This week's Weekly 5 brings you the following stories:
1. The Gig Economy
2. HS2 problems
3. The chicken market
4. US Yield Curves
5. The UK housing market
Welcome to this week's Weekly 5.
This week, we're focussing on the following stories:
1. Brexit forecasting
2. The Bank of England stress tests
3. The ups and downs of Bitcoin values
4. The Audit market
5. The climate change report
This week's Weekly 5 brings you the top stories from the economic world, along with questions and class discussion points to put the stories into context for A-level Economics students.
The stories we have chosen for this issue are:
1. Governor of the Bank of England's warning on a potential no deal Brexit
2. Impact of global migration on the education sector
3. An alternative approach to measuring poverty in the UK
4. Trade tensions between the US and China
5. Impact of the UK sugar tax
This week's Weekly 5 covers the following topics:
1. The rise and fall of oil prices
2. The latest UK economic growth figures
3. The shrinking Japanese economy
4. India's banking problems
5. The IMF position on cryptocurrencies
We last brought you an Economics Weekly 5 back in spring, before we kicked off our revision campaign for the summer exam season.
We thought it was high time we brought back this popular feature, so starting from today, The Weekly 5 returns!
Be sure to get some sleep-in tonight because Tuesday night promises to be a long and eventful one over in the US of A!
The results of the US mid-term elections – US general elections held every four years to decide upon the legislative structure surrounding the incumbent administration - are expected to come in overnight. The mid-term results are hotly anticipated as they are likely to form the first tangible evidence of sentiment and opinion on the progress made by Donald Trump’s administration half-way into his first term of office i.e. has Trumponomics really worked?
This article and videos are great material for young economists. Loved watching the video and reading the article on Sky News this morning.
Historical context, some good explanations, several connections to the real economy and some interesting thoughts on what happens to US interest rates, what the consequences might be and why current policy tools might not dig us out of another financial crisis.
For more detail on the technicalities of banks and coverage of the 2008 crisis please feel free to use and share:
Banks and financial institutions recap video
2017 CPD presentation - free slide pack
Don't forget:
- You won't learn much via passive video viewing i.e. just watching a video
- Take your time, make notes and turn your time into an active viewing event.
- When you think you understand it then test yourself via our assessments
- Read the feedback when you get questions wrong as "feedback is the food of champions"
Here is an outline with links to our main course activities:
|
Ref |
Description |
Videos |
Qs with unique explanations |
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Unit 1 |
Provision of Finance |
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Unit 2 |
Financial Markets |
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Unit 3 |
Calculating Bond Yields |
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Unit 4 |
Financial Institutions |
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Unit 5 |
Interest Rate Determination |
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Unit 6 |
Central Banks |
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Unit 7 |
Bank Failures and Systemic Crises |
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Unit 8 |
Financial Regulation |
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Unit 9 |
Financial Sector in Developing economies |
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Finale |
End of Module Assessment |
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Total activities |
27 |
135 |
Following the upgrade to our macro questions back at Christmas, we are excited to be upgrading all of our micro questions as well!
As time has passed since we first launched the EzyEconomics courses, we have developed our functionality. In particular, we have created our own question functionality which allows us a lot of flexibility to ask different question formats. It also makes questions prettier and clearer for students to understand.
Towards the end of August, we will publish all of these new-format questions.
What does this mean for our learning data?
All previous assessment outcomes will be retained. This means that reports like the Gradebook will be unaffected. Students will notice no difference to their data.
However, some of the more advanced reports available to teachers, including student learning analysis, will not contain data for attempts at the 'old-format' questions. All attempts from the end of August onwards at these new questions will be recorded. If you have any questions about this, please get in contact with us!
A huge thank you to all of the schools who have supported us thus far. We are looking forward to yet another record-breaking year of usage within EzyEconomics and the production and release of ever more (and ever better) resources!
Best wishes,
The EzyEconomics Team
This is the time of the year when there is time to think ahead. In order to think about how to do better next year a good idea might be to focus on what you are trying to achieve. If the objective is to improve performance against target grade it is worth reflecting on just how this might be achieved.
On day 30 of the Year 13 Recap we review the material relating to inequality and poverty.
Inequality and poverty are politically charged topics because they relate to the consequences of bad policy decisions and allocative inefficiency.
On day 29 of the Year 13 Recap we review the field of macroeconomics titled development economics.
Development economics is a branch of economics established to evaluate the link between growth and development. This is because standard economic theory, up to that point, had always assumed that higher levels of growth would translate into improved living standards and put a country on a strong development path.
On day 28 of the Year 13 Recap we review the concept of economic integration and discuss the different levels in which economic integration can come in.
Economic integration describes how countries take active steps to increase the amount of trade between themselves and the rest of the world. There are lots of competing terms that you need to be comfortable with such as a customs union, free trade agreement and single market.
On day 27 of the Year 13 Recap we review the balance of payments and more specifically the solutions that are put forward to correct large trade deficits and surpluses.
A deficit may sound bad and a surplus may sound good, but the reality is that some countries have to run a large surplus to finance the large deficits belonging to other countries. So should we really be as concerned with these trade statistics as we might think?
On day 26 of the Year 13 Recap we review the material surrounding exchange rates and the systems that prevail around the global economy.
An exchange rate is a price at which one currency exchanges for another. Businesses, holidaymakers, governments and policymakers all keep a keen eye on the exchange rate as it has important knock-on effects for each of these agents.
On day 25 of the Year 13 Recap we focus on trade protection and how we can analyse the welfare implications of three of most commonly used protectionist policies.
Despite the efforts of the WTO and the existence of the widely-accepted trade theory of comparative advantage, protectionism is still a trading action which is used as a political bargaining chip and sometimes implemented to place pressure on a particular industry or country.
On day 24 of the Year 13 Recap we review the trade theory of comparative advantage and how it can be used to explain trade patterns around the world.
Ever wondered why the UK has a specialised focus on providing and selling services, whilst China has an innate ability to produce heavily manufactured goods? The theory of comparative advantage, to some degree, explains why countries focus and trade the surplus of the goods they are most efficient at producing.
On day 23 of the Year 13 Recap we discuss the causes, consequences and impact of globalisation on the UK economy.
Globalisation is a term which is used to explain how individual economies have moved away from their localised specialities towards a more global approach. Globalisation has fielded a series of advantages for firms, be that small or large, through the reduction in transportation costs and trade barriers.
On day 22 of the Year 13 Recap, we review the basics behind financial regulation and why this has grown in prominence since the 2008 financial crisis.
Regulation is enforced in an industry to curb the activities and conduct of firms to ensure that standards are maintained, and consumers are not being exploited.
On Day 21 of the Year 13 Recap we review the policy tool of Quantitative Easing (QE) and why it is was introduced post-2008.
After the 2008 financial crisis, many central banks around the world sought to stimulate their respective economies by slashing interest rates. This relates back to the chain of reasoning introduced in the traditional transmission mechanism. However, one of the limitations of interest rate changes is that the effectiveness of this policy tool erodes as the bank rate gets closer to zero.
On Day 20 of the Year 13 Recap, we review the causes, consequences and UK policy response to the 2008 Financial Crisis.
When it comes to the material surrounding the financial crisis there are lots of pieces of literature, books, articles and academic research devoted towards explaining and the analysing the causes that led up to the 2008 crash.
