Barriers to Economic Development:
For ONE of the developing country’s you’ve chosen, research the extent to which the following institutional, political, international trade, and international financial barriers hinder its economic growth and/or development:

Institutional and Political Barriers:

1. lack of provision of education and health care
2. the extent and quality of infrastructure
3. poor financial services/banking system
4. absence of sound legal system
5. lack of political stability
6. extent of corruption

International Trade Barriers:

1. overdependence on primary products
2. adverse terms of trade
3. narrow range of exports
4. Protectionism in international trade

International Financial Barriers:

1. Indebtedness
2. Capital Flight
3. Non-convertible currencies

US Trio Wins Nobel prize By Vinnee Tong, NEW YORK (AP)

It is very exciting that three Economics professors from the US have received recognition from the Nobel Foundation and have been awarded the Nobel Economics prize. All three professors, including, 90 year old Emeritus Professor Leonid Hurwicz, have been working the since 1960′s investigating “how people’s knowledge and self-interest affect their behavior in the market or in social situations such as voting and labor negotiations.”

While some of these ideas will sound familiar to you now as an “experienced” AP Economics students, their “mechanism design theory” will be new to you. This theory builds on another theory that we will discuss later on this year, Game Theory. What I appreciate about the these three professors is that they have been dedicated to developing economic theories in order to understand real life situations. One professor has even applied his formula in such a way that he has written about how it can be used to rebuild the government in Iraq. Essentially, the three men