How effective were the liberal reforms between 1900 and 1914.

How effective were the liberal reforms Between 1900 and 1914 the British liberal government introduced the largest series of reforms ever completed by a government till that date. Prior to these reforms it was not considered the duty of the government to provide any form of relief for the poor and when the reforms were passed they were viewed as radical and amazing. Many conservatives considered them unenforceable and many radicals considered them far too small. Yet how effective were these reforms? Prior to the reforms the only relief for children was either from charities or the workhouse, and many liberals claimed that the workhouses were worse than the conditions that many children had previously lived in. The first liberal reform for children was an act to allow schools to provide free school meals to those they felt needed them. This act meant that children would receive at least one meal a day and encourage them to attend school. The was voluntary though and many schools did not spend their budgets providing these meals. Only half of all schools set up these meal services. In 1907, the liberals introduced medical care to schools; this act meant that schools had to provide regular medical checks for children. These checks were extended to medical care in 1912. The liberals also banned the insuring of a child's life. Before the reforms old people had to rely on their

  • Word count: 646
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Economics
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Globalisation: The Unstoppable Trend.

Globalisation: The Unstoppable Trend. Word Count: 1863 words. Subject area: Business Studies : Management Globalisation is not a single phenomenon. It has become a catch-all concept to describe a range of trends and forces changing the social and economic structures of the world. Globalisation may be defined as 'becoming or making world-wide', but it has also been referred to as Westernisation. Globalisation as argued by Professor Ruud Lubbers, former Prime Minister of the Netherlands, is considered to have a number of distinct elements to it, which include Economic, Technological, Political, Cultural and Environmental. Economically, greater world integration or globalisation has been greatly encouraged since the Second World War, with the introduction of free trade agreements such as GATT (General Agreement on Tariff's and Trade). Additionally, regional trade agreements have also been developed, which have included 'single markets' established by the European Community and NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement). Technologically, the IT revolution has provided a massive improvements in our ability to store and manipulate data using ever more powerful computers. More important however, is the communication abilities of these computers. The Communications Revolution has resulted in the 'shrinking' of the world. Politically, it was not until the collapse of the

  • Word count: 2067
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Economics
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Can non-price competition be a substitute for price competition in oligopoly?

SUMMATIVE ASSIGNMENT Can non-price competition be a substitute for price competition in oligopoly? Consider this in the case of the European brewing industry. The European brewing industry has seen dramatic changes in the period post World War II. The industry started off as a monopolistic one during the late 1940s and 50s, where in 1947, 404 independent brewing companies owned 465 plants. The four-firm concentration ratio was 21%1. This began to change in next decade as the larger companies began to merge with (or buy out) the smaller ones and thus relatively quickly the context of the industry saw a change with five major firms dominating the industry during the 1970s, (by 1976 the four-firm ratio was 59%). These companies were; Bas, Whitbread, Grand Metropolitan, Allied and Courage. These brewers owned pubs all over the country and the likes of Whitbread owned over 4000. Brewers only allowed the sale of their product in their pubs and thus there was little competition with a small variety of beers. The brewing industry has been watched very closely and the Monopolist Commission (now called the Competition Commission) has reviewed the industry four times since the 1950s. As a result of one of these reports the government launched a new law that limited brewers to own only 2000 pubs and these pubs must have at least one guest ale being served. These caused a huge

  • Word count: 1358
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Economics
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Privatisation in the UK

Privatisation in the UK It is the belief of some economists that free market is a superior method of allocating economic resources and that large scale involvement by Government in business activities would hinder economic progress. The UK Conservative Government under Mrs Margaret Thatcher therefore felt that the central control of many industries was no real benefit to the economy, it was therefore decided that it would be better to privatise the public sector as far as possible. Privatisation is the sale of nationalised industries to the private sector of the economy. This was a major element in the economic strategies of the Government. Other elements of the strategies included giving the right to buy to tenants of houses and flats owned by the local authorities, inviting tenders for the performance of a wide range of services which were within the public sector and contracting over these services to private firms. Privatisation therefore had two main aims, these were to promote efficiency, especially through competition and to widen share ownership. Competition ensures that goods and services desired by the customers are provided at the lowest economic cost, increased efficiency is achieved as a result of sustained pressures on companies coming from market forces. Organisations that were privatised were in the following industries; gas, electricity, water, transport

  • Word count: 1177
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Economics
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Macroeconomic Theory - "Chasing the Leader".

Justin Smith Macroeconomic Theory "Chasing the Leader" Assignment 3/19/03 This is an article comparing the living standards of the U.S. and Europe. The U.S uses GDP per capita and Europe uses GDP per head to measure their living standard. In examining the living standards between these two countries, the author looks at both productivity and GDP in his analysis. America has been the world's economic leader for over a century. Economic theory suggests that Western Europe is catching up. GDP per head is only three-quarters of that in the U.S., but European productivity, measures by output per hour worked, has in fact almost caught up with the U.S. Europe's productivity has been in a surge since 1950. This is largely expained by reconstruction after the war and belated exploitation of electricity and the mass production of cars. The puzzle, as stated by the article, is why Europe's GDP per head has lagged so far behind productivity. GDP per head rose sharply from the mid 19th century, but then flattened off in 1970. Germany's GDP per man-hour is 1% higher than in America, but its GDP per person is 25% lower. The main reason pointed out by the author is the average hours worked in Europe have fallen sharply. In part, this reflects a preference for shorter working weeks and longer holidays. The author looks at Robert Gordon, an economist at Northwestern University. Mr. Gordon

  • Word count: 582
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Economics
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'Less than credible stabilisation will not eliminate inertia and will generate real exchange rate overvaluation'.

