MCD2020 Microeconomics 微观经济 assignment 代写

100%原创包过,高质代写&免费提供Turnitin报告--24小时客服QQ&微信：120591129

MCD2020 Microeconomics 微观经济 assignment 代写

© Monash College

Page 1 of 8

MCD2020 Microeconomics

Trimester 2, 2017

Research Assignment

Word limit: 1000 words (must be stated)

Weightage: 10%

Due Date: Week 9 – Friday August 25th 2017 10 am

Instructions to Students

1. Learning Objectives:

This assessment task is designed to build independent research, analytical and

writing skills. It is an individual task.

2. Submission requirements:

It must be submitted typed, one-sided, and double spaced on white A4 paper. Work

submitted for assessment must be accompanied by a completed copy of the Cover

Sheet (available on Moodle). No assignment will be accepted or marked if it is not

accompanied by a signed Cover Sheet with your name, I.D. number, the tutorial

day/time, and the name of the tutor on the Cover Sheet. An electronic copy will not

be accepted. You should retain a copy of the work submitted.

Faculty Style Guide – Work submitted for this assignment must follow the Faculty

Style as outlined in the Faculty Q Manual. Copies of this manual can be obtained at

the bookshop or online.

Applications for extension of time – All applications for an extension of the time

allocated to an assessment task must be made in writing to the Team Leader (see

special consideration for within trimester assessment on Moodle). Approval, if

granted, will be communicated in writing.

Feedback on Assignment:

Assignments will be returned during Session One of tutorials in week 12 by a name

call.

Page 2 of 8

MCD2020 Microeconomics – Research Assignment

1. Choose any one article from the following articles:

Harry Potter and the Curse of Market Forces: A muggle's game

Of legumes and liberalisation; Brazilian trade

2. Based on the list of learning objectives,

a) Identify two (2) microeconomic ideas you can find in the chosen article. Highlight sections

of the text with those microeconomic ideas, and relate / match those two economic ideas,

one at a time, to the learning objective given in the appendix. (2 marks for each concept;

Total 4 marks)

b) Explain and further discuss the selected economic ideas. In your explanation, you need to

show understanding of the economic ideas as they are used in the article, by drawing

connections between the concepts and the article content. Support your discussions with

relevant diagram(s). (8 marks for each concept; Total 16 marks)

In your submission, please keep to a limit of 1000 words in total for both concepts.

3. Attach a copy of the selected article and highlight the parts of the article you have referred to

in your discussion.

Page 3 of 8

Article 1

Harry Potter and the Curse of Market Forces: A muggle's game

The Economist (Online); London (Aug 17, 2016).

Rather than allowing touts to profit, the play's producers could follow the producers of

"Hamilton", a wildly successful Broadway musical, and up prices for the premium seats until

demand falls in line with supply (even at up to $849 per ticket, some argue that "Hamilton"

is too cheap).

A British stage show's spellbinding success proves ticket reselling is tough to manage

TICKETS to "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child", the latest, on‐stage instalment in the

magically lucrative series, have proved harder to grasp than the golden snitch. After 250,000

tickets released on August 4th sold out within hours, fans' disappointment turned to

outrage as stubs with a face value of Pounds 15‐70 ($20‐90) started popping up on resale

websites for more than Pounds 8,000.

In line with the howls of outrage, the play's producers called the secondary ticket market an

"industry‐wide plague" and asserted their contractual right to refuse entry to people turning

up with a resold ticket. This was the most they could do. Unauthorised reselling (known to

its foes as scalping) was criminalised in Britain in the case of football in 1994, and in the

London Olympics of 2012, but is legal for plays and concerts.

Flint‐hearted economists might note that a secondary market suggests that the seats were

under‐priced. Cheaper tickets meant to boost equal access lure in touts, for whom low

prices mean bigger premiums. And more scalpers means more disappointed fans in the

queue.

Rather than allowing touts to profit, the play's producers could follow the producers of

"Hamilton", a wildly successful Broadway musical, and up prices for the premium seats until

demand falls in line with supply (even at up to $849 per ticket, some argue that "Hamilton"

is too cheap). But the Potter producers seem to be more worried about impecunious

wizarding fans losing out than about the prospect of touts swiping surplus.

Stamping out the secondary market entirely means preventing people selling their tickets to

those who value them more. This inefficiency is wince‐inducing for economists, and difficult

to enforce. In May a report on the online secondary ticket market commissioned by the

government pointed out that banning the secondary market would simply shift activity

underground.

Restricting the secondary market is possible, but only with great effort. The government's

review reported that the Glastonbury model, where festival‐goers must show proof of

identification alongside their ticket, work, but only because the organisers try so hard to

control everything, from ticketing to the venue.

Page 4 of 8

Checking at performances of "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child" seems less rigorous. The

producers have identified only around 60 bookings yielding tickets that that made their way

on to the secondary market since the play opened in June, an average of around one a day.

In any case, resale websites guarantee that rejected tickets will be reimbursed. Awkwardly

for producers, ticket markets are more like unruly bludgers than pliable quaffles.

Page 5 of 8

Article 2

MCD2020 Microeconomics 微观经济 assignment 代写

Of legumes and liberalisation; Brazilian trade

The Economist (Online); London (Jul 2, 2016).

A big protectionist economy starts to open up.

FEW Brazilians get through a day without eating beans. They gobble up 3.4m tonnes a year,

a ladle a day for each person. So when prices rise, as they did by a fifth recently after bad

weather damaged the domestic harvest, they gripe. On June 24th the government

suspended its 10% tariff on imports. Blairo Maggi, the agriculture minister, hopes that

Chinese and Mexican farmers will fill the leguminous gap.

In a country prone to protectionist folly, Brazil's market‐minded response to the bean

shortage is refreshing. It may portend a greater opening to trade. Though Brazil is the

world's ninth‐largest economy, its trade is just 1.2% of the global total; in only five countries

does trade account for a lower share of GDP. Brazil's new centrist government sees exports

as one way to pull the country out of its deep recession. Politicians and company bosses are

starting to regard trade as a way to boost productivity, and thus growth, in the long run,

too.

Of late, the government has tucked into liberalisation as if it were an appetising feijoada

(bean‐and‐meat stew). In April Brazil signed an investment treaty with Peru that, if ratified,

will allow firms from both countries to compete freely for government contracts. In June

Brazil asked to join 23 members of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in negotiating a

pact on trade in services. The government is preparing legislation to raise the ceiling on

foreign ownership of airlines from 20%. Mr Maggi talks of lifting a presidential decree from

2010 that bars foreign ownership of farms, which discourages foreign investors from lending

to farmers. "All the taboos have gone," says Ricardo

Mendes of Prospectiva, a consultancy that specialises in trade policy.

Brazil has been a reluctant globaliser. Ever since the 1950s, when many poor‐country

governments championed domestic production as a substitute for imports, Brazilian

industry has been shielded from foreign competition. The left‐wing Workers' Party (PT),

which governed from 2003 until May this year, continued the cosseting. From 2000 to 2013

Brazil was a party to a tenth of all disputes filed at the WTO, usually as the plaintiff. During

that period it erected more trade barriers‐‐from tariffs to subsidies to local‐content rules‐‐

than most other countries.

Attitudes started to shift in 2012 as the economy weakened, prompting firms to seek

growth abroad. Dilma Rousseff, the PT president, began to liberalise trade after her re‐

election in 2014. The government has enacted two dozen pro‐trade measures and just three

restrictive ones since the start of 2015, according to the WTO.

Michel Temer, who became acting president in May after Ms Rousseff was forced to step

aside while the Senate conducts an impeachment trial against her, is going further. Although

his Party of the Brazilian Democratic Movement is close to competition‐shy industry, he has

Page 6 of 8

a liberal streak. He plans to dismantle local‐content rules in the oil‐and‐gas sector (which

force companies to use substandard, and often more expensive, domestic technology). He

replaced Ms Rousseff's liberalising trade minister but kept the ministry's technocrats to

avoid disrupting negotiations.

On June 24th Mr Temer renewed a bilateral automotive arrangement with Argentina for

four years (rather than the usual one). For the first time the two countries, the main

constituents of Mercosur, a South American trade group, have agreed in principle to free

trade in cars and car parts from 2020. Brazil's new trade minister, Marcos Pereira, wants to

conclude an ambitious trade deal with Mexico by the end of 2016. Mr Temer took Apex, the

export promotion agency, away from Mr Pereira and gave it to the foreign minister, Jose

Serra, an economist. It has a new mission, "inserting Brazil into global supply chains", which

implies greater openness to imports.

Curb your enthusiasm.

Brazil opened partially in the early 1990s but later attempts to liberalise fizzled. The

government of Fernando Henrique Cardoso signed ten bilateral investment treaties in the

late 1990s and ratified none. A Free‐Trade Area of the Americas, supported by Mr Cardoso,

was blocked by his successor. Industries will not give up protection without a fight.

Another worry is that Brazil's move towards openness comes at a time when its biggest

trading partners are moving in the opposite direction. It is safe to say that the European

Union's first priority will not now be to conclude its trade deal with Mercosur. One

presidential candidate in the United States is a raging protectionist; the other is ambivalent.

This makes Brazil's change of attitude all the more welcome. Brazilian businesses will not

become competitive unless they compete, acknowledges Mr Maggi. It has taken Brazil a

long time to learn that lesson.

Page 7 of 8

MCD2020 Microeconomics 微观经济 assignment 代写

MCD2020 Microeconomics ‐ List of Learning Objectives

1. Understand the factors that influence the demand for goods and services.

2. Understand the factors that influence the supply of goods and services.

3. Explain how equilibrium in a market is reached and use a graph to illustrate equilibrium.

4. Use demand and supply graphs to predict changes in prices and quantities

5. Define the price elasticity of demand and understand how to calculate it.

6. Understand the determinants of the price elasticity of demand.

7. Understand the relationship between the price elasticity of demand and total revenue.

8. Define the cross‐price elasticity of demand and the income elasticity of demand, and understand

their determinants and how they are calculated.

9. Use price elasticity and income elasticity to analyse economic issues.

10. Define the elasticity of supply, and understand its main determinants and how it is calculated.

11. Understand the concepts of consumer surplus and producer surplus.

12. Understand the concept of economic efficiency, and use a graph to illustrate how economic

efficiency is reduced when a market is not in competitive equilibrium.

13. Use demand and supply graphs to analyse the economic impact of price ceilings and price floors.

14. Use demand and supply graphs to analyse the economic impact of taxes and subsidies

15. Explain how firms choose the profit‐maximising quantity of labour.

16. Explain how people choose the quantity of labour to supply.

17. Explain how equilibrium wages are determined in labour markets.

18. Explain how countries gain from international trade.

19. Describe the winners and losers with exports and imports.

20. Analyse the economic effects of policies that restrict trade.

21. Evaluate the arguments for and against government policies that restrict international trade.

22. Understand the defining characteristics of public goods and common resources

23. Examine why private markets fail to provide public goods

24. Explain why externalities can make market outcomes inefficient

25. Examine how people can sometimes solve the problem of externalities on their own

26. Examine the various government policies aimed at solving the problem of externalities

27. Examine what items are included in a firm’s costs of production

28. Analyse the link between a firm’s production process and its total costs

29. Understand the meaning of average total cost and marginal cost and how they are related

30. Consider the shape of a typical firm’s cost curves

31. Examine the relationship between short‐run and long‐run costs.

32. Define a perfectly competitive market, and explain why a perfect competitor faces a horizontal

demand curve.

33. Explain how a perfect competitor decides how much to produce.

34. Use graphs to show a firm’s profit or loss.

35. Explain why firms may shut down temporarily.

36. Explain how entry and exit ensure that firms earn zero economic profit in the long run.

37. Explain how perfect competition leads to economic efficiency.

Page 8 of 8

Marking Rubrics

1 mark 2 marks 3 marks 4 marks

Identify

(2 marks max.)

Fair

Vague

identification

Good

Clear

identification

Explain

(4 marks max.)

to showing

understanding of

learning

objectives

Poor

Brief

presentation, but

does not show

much

understanding

Fair

Fairly well

presented, but

lacking in details

Good

Sufficiently

detailed

presentation,

with some

reference to

article content

Excellent

Comprehensive

presentation of

answer, with

references to

article content,

integrated into

explanation

Further Discuss

(4 marks max.)

further by

making the

connection

between the

concepts/ideas in

the article, and

support your

discussion with

relevant

diagram(s).

Poor

Brief answer, but

does not show

much

understanding

Fair

Fairly well

written, but

lacking in details

with somewhat

unclear

diagram(s)

Good

Sufficiently

detailed answer,

supported by

well‐labelled

diagram(s)

Excellent

Comprehensive

answer,

supported by

relevant and fully

labelled

diagram(s)

MCD2020 Microeconomics 微观经济 assignment 代写