Chapter 28

Chapter 27 discusses unemployment and how it ties into the economy. The unemployment rate is the percentage of those who would like to work who do not have jobs. The Bureau of Labor Statistics calculates this statistic monthly based on a survey of thousands of households. The unemployment rate is an imperfect measure of joblessness. Some people who call themselves unemployed may actually not want to work, and some people who would like to work have left the labor force after an unsuccessful search. One reason for unemployment is the time it takes for workers to search for jobs that best suit their tastes and skills. Unemployment insurance is a government policy that, while protecting workers’ incomes, increases the amount of frictional unemployment. A second reason why our economy always has some unemployment is minimum-wage laws. By raising the wage of unskilled and inexperienced workers above the equilibrium level, minimum-wage laws raise the quantity of labor supplied and reduce the quantity demanded. The resulting surplus of labor represents unemployment. A third reason for unemployment is the market power of unions. When unions push the wages in unionized industries above the equilibrium level, they create a surplus of labor. A fourth reason for unemployment is suggested by the theory of efficiency wages. According to this theory, firms find it profitable to pay wages above the equilibrium level. High wages can improve worker health, lower worker turnover, increase worker effort, and raise worker quality.

Chapter 27

Chapter 27 discusses unemployment and how it ties into the economy. The unemployment rate is the percentage of those who would like to work who do not have jobs. The Bureau of Labor Statistics calculates this statistic monthly based on a survey of thousands of households. The unemployment rate is an imperfect measure of joblessness. Some people who call themselves unemployed may actually not want to work, and some people who would like to work have left the labor force after an unsuccessful search. One reason for unemployment is the time it takes for workers to search for jobs that best suit their tastes and skills. Unemployment insurance is a government policy that, while protecting workers’ incomes, increases the amount of frictional unemployment. A second reason why our economy always has some unemployment is minimum-wage laws. By raising the wage of unskilled and inexperienced workers above the equilibrium level, minimum-wage laws raise the quantity of labor supplied and reduce the quantity demanded. The resulting surplus of labor represents unemployment. A third reason for unemployment is the market power of unions. When unions push the wages in unionized industries above the equilibrium level, they create a surplus of labor. A fourth reason for unemployment is suggested by the theory of efficiency wages. According to this theory, firms find it profitable to pay wages above the equilibrium level. High wages can improve worker health, lower worker turnover, increase worker effort, and raise worker quality.

Chapter 26

Chapter 26 discusses the aspects of the financial system and how firms and households are involved. The U.S. financial system is made up of many types of financial institutions, such as the bond market, the stock market, banks, and mutual funds. All these institutions act to direct the resources of households who want to save some of their income into the hands of households and firms who want to borrow. National income accounting identities reveal some important relationships among macroeconomic variables. In particular, for a closed economy, national saving must equal investment.

Financial institutions are the mechanism through which the economy matches one person’s saving with another person’s investment. The interest rate is determined by the supply and demand for loanable funds. The supply of loanable funds comes from households who want to save some of their income and lend it out. The demand for loanable funds comes from households and firms who want to borrow for investment. To analyze how any policy or event affects the interest rate, one must consider how it affects the supply and demand for loanable funds. National saving equals private saving plus public saving. A government budget deficit represents negative public saving and, therefore, reduces national saving and the supply of loanable funds available to finance investment. When a government budget deficit crowds out investment, it reduces the growth of productivity and GDP.

I have always wondered how the financial system operates because I have always wanted to understand how stocks and bonds work. 

Chapter 24

Chapter 24 discusses the cost associated with being a part of society and how to measure those costs. There are two tools Gross Domestic Product (GDP) Deflator and the Consumer Price Index (CPI). The consumer price index shows the cost of a basket of goods and services relative to the cost of the same basket in the base year. The index is used to measure the overall level of prices in the economy. The percentage change in the consumer price index measures the inflation rate. The consumer price index is not a perfect measure of the cost of living because it does not take into account consumers’ ability to substitute goods that become relatively cheaper over time, it does not take into account increases in the purchasing power of the dollar due to the introduction of new good, it is distorted by unmeasured changes in the quality of goods and services. Because of these measurement problems, the CPI overstates annual inflation by about 1 percentage point. The GDP deflator also measures the overall level of prices in the economy, it differs from the consumer price index because it includes goods and services produced rather than goods and services consumed. As a result, imported goods affect the consumer price index but not the GDP deflator. In addition, whereas the consumer price index uses a fixed basket of goods, the GDP deflator automatically changes the group of goods and services over time as the composition of GDP changes.

I took AP Human Geography my freshman year, where I learned about quality of life and GDP but we never talked about what goes into actually measuring them. It is interesting to see the economic side of this aspect of society.

Chapter 23

Chapter 18

Chapter 18 discusses the factors of production. The three most important factors of production are labor, land, and capital. The economy’s income is distributed in the markets for the factors of production. Competitive, profit- maximizing firms hire each factor up to the point at which the value of the marginal product of the factor equals its price. Because factors of production are used together, the marginal product of any one factor depends on the quantities of all factors that are available. As a result, a change in the supply of one factor alters the equilibrium earnings of all the factors. Each factor of production has its own components. For example, the supply of labor arises from individuals’ tradeoff between work and leisure. An upward-sloping labor supply curve means that people respond to an increase in the wage by enjoying less leisure and working more hours. One of the ideas you get out of this chapter is that in order to maximize profit, firms hire workers up to the point where the value of the marginal product of labor equals the wage. This idea is similar to what we have just learned when trying to maximize profit, but instead of how much of a good to produce it is how many workers to hire, thus a factor of production.

            Chapter 18 begins to expand on the idea of markets by further discussing what goes into a creating a market. It is very interesting to see what it takes for a market to function and makes learning about market function a lot more realistic.

Chapter 17

Chapter 17 discusses oligopolies, their characteristics and how they compare to other types of markets. An oligopoly is a market with only a few sellers, each offering a product similar or identical to the others. One example is the market for tennis balls and the world market for crude oil because only a few countries in the Middle East control much of the world’s oil reserves. Oligopolists maximize their total profits by forming a cartel and acting like a monopolist. Yet, if oligopolists make decisions about production levels individually, the result is a greater quantity and a lower price than under the monopoly outcome. The concepts of game theory apply to oligopolies, such as the concept that explains why oligopoly cartels do not work: the prisoner’s dilemma. The prisoners’ dilemma shows that self-interest can prevent people from maintaining cooperation, even when cooperation is in their mutual interest. Since oligopolies try to behave as monopolies by forming trusts and since they try to operate at a level that is not socially efficient, policymakers use the antitrust laws to prevent oligopolies from engaging in behavior that reduces competition.

            Reading about oligopolies after monopolistic competition was very helpful for understanding the characteristics of oligopolies because monopolistic competition is easier to understand and has the same concepts. Reading about antitrust laws in US history classes did not teach me about the characteristics of the markets and what type of market antitrust laws are used. It is very interesting to learn about this topic from a different perspective.