'Less than credible stabilisation will not eliminate inertia and will generate real exchange rate overvaluation' Inflationary pressures persistently dog every type of economy across the world. However, the pressures are typically much higher amongst many developing counties. In many cases, aside from the lack of necessary economic tools required to combat inflation, a major component in the constraints faced by these countries is the issue of credibility. In this essay I will focus on the role that credibility plays within various stabilisation programs, and more specifically the effect that it has on inflationary inertia and on the real exchange rate. This will be done by looking at the different types of stabilisation programs that have been used, the causes of a lack of credibility of these programs, the steps that governments can take to increase the credibility of its schemes, and finally a conclusion will be drawn regarding the links between credibility and both inflationary inertia and exchange rate overvaluation. Firstly though, it is worth looking at the scope of the effects that inflation has across the world. While the western hemisphere is in no way immune to the threat of inflation, it is true that high levels of inflation are much more widespread amongst developing countries where, as Agenor and Montiel (1996) show sustained inflation rates of over 25% have

  • Word count: 2160
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Economics
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Carbon Credit Trading

International Business MGCR 382, Section 071 Carbon Credit Trading Topic 36- Group Project Submitted to Mr. Jan Jorgensen & Mr. Nicholas Matziorinis By Aditya Swarup Claire Hackett Dayna Murray Lefei Xie Simon Turcotte McGill University November 18th, 2009 TABLE OF CONTENTS I. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY iii II. COVER LETTER iv III. THE ISSUES 1 A. The carbon market 1 B. History of carbon trade conflicts between industries and the environment 4 IV. THE ALTERNATIVES 5 A. Continue with Current Manufacturing Processes. 5 B. Centralize Manufacturing Facilities 7 C. Enter a Voluntary Carbon Reduction Scheme within the United States 8 V. CONCLUSION 11 VI. REFERENCES v VII. APPENDIXES viii VIII. BEST ARTICLES xiv Executive Summary H.J. Heinz Company, more commonly known as Heinz, significantly contributes to the global carbon dioxide emission due to its many manufacturing facilities worldwide. Carbon credit trading is a major growing sector of the international trading economy; this must be kept under consideration by all enterprises. Heinz's facilities in the EU are under the influence of the Kyoto Protocol and the European Union Emission Trading System (EU ETS). For Heinz Company, this currently applies for their facilities in the EU, but not for those in the U.S. This resulted in the emergence of volunteer carbon credit markets to prepare

  • Word count: 4834
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Economics
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Asses the impact of trade liberalisation on Australia.

Asses the impact of trade liberalisation on Australia After the Second World War many countries were devastated both geographically and economically. A trend of protectionalism, first started by the USA was adopted by many nations in an attempt to protect their economies. This resulted in a halt in world trade as high tariffs and quotas were introduced to stop cheap imports invading the domestic market. Tariffs are taxes placed on specific imported goods, also known as import duties and quotas are physical limits on the level of imports in any one year for specific imported goods. This created huge barriers to trade and world trade was reduced to necessity goods that some countries were simply unable to produce. In recent decades Australia has changed its outlook on the rest of the world and has changed from a very inward looking protectionalist state to a liberalised economy with multiple trading partners. Economic theory shows us that a more open, outward looking economy can deliver higher living standards than highly protected, inward looking economies. Increased competition, more efficient uses of resources, new markets and opportunities, and new technologies and higher returns to innovation all increase welfare. Economic modelling confirms that unilateral trade liberalisation is good for Australia. It is estimated that gains form liberalisation to date are

  • Word count: 3526
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Economics
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Multinational Corporations in context

Multinational Corporations in context When we mention MNCs, we instantly concern ourselves with firms such as McDonalds, Coca-cola and Nike. However, there are plenty more of these firms in the international market, which are also known as TNCs. Some are often puzzled by the ultimate definition which is still facing small-scale controversy, 'enterprise operating in several countries via assets or production facilities where the firm has 25% or more of its output capacity located outside its country of origin'. It often occurs that several of these MNCs' budgets are so great that they exceed the GDP of several countries. The world's largest multinational in 2000, was Exxon Mobil which has a value greater than the GDP of Pakistan whilst the joint revenues of the four largest MNCs outweighed the combined gross national product of all African countries. The budgets raised by MNCs across the world are so great that they influence many newly industrialized and less economically developed countries. In a highly competitive world, companies seek to reduce their costs as much as possible and therefore the prospect of a foreign company setting up in a country where labour is cheap is attractive for both the company and the host country's government. These influences can be both good and bad but what are the specific motives for MNCs existing and are there any particular examples? The

  • Word count: 1241
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Economics
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Consider whether protection should be based on an economic basis only or whether other aspects of our society should be considered to be more important.Use suitable graphs and statistics to explain and support your arguments.

Economics Essay: Protectionism vs. Free Trade "Most arguments for protection are based on political, defence, sectional and social consideration rather than on an economic basis." Consider whether protection should be based on an economic basis only or whether other aspects of our society should be considered to be more important. Use suitable graphs and statistics to explain and support your arguments. The argument for and against the protection of domestic industrial sectors, known as protectionism, the restriction of international trade by governments, namely to protect incomes of national/domestic producers, but many other reasons such as the protection of infant industry or military conflict, through the implementation of trade barriers such as quotas, tariffs, embargos, subsidies and VER's (Voluntary Export Restraints); has become extremely pertinent to the Australian economy over the past year, mostly as a result of the proposed "Free Trade Agreement" with the United States. "Free Trade" is the practice of trade between countries where there are very few trade limitations and there is little government intervention. This is the ideal situation for consumers, but as a result of domestic producer pressure and paranoid treasuries, it is rare to find situations of totally free trade between countries. It is expected that Australia will do very well out of the FTA as

  • Word count: 1043
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Economics
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