IB SL Economics Commentary: Macroeconomics

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IB Economics: Internal Assessment Front Cover

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Candidate Number: 310187471        

Teacher: Mr. Messere

Source of Article: The Toronto Star:

Title of Article: Booming GDP beats forecasts, http://www.thestar.com/business/article/773531--booming-gdp-beats-forecasts

Date Written: March 5, 2010

Word Count: 726

Areas of Syllabus your commentary relates to: Section 4: Macroeconomics

Having experienced contraction from Q4 08 to Q2 09, the Canadian economy grew 5% in the fourth quarter of 2009, beating predicted forecasts. This growth was precipitated by consumer and government spending, as well as a growing housing market. There was also growth recorded in exports, with sectors such as the automotive, energy and industrial factoring into this. However, economists warn that for this growth to continue, issues such as unemployment and spotty aggregate demand must be addressed.

Fiscal measures, meaning decisions made by the central governing body concerning taxation and government spending, have already been taken by the Canadian government, in the form of the fiscal stimulus package. This package has in it $12B in infrastructure spending, $7.8B meant to stimulate construction firms, $8.3 B for skills training and retraining, and several tax credits ranging from the home improvement ($1350/family) to lowered EI and income tax rates. Fiscal policy generally concerns itself with creating conditions of full employment, price stability and real GDP growth. Full employment, or an economic state where all eligible people who want to work can find employment at the prevailing wage rate, is important in achieving a state of maximum productivity in the economy. The current unemployment rate is 8.2%, above the generally accepted natural rate of unemployment. It has however fallen significantly, with a gain of 159,000 new jobs since June 2009. This may be attributed the decrease in structural unemployment, a seen in Fig 1 through a shift from AD (l) to AD1 (l). There mismatch in skills offered by Canadian workers and those demanded by firms has decreased on the diagram, perhaps through training programs. On the other hand, an increase in aggregate demand, caused by an increase in the disposable income of families may have also caused the increase in demand for labour as firms expanded or rehired laid off personnel.

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Price stability is also important for long term economic growth, because rampant inflation, meaning a steady and prolonged increase in the price level, is known to have several adverse effects. These include the extra costs caused by unsteady resource costs, and money losing its role as a medium of value. As the government injects more stimuli into the economy, the risk of demand pull inflation grows. Thus aggregate demand would rise; because of growth in the money supply, the price level would increase, as described by the short run equation of exchange, M=P. This increase in the money ...

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