promoting the
integration of domestic industries.
o Allowing prices to move freely means that
• There is no question that the IMF has been effective in stabilizing international
finance, there have been no competitive devaluations of the type which can lead
to serious depressions.
• On the other hand the damage inflicted by SAPs imposes a heavy cost on
countries moving from Balance of Payments problems to greater financial
stability.
o Many critics claim that the IMF has gone beyond its mandate of stabilizing
international finance to actually restructuring countries along western
capitalistic lines and is dictating economic policy for a significant number of
countries
o There has been little attempt on the part of the IMF to tailor its SAPs to the
needs and conditions of the countries on which they are imposed.
• In 2004 the WB provided $20 billion for 245 projects in nearly 100 LDCs
o $9 billion of the $20 billion was given in the form of grants, interest free
loans, and technical assistance: usually through the IDA to 62 low income
LDCs
Countries have 35 to 40 years to repay the loan with no repayment of
principal for the first 10 years
o $11 billion of the $20 billion was given in the form of low interest loans to 33
higher income LDCs:
Countries have 15 to 20 years to repay the loan with the first 5 years free
of any principal repayment.
• The WB is also involved in lending to high risk countries and providing assistance
in resolving loan disputes between LDCs and commercial banks.
• The WB has also been involved in debt relief for 26 Heavily Indebted Poor
Countries (HIPC)
o The money does not have to be repaid as long as the normal payments which
would have been used for servicing the debt are instead directed toward
housing, education, health, and welfare programs for the poor.
• It is important to remember that despite fresh infusions of cash each year from
member countries and other donors, the WB needs loan recipients to repay their
loans so that money is available for other countries who need to borrow to
finance growth and development
• WB loans were originally designated mainly for infrastructure projects such as
dams, water systems and roads. Over the years, program funding for education,
healthcare and technical training have increased as a proportion of the total loans
given.
• The WB has worked with the IMF to support reform through the imposition of
SAPs as well.
• Studies indicate quite clearly that funding development projects will not work to
enhance economic growth and development unless the governments in those
countries use better economic policies
o Forcing reforms on countries in return for loans may be the only way to bring
about the “good governance” which all now recognize as essential for
economic growth and development to take place
o As with the criticism of the IMF, the SAPs have inflicted so much damage that
it is not clear whether the gains made in terms of growth and development
are adequate compensation
• At the same time, governments themselves are aware of the savings gap and
may borrow money from international private banks to invest in infrastructure
o The terms and conditions of the loans are much more exacting than those
required by the WB
Often governments do not earn enough on the investment to pay the
interest let alone repaying any principal
Governments may be forced to meet the conditions of the loan by taking
money from other designated expenditures such as education and
healthcare.
o Typically the loans are short term as the interest charges are lower, however,
if interest rates rise in the world, they do so most rapidly on short term loans
and governments are left trying to renew the loan at higher interest rates.
• In the case of countries such as Mexico and Romania where all the private banks
are owned by foreigners, money may leave the country to be invested in other
countries where the risk adjusted ROI may be higher
o This leaves less money in the domestic economy for both government
borrowing for investment in infrastructure as well as private borrowing for
investment
o Rich citizens may find it easier to hold US$ accounts in those foreign owned
banks which makes capital flight even easier in times of financial stress
o “Hot” money, or short term capital, can flow more easily into an out of LDCs
through foreign owned banks, which may lead to instability in exchange rates
due to speculation.
• Typically NGOs are non-profit organizations which can be broken into two types
of groups
o By function: the most familiar being environmental groups like the Sierra Club
or economic development groups such as OXFAM
o By social group such as women’s groups or indigenous groups or Amnesty
International
• Obviously NGOs are institutions which serve a very important purpose and
contribute significantly in dollar terms to the whole process of development but
UWC in Mostar: Blue Book Economics Notes, page 226
there is need for reform, particularly in terms of accountability, transparency and
representation:
o Because they are usually funded by private donors sometimes with
government matching grants, NGOs are not subject to public scrutiny as are
governments or private businesses
o They are often accused of having more impact on global decision making than
citizens of countries with freely elected governments, and yet NGO
management may be largely self-appointed if they have co-opted supervisory
boards.
• There are 35,000 MNCs of which 50% are controlled by US, Japanese, German
and Swiss investors.
o 50% of all industrial production is produced by 100 companies.
o These 100 companies control 50% of world trade.
• Studies have indicated that MNCs are not good at providing jobs:
o Local firms are displaced by the MNC and the displaced firms often have much
higher labour capital ratios,
o LDC governments may force the MNCs to operate in a highly capital intense
sector of the economy such as natural resource extraction and processing
requiring massive investments in sophisticated equipment and machinery:
The labour that is hired is very highly skilled
Either local labour must be given extensive training or skilled workers
must be imported.
• Transfer pricing: the setting of internal prices between branches of an MNC such
that goods can be exported at artificially low prices:
o The MNC raises price in the next country to the market level and takes the
profit there if the taxes are very low, thereby saving on income taxes.
o This reduces the ability of the host government to collect taxes and defrauds
them of taxes on work done in their own country.
o 25% of all trade is between branches of the same MNC company.
o The highest value added work is done in the countries with the lowest taxes.
o It is a powerful tool in labour negotiations to demonstrate that the company is
losing money
o Studies indicate that as much as $50 billion is not paid in taxes due to transfer
pricing which means less money is available for LDC governments to spend on
merit goods and infrastructure.
• Foreign enclave: the MNC can increase the inequality between the rich and the
poor by developing a modern high wage sector.
o This sector imports luxury goods
o Inappropriate goods are marketed in the LDC
o It widens the rural-urban wage gap leading to increased migration
o MNC supporters may influence the government to undertake projects or adopt
policies which are growth rather than development oriented.
MNC Policy
• 50 of the top 100 ‘national incomes’ in the world are earned by MNCs.
• MNCs have no loyalty and are happy to produce and sell anywhere, they are
economically powerful and often more influential than the governments they deal
with
• Industrial orientation: 40% of FDI by MNCs is for manufacturing, and 60% is for
extraction and processing of natural resources:
UWC in Mostar: Blue Book Economics Notes, page 228
• 500 MNCs control 80% of the FDI, 40% of them are US based, and 30% are
based in the UK, Germany and Japan.
• Most European and US based MNCs tend to invest in other MDCs.
• US owned: US MNCs still account for 50% of total FDI in LDCs. Much of the FDI
from US based MNCs is directed toward the oil industry.
• Japanese owned: 60% of Japanese MNCs investment has been in LDCs,
• LDC owned: MNCs which are LDC based and invest exclusively in other LDCs
have the fastest growth rate.
• Over time, nations and institutions such as labour unions have developed laws
and agreements to control or balance the excess of private companies.
o The problem with MNCs is that there is no global government or global union
to oppose or reduce the worst excesses.