Bloomberg has recently added a new focus to its news reporting: Sustainability. These articles focus on issues related to the environment, business ethics and resource depletion. As well as news stories, links are provided to videos and debates on related topics. This categories is well worth exploring and Bloomberg is to be commended for increasing awareness of the challenges facing the global environment.
Triple A Learning IB Blogs
December 25, 2011
A Green Bloomberg
December 10, 2011
Economics by Invitation
The Economist has a great feature on its website, “Economics by Invitation”. Key questions are posed and answered by leading economists. The range is questions is diverse and of interest to both teachers and students. For example some of their more popular questions include the following:
- Is inflation or deflation a greater threat to the world economy? Should policymakers focus more on structural adjustments or aggregate demand?
November 30, 2011
Natural Disasters and Economic Growth
An economic slowdown brought about by a natural disaster is tragically illustrated by the recent floods in Thailand as the nation struggles to recover and count the cost now that the waters are receding.
Most economists are slashing their forward estimates of GDP growth and see a strong possibility of an interest rate cut to help stimulate the economy.
November 20, 2011
Currency Wars
Most IB Classes are about to start teaching currency exchange from Section 4 and one topical way to introduce the topic is to focus on US claims that the Chinese manipulate their currency to gain trade advantages.
In a recent speech Obama talked tough on the issue. The Chinese countered by saying that all of America’s problems will not be solved by an appreciation of their currency. There does however seem to be some tentative signs of a softening of the usual Chinese response as reported by Bloomberg. These and other articles on the continuing currency wars can be an effective way to introduce the definitions and diagrams of this section.
November 2, 2011
Triple A blogs: the human sciences for TOK
For teachers perpetually on the lookout for fresh materials for the human sciences in TOK, let me bring your attention to other blogs within this Triple A Learning site. Although my incontestable favourite for TOK ideas with intercultural resonance is the blog on Social and Cultural Anthropology, a sample of from several blogs within the broad area of the human science might prompt your own good ideas. If you visit this site as a TOK teacher to follow my own blog or the other one for TOK (Chris White’s), you might also want to cruise from time to time through these others.
Business and Management:
October 16, 2011
iCloud and Barriers to Entry
In studying the characteristics of firms the concept of barriers to entry is a central one and highlights the fundamental difference between free competition, where there are no barriers, to monopolies, where high barriers to entry safeguard the power of a monopoly to be the price setter.
The article, Apple using iCloud to lock in users after online misfires, argues that Apple is hoping that the release of iCloud will succeed where other internet ventures failed and raise barriers to entry against competitors like Google.
September 24, 2011
What is the real issue facing policy makers?
Paul Krugman, perhaps the most famous economist in the world at the moment, has been a consistent advocate of increased government spending as a means to spur AD and decrease unemployment. He has also been highly critical of those who argue that the real issue is government debt which much be reduced. He counters by contending that a reduction in spending will have long term negative consequences. In this op-ed piece for the New York Times, The Fatal Attraction, he outlines why the obsession with government debt and reduced spending will not work :
Although you’d never know it listening to the ranters, the past year has actually been a pretty good test of the theory that slashing government spending actually creates jobs. The deficit obsession has blocked a much-needed second round of federal stimulus, and with stimulus spending, such as it was, fading out, we’re experiencing de facto fiscal austerity. State and local governments, in particular, faced with the loss of federal aid, have been sharply cutting many programs and have been laying off a lot of workers, mostly schoolteachers.
September 17, 2011
Section 3.6: Income Distribution
A recent article by the Wall Street Journal blogger Robert Frank should provoke an interesting class discussion on income distribution. The article quotes data and supplies a graph that reveals that 80% of the US wealth gains from 1983 to 2009 went to the wealthiest top 5%. In fact the top 1% gained 40% of the the US’s total wealth gain while the next 4% gained 41.5%. The data provided in the article can be analysed from various perspectives and students could apply their knowledge of the Lorenz Curve to show how these changes in income redistribution could be plotted. In addition students can be reminded of the distincion between normative and positive statements in economics. Students could also add their comment to the blog.
September 6, 2011
CNBC Explains
CNBC provides excellent resources on a range of economic topics. They claim to be able to “dissect the complicated world of economics of our world” and have employed the services of Salman Khan, founder of the Khan Academy and a whiz at making arcane topics easy to understand. There are also articles by anchors and editors around CNBC. While many of the topics are focused on investment there are excellent entires on inflation and deflation and currencies.
August 17, 2011
The GDP Fixation
This article, How did the world get so fixated on GDP? from the Guardian raises some interesting points about why most economic commentators and policy-makers remained locked into GDP as a measure of economic success.
The author points out that:
