'Gun Control' - Does it work?

by Eyrie Clark

11 dead. 10 dead. 26 dead. Every year, over 250 mass-shootings take place in the United States, making an average of almost once per day.

In the wake of so many mass-shootings: Fort Hood, the Aurora theater, Sandy Hook Elementary School, and most recently the shooting at the navy yard in Washington, D.C., and finally, the shooting of 13 people in a Chicago basketball court, which included a three-year-old child among the victims, many people not only in the United States, but around the world, are having a serious debate about the merits - or lack thereof - of gun control.

Credit to The Guardian

Many people believe there is no connection between gun control and the rate of violence in a country. For instance, Republican Representative John McCain believes that there is no connection between guns and violence at all. He, along with many other conservatives, persistently speaks out against gun-control laws, attempting to block almost all progress. So let's start out by having some fun and tearing his statement to pieces.

Why has Chile become an economic force in South America & will it last?

By Izak Kallumpram

 

Economic History of Chile

Having come out of a repressive military dictatorship of General Pinochet in early 1990s, Chile opened up as a nation, becoming more of a democracy. By detracting its powers in the country’s economy, the government allowed the free-market orientated economy to push ahead whilst achieving political stability. In past centuries, especially under the Spanish-colonial periods, Chile had been a mainly monopolistic and closed economy. Once the economy did open up to foreign trade it reaped the rewards, becoming the fastest growing economy in South America in the 1990s, undertaking an aggressive privatization process and has weathered recent regional economic instability. With Chile already having free trade ties with the U.S. as well as elsewhere in the world, the tools for success were in place to a capable trading platform.  This coupled with a falling inflation, strong currency and affirmative monetary and fiscal policies meant that Chile was in a robust and stable position approaching the new millennium.

How do you feel about plastic money?

by Karina Shooter

Australian Plastic Banknotes Photo Courtesy of realitypod.com

The Bank of England has announced that plastic banknotes may be introduced in the UK from 2016. The transition would begin with the new Winston Churchill £5 note, soon followed by the new £10 featuring Jane Austen. The Bank has been looking into the possibility of plastic banknotes for the past three years, and is now going into the final stage of the procedure - a roadshow across the UK to find out public opinion on the matter. In December a final decision will be made on whether plastic notes should be introduced. 

So why the sudden change? Plastic notes are a lot more durable than their 'paper' counterparts (which are actually made of cotton pulp combined with linen and other plant fibres). A typical £5 note currently lasts just over 6 months before it is so worn and torn that it is deemed unsuitable for circulation by the Bank of England and is shredded. A polymer note will last for 2.5 times longer, which will reduce money spent on the replacement and disposal of worn banknotes. It will also be more environmentally friendly, as less notes will have to be disposed of on such a frequent basis. 

Can Pigou Refute the (Keynesian) Liquidity Trap?

by Jaime Bravo + (A spanish version of this article can be found here)

Keynesian economists believes that, in the presence of a liquidity trap, a competitive economy may lack automatic market mechanisms that tend to eliminate excess supplies of labor. So, in a liquidity trap, if the interest-rates are so low, there must be some public spending in order to "rebuild" the economic activity. Although Keynes made great points on this issue, the classical economists have something to say. Here enters the Pigou Effect and its relation with the Liquidity Trap. As Paul Krugman said (not exactly quoted): there might be a moment for every economy when markets cannot do anything by themselves as the interest-rates are so low - it means that there is no investment in the country - and, as you can have less than a 0% - in a negative interest rate, the Government would have to pay the investors to invest - you have to make something. The answer for Keynesians is, yes, public spending. The logic behind this asseveration is surprisingly simple: a country - say, Spain - has a lot of people with money, but they do not invest it, they save it because, for example, there's high unemployment and a big uncertainty in the future - the risk of losing all the money is here.  If a Government expands its public spending, it will raise the number of jobs. Considering that Spain - the example taken - has a lot of unemployed people (which is actually true), they will be employed and therefore, they will be less resistant to spending. So debt will increase, yes. But the problem with the debt-obsession - I'm nowadays reading to Reinhart and Rogoff on this issue - is that it is not quite relevant sometimes: if you have 7 million unemployed in a country, debt doesn't matter: the high unemployment rate does.

Youth Unemployment in Europe - What are the effects and how can we solve it?

by Karina Shooter


Photo Courtesy of gkardashev.com

In July, Angela Merkel announced that youth unemployment was a priority in the Eurozone. Many people believe that this decision was far overdue - the youth unemployment rate is now at 58.7% in Greece and 56.1% in Spain. But what is the effect of youth unemployment and what can we do to reduce it? 

The first question which needs to be addressed is why youth unemployment is more dangerous than unemployment in general. The main reason for this is that jobs become easier to get the more experience you have - it is important for young people to get on the 'job ladder' quickly, so they can gain experience and progress to better jobs. If youth unemployment is rife, then a generation of young people gain no experience, so even when the economy stabilises and employers are willing to hire workers again, they are too inexperienced to be offered a job - hence they become 'the jobless generation'. This is a massive waste of skills and resources. The second issue which arises from mass youth unemployment is an ageing population. When youth unemployment is high in a particular country, young people tend to move abroad in order to find work. This means that countries such as Spain and Greece, have lots of older retired people in their country but not enough young working people who pay their taxes so the government can support the citizens - this may, at an extreme, result in poorer quality state education which would lead to under qualified youth and may cause a youth unemployment spiral. 

Redundancy at 17... Yes that's me!

By Krupa Popat

Writing about economics and reading articles as to what is happening to the people around me because of the decisions of others really made me think about how privileged and grateful I should be.

However now, I’m in the position of experiencing the downfalls of the decisions and being on the receiving end… And I can definitely confirm it is not nice!

I worked for a retail company, which is a very large multinational but worked in a very small store, within a store. I worked there for over a year and thoroughly enjoyed it. I met new people and learnt many skills but especially developed my patience and ability to be quick on my feet with customer problems. Something you don’t do on a regular basis without a job.

This has disappointed me in the fact that our economy as been flat lining which made me think that the economy was going to get better and this would increase our confidence as consumers and the confidence of companies to invest. This would then hopefully kick start the growth and rebuild the economy.

Would an Increase of Wages in Bangladesh Destroy Their Economy?

by Jaime Bravo

 Since a lot of factories in Bangladesh were destroyed, many people wondered whether an increase of wages would destroy the (fragile) economy of Bangladesh. Many people are employed every day in the sweatshops, the factories where they are being turned to slaves by an economic paradigm that does not fit for them. As I argued in my last piece, they are poor but they are not stupid. In fact, since that happened, many people started saying that the benefits from the sweatshops are incredibly great because they provide of higher wages (considering that, if they do not work in factories (with increasing-returns) they will work in the agricultural sector (with constant-returns) and because they let them to save little by little so that they can provide their children with a better education and, in the long-term, with a better future. This is the theory. But the reality isn’t so sweet. Again, economists have something to say about this issue.

Is Latin really making a comeback?

by Viva Avasthi

Despite The Economist's conviction that Latin is making a comeback, as described in their article from a couple of days ago, I beg to differ. In fact, I believe that the question is not, "Why is Latin making a comeback?" but rather, "Is Latin really making a comeback?"

I'm afraid the answer is, "Not really, no."

Although it would be brilliant if Latin really were making a comeback, The Economist's argument that Latin is becoming more popular can be refuted in two parts: by observing the ancient language's popularity in young people and by analysing just how popular the Latin-based services the newspaper refers to are. I'll also try to attempt to use ideas from behavioural economics to explain why Latin is not making a comeback any time soon.

What do we (Really) Know From Economic Development? A Random Analysis of Poverty in Some Non-Developed Countries

by Jaime Bravo

  One of the things I have come across recently is the fact that we know very  little about poverty. I mean, really. We have the Millennium Goals, settled by the UN, and, yes, poverty is decreasing in some parts of the world. In a study I made a few weeks ago, I discovered a few facts about poverty in non-developed countries that are really important. I saw that there is a big problem with GDP all across the world. The study was based on a few countries (particularly, Germany, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Argentina, Afghanistan, Colombia and Spain) and there were three different groups.

Firstly, I considered GER and SPA as the completely developed countries; ARG and COL (those from Latin-America) are considered as the upcoming-completely-developed countries among the group. Finally, PAK, AFG and BAN are the less-developed countries included in the study. What I saw was that, even though the less developed  had a lower-income than the others, they were doing significant efforts (for example, the number of children in school in Afghanistan has increased a lot if we compare it with the upcoming-completely-developed economies).

Secondly, I found that the crisis hit harder to developed economies than to non-developed ones (the table I presented included data from Afghanistan, Albania, Bangladesh, Burundi, Colombia, Ethiopia, Germany, Kenya, Norway, Spain, Sudan, Thailand, France and Austria) in terms of GDP reduction. It could be because both the GDP and the exports decreased simultaneously. (The table presented considered the data from 2009, one year after the crisis started.) This is quite interesting: while non-developed economies are mainly importers of manufactured-products and exporters of commodities, they didn't stopped exporting commodities but importing manufactured products. The logic behind this is quite simple. Non-developed economies have a lot of unskilled labour and they have a lot of labour-intensive industries. In the other hand, developed economies have some kind of equilibrium between unskilled and skilled-labour and they have a lot of capital-intensive sectors/industries.

Book Review: 'A Room of One's Own' by Virginia Woolf

by Viva Avasthi                                                                                  
                                                                    Rating out of 5: ★★★★★

After 'The Picture of Dorian Gray', which I've reviewed here, it was the extended essay entitled 'A Room of One's Own' by Virginia Woolf (1182-1941) that I got my hands on next. This text is based on a series of lectures delivered by Woolf at Newnham College and Girton College, two colleges of the University of Cambridge. In 1928, when Woolf gave her lectures, both colleges were solely for women; today Girton also admits men.

Despite being based on her lectures entitled 'Women and Fiction' (and being classified as a non-fiction text for this very reason), it is a fictional narrator of no particular name who is the main character in this text. We are encouraged by Woolf's anonymous narrator to call her by "any name [we] please" as it is apparently "not a matter of any importance" - a highly effective way for Woolf to direct her readers towards thinking more closely about the ideas and arguments presented rather than who they are being presented by.

This essay follows the thought processes of the unnamed narrator in trying to establish why it is that up until the point of this essay being published women had not been able to have as much influence in society, and particularly in the field of literature, as men. She travels from the colleges of the fictional Oxbridge University to the British Museum in London to Shakespeare's time (as a thought experiment) to see why "masculine values prevail" and "football and sport are 'important'; the worship of the fashion, the buying of clothes 'trivial'". In a particularly intriguing part of her writing, she imagines what it would have been like for Shakespeare's own sister, had she been a genius, to attempt to display her talents to the world.

Book Review: 'The Picture of Dorian Gray' by Oscar Wilde

by Viva Avasthi                                                                                  
                                                                  Rating out of 5: ★★★★★

You might be someone who is interested in what others have been reading and what they have learnt from or enjoyed about particular books; in which case you'll be interested in this summer's series of book reviews on this website. This month I've read two novels and a text better referred to as a fictitious extended essay than anything else.

To keep my account in chronological order, I'll start by mentioning some of my opinions on the first of my reads: 'The Picture of Dorian Gray' by Oscar Wilde (1854-1900). The novel follows the descent of an outstandingly handsome but initially naive man who makes a Faustian bargain, trading his soul for eternal youth. He emerges as a corrupt individual prioritizing beauty over everything else and ruining countless lives including his own.

If you haven't already read this classic, I would highly recommend that you do so - if not for the marvellous prose, then at least for the brilliant storyline. There have been at least six film or television adaptations of this book, and although I have only seen the 1945 film version, I find it difficult to believe that any production could do justice to the book. Filled with vivid descriptions and numerous witticisms on almost every page, this book was such a wonderful read that once I'd finished, I was very tempted to start reading it all over again.

The London 2012 Olympics: One Year On

by Pavandeep Virdee

It seems hard to imagine that it was only last year that people in Great Britain were celebrating the incredible sporting achievements of the Olympics. Whether it be the memorable moments of Mo Farah crossing the finish line, or the much-awaited triumph of Jessica Ennis- I think it’s safe to say that the Olympics brought many intangible benefits, for all of us.
But what about the economic benefits?

Did the Olympics succeed in its expectation to provide economic growth, or did it in fact fail to deliver? Well, with the official report on the economic benefits of the 2012 Games published on the 19^th of July this year, the 2012 Games were said to have ‘gone out of their way to show that the Olympics more than paid for itself’; by generating an approximate figure of £10bn- almost £1bn higher than its cost.

The report states that many of the benefits include the additional business that has been secured for UK firms and companies. For instance, some UK companies have won more contracts for other international sporting events, which adds up to the figure of £1.5bn, with £120m of this being business that UK companies have won, to help with the Rio Olympics.

Britain's EU Membership - The Cons

by Karina Shooter

Picture courtesy of studentthinktank.eu

In my previous article, we looked at the advantages of Britain’s EU membership.  Now we are going to consider the alternative point of view – what are the disadvantages?

One of the most common arguments which is used to oppose Britain’s EU membership is the cost. Different estimates on how much EU membership costs Britain per year vary dramatically, for example although the Foreign Office and Commonwealth say that the cost of EU membership is £300 per head, the Bruges (an anti EU group) claim that the cost per head is £873. The argument put forward from Euro sceptics is that we are suffering from an imbalance of payments – the UKs allocation from the EU budget is much less than our contribution in the form of membership payments – therefore we are experiencing a trade deficit.

Whatever happened to the 'F word'?

by Pavandeep Virdee

I can understand that the title above may be a little misleading - so just to clear any confusion, the only ‘F word’ I’ll be using in this article is in fact feminism! I know what you’re thinking: why feminism? Well, it may seem a little strange, but believe it or not, it seems that many young women and girls are more reluctant to talk about feminism; or even simply mention the word in a conversation, than ever before.

But why is this? With regards to feminism itself, there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with its cause; it has been at the heart of defending equal political, economic and social rights for women for over 100 years. From the right to vote, all the way to having free access to contraception - the wave of feminism has passed us all. Nonetheless, what is the mystery behind the decline in modern feminism?

The biggest reason for the dislike of feminism amongst recent times, is that feminists are often branded by the media and anti-feminist groups, as being ‘men-haters’, who believe that women’s rights are more important than men’s rights - leading to them being too concerned about the issues of women, whilst forgetting the issues of men too.

Still, is this really the case? The truth is that most feminist groups today do not neglect the issues of men- some have in fact pioneered in promoting global awareness of unspoken issues, like prison rape - which largely affects male prisoners. It can be said however, that feminists do advocate more for the rights of women, but that’s largely because they believe that in comparison to men, women still have many significant issues, which are not always openly addressed by society - such as the lack of rights to contraception and abortion for many women in developing countries.

Field Burning in South Africa

© Travel Pictures Travel, Image Ref 3104447 –
Aerial View Of Sugar Cane Farms
Near Mtwalume. Kwazulu Natal South Coast. South Africa

by Sparshita Dey 
(with Viva Avasthi)



As suggested by the introduction, this is the second of our field burning case studies of countries/states across the world. Our first report was on Brazil - the world's largest producer of sugarcane. This report will focus on the KwaZulu-Natal Province in South Africa and whether or not there is a market for the Pyroformer™ there.  





Field Burning in the KwaZulu-Natal Province happens mainly on sugarcane fields in order to maintain a continuous harvest throughout the years so that production and profit is generated consistently. This therefore relies on the removal of plant residue from the soil to allow replanting. Furthermore, the burning is also an important way of warding off snakes, dangerous insects and other pests as well as killing or destroying weeds for healthier growth of the sugarcane plants themselves as they have less competition.

^Source: http://unfccc.int/files/meetings/seminar/application/pdf/sem_sup3_south_africa.pdf - “A National Climate Change Strategy for South Africa” 

The above has been taken from the South African National Climate Change Strategy document from September 2004. The highlighted text shows that as part of the strategy, South Africa had highlighted field burning as a key area where greenhouse gas emissions could be reduced in the agricultural sector. This suggests a certain amount of awareness of environmental issues regarding field burning at a government level hinting that the government will be more inclined or interested to fund any projects with the intention of reducing the emissions: like the use of the Pyroformer™. 

Field Burning In Brazil

by Viva Avasthi (with Sparshita Dey)

Following our introduction to our project investigating field burning across the world, we're starting with an overview of field burning in Brazil, with a focus on the state of São Paulo (indicated on the map below by the initials SP).

The situation in Brazil

São Paulo is at the heart of Brazil’s sugarcane industry,
and has set an eco-friendly example for other regions
through its successful ‘Green Protocol’.

Brazil produces the largest quantities of sugar in the world, which could explain why the Brazilian government is so keen to prevent the burning of sugarcane in its fields. 

In 2012, Brazil produced 25% of the world’s sugar and 50% of the world’s sugar exports. The sugarcane sector employed 70,000 growers with the direct employment of 1.18 million people and an annual sector revenue of US$ 28 billion. US$ 16.2 billion of foreign revenue was generated in 2012.

The statistics above illustrate that the sugar industry is an important sector of Brazil's economy. Through eliminating field burning, the government aims for the production of sugarcane in the country to be sustainable so that Brazil can continue to retain its competitive advantage over other producers of sugar. Field burning has occurred in the country’s fields for hundreds of years for a variety of reasons, the most common of which are: to remove sugarcane straw (which consists of the plant’s tops and leaves); to drive out snakes; and to allow the cane to be cut more easily by hand.

Field Burning and the Pyroformer™: An Introduction

by Sparshita Dey and Viva Avasthi 

Copyright © Aaron Joel Santos / NOI Pictures

As part of our work experience, we chose to work at Aston University in Birmingham for two weeks where we are involved in some research regarding “an innovative sustainable energy solution developed by the EBRI (European Bioenergy Research Institute) that could dramatically reduce the world’s reliance on fossil fuels”. This solution, namely the Pyroformer™,  aims to tackle the problems created through agricultural field burning (also known as 'stubble burning'). 

Britain’s Membership of the EU – The Pros

by Karina Shooter

Photo courtesy of www.bbc.co.uk

Sky News has announced the results of an exclusive survey about Britain’s EU membership. In response to the question: "Do you think that the United Kingdom should remain a member of the European Union?” 51% voted ‘No’, with 49% supporting the ‘Yes’ option.

The results show that there is no clear consensus on people’s views towards EU membership, and if we take into account the fact that the poll will have a margin of error, it really does highlight how result of the referendum vote could go either way. This means that it is more important than ever to discuss the pros and cons of EU membership. I will look at each side of the argument in separate articles. In this article we will look at the advantages of Britain being a member of the EU, in a subsequent article I will explore the disadvantages. 

Perhaps the most obvious advantage of EU membership is the single market. Europe is the world’s largest single market – it is an economic zone larger than that of the USA and Japan combined and it has a total GDP of around £11 trillion. The single market allows Britain to freely trade good and services between countries in the European Union, without tax or regulations. European markets account for half of the UK’s overall trade and foreign investments. It is said that EU countries currently trade twice as much with each other as they would do in the absence of the Single Market.