Skip to main content

Economics Notes

I've been tutoring A-level and adult students in economics since 1998, amongst other things. I find that it sometimes helps for people to access notes to supplement the textbooks and revision guides on specific topics, so I will be putting my own material, plus links to other content, here. You can access it freely, but don't sell it on or pass anything off as your own work. Tutorial services can be accessed via my professional website. In time, I will compile the notes here into an amazon kindle book. Good luck!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Is the existence of different wages a problem for societies, and if so, how can it be remedied?

  Adam Smith, and Karl Marx, both believed that labour value lies at the heart of all economic value. Commodities, goods, and services arise from the interaction of land, labour, and capital. Since Land is fixed until new land is cleared or built by workers, and since capital enhances labour and is invented by people, they both thought that the only people who added value in economic transactions were workers. This theory of labour value was qualified in the second half of the twentieth century by the elevation of entrepreneurialism as a factor of production. The enterprising businesspeople who took on risks, brought factors together, and who were rewarded with profit having been prepared to make losses, were elevated to a ‘fourth factor.’ This idea makes some sense, but also serves to undermine the idea that labour value on its own creates economic value. If labour has value, some argue that the value of time taken from a life to work should be viewed equally. This means t...

Notes on Inflation

  Inflation is the general tendency of prices to rise over time. It is not simply an increase in one or two prices, or a temporary ‘blip’ upwards. There are three elements which students and writers on the topic must always grasp and build into any definition; ·          Prices rise, or the value of money falls ·          In general or on average ·          In a sustained way over time Such a definition puts an emphasis on the measurement of prices, of course, and also allows for types and causes of inflation to be separated out. Measurement is usually via some form of weighted index of average prices . This is sometimes referred to as a ‘ basket of goods and services.´   The CPI and RPI There are several measurements which the UK Government uses. These include the Consumer Price Index , (CPI), the CPI including Housing costs (CPIH ), the Ret...

Inequality, Part One: the greatest market failure?

    Income inequality arises when different consumers have different incomes, and different people have different talents. It could also arise because of the source of income or the value of the talents. For instance, employees might have different incomes from each other because of different marginal labour products, different factor returns to their labour, or different elasticities of labour. People might have different skills for which there is a greater or lesser need and employers, or the purchasers of labour might have different demands. Equally, entrepreneurs often take greater risks than others, and thereby expect and receive greater rewards than those who do not take risks. There might be different factor returns to capital or land, which result in various levels of profit, dividend, or rent, for those who do not live by the return to their labour value. A functional market would bring all these diverse groups together as suppliers and consumers and would matc...