A student's viewpoint

 Standard of living can be a difficult concept to measure or define, given its normative nature, but it can consist of different factors such as level of income, quality and quantity of goods and services available to consumers that can lead to wellbeing. The industrial revolution shifted the occupations of the working class towards manual related industries such as manufacturing, given the increase in urbanisation but it is clear that a large proportion of the population did not experience a rapid increase in standard of living. Those researching this topic can be split into two categories, optimists who believe in increased standard of living and pessimists, that believe in the opposite.  Over this period, the working class had to work in poor working conditions with ‘little to show in terms of living standards’ according to Marx as well as on many more days during the year (Voth, 2004). Real wages increased by a substantial amount, by more than 80% for adult men from 1820 t...

 The National Minimum Wage(NMW) is a statutory minimum wage used to increase the earnings of the low-paid. The National Living Wage, the NMW for those aged 23 and over, is at £8.91 per hour. Increasing the NMW would mean workers receive increased real disposable income. As wages are the reward to labour for working, there would be an increased supply of labour. It would improve the monetary benefit from the job, which could mean workers would choose to work more productively. As labour per hour increases, this makes them more valuable to an employer. As a result, there is increased demand for labour from firms, given that productive workers are in more demand according to labour market theory. This is beneficial to both firms and workers, as workers experience a greater quality of life due to increased income and firms see increased marginal revenue product of labour, despite the increased costs from the higher NMW.  However, this may not necessarily occur. The diagram shows t...

Migration is a key factor influencing the economic growth of developing countries. Economic growth in the long run is the potential output that can be produced, and in the short-run, the real output produced in a period of time. The key reason why emigration of skilled workers could be beneficial to developing countries is due to the remittance paid to homelands. Given that skilled workers are likely to earn more income abroad in global hubs such as the UK and USA this can benefit the while family living in e.g. Romania. This gives them a stable source of income from a well-paying job, which increases their marginal propensity to consume. As a result, there is an increase in aggregate demand , causing an increase in actual output and hence resulting in short-run economic growth. Indeed, workers from developing countries remitted a total of $325 billion in 2010. This can indirectly improve the economy’s balance of payments, as remittances are a key part of investment incomes, making ...

Economic growth is a change in the level of real national output in an economy in a period of time. Recently, China experienced real annual GDP growth of 9.5% through 2018. From the 1970s, China has been having export-led growth. This means that their value of exports exceeds their value of imports, which is a key contributor to a ‘huge trade surplus’. They have been able to do so largely due to their ‘undervalued exchange rate’ and ‘cheap labour ’. When this is the case, foreign consumers would find Chinese goods relatively cheaper, and Chinese consumers find foreign goods relatively more expensive, having the above effect. Historically, China would have a trade surplus in goods, such as energy and natural resources, as they would first specialize in the primary sector of manufacturing, causing net exports to increase. As net exports is a component of aggregate demand, this signifies short run economic growth  (since increased aggregate demand can enable increased real GDP, i.e. o...

 John Maynard Keynes had published economic theories regarding unemployment and solutions to economic recession. His most important work was the  The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money  (1935–36) which contains these theories. His work was based off his support for government intervention in markets.  He strongly affected fiscal policy until the 1970s, believing that when household savings exceeded investment, it caused deflation, and vice versa for inflation.  This is why his primary view was that recessions and unemployment can be significantly reduced using government spending that was targeted at increasing aggregate demand.  When aggregate demand increases, it incentivises firms to increase output and production to meet the increase in aggregate demand. As a result, unemployment falls, and revenue and profits rise for firms. This is important as it can lead to economic growth and therefore help the economy recover in time of a recession. ...

What is the EU? The EU is a trading bloc, where countries within the EU can trade with each other freely without facing any tariffs. A common external tariff is applied on non-member countries. The EU can be seen as a customs union, with the exception that there is free trade with almost all European states outside the EU. The timeline below depicts the events from when it was decided to leave the EU and when it was executed. The above data was taken from https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-7960/ It describes the entire timeline starting from when the referendum occurred in 2016, until when the UK left the EU on 31st December 2020. So what changed after this long period of decision-making? Similar rules would continue to apply for the UK, but to ensure that there is no unfair advantage given to the UK, both sides have ag reed to  ' some shared rules and standards on workers' rights, as well as many social and environmental regulations.' The key aspec...

Will the pandemic be inflationary or disinflationary?   A look into the pandemic’s effect on all economic agents and their responses The pandemic. The impact it will have on the world is yet to be fully calculated. It has caused governments to issue lockdowns worldwide, urging millions to stay home in order to control the disease. The government is in conflict whether to put their focus on their population’s health or the economy, which has meant coming to a compromise that may lead to the pandemic becoming disinflationary in the long term, looking at various sources and analysis. The response to the pandemic as well as the message given to the general public has led to a fall in aggregate demand as well as a large rise in unemployment. When aggregate demand falls, it can mean low and even negative economic growth, which in turn leads to disinflation, and in its extreme, deflation. However, deflation is very unlikely, because as ‘the Economist’   (Anon., 2020) has pointed...

For the entirety of the 20th century, oil has been driving the production of energy, ever since the Industrial Revolution.  However, day after day, awareness of climate change is increasing, and governments of developed countries are finally giving in to the prospect that a change must occur. In order for the world to sustainably allow more countries to develop, we must switch to cleaner sources of energy. Currently, 4 million people die every year from pollution due to fossil fuels. Not to mention the devastating droughts and famine faced by certain countries, as a consequence of developed countries ‘dumping’ their pollution on their neighbours. Nevertheless, it is important to consider that the world currently relies on fossil fuels. In fact, fossil fuels currently account for 85% of sources of energy. Moreover, developing countries such as Mexico rely on fossil fuels to feed their high population and thinking of investing in renewable sources of energy is a risk not worth taking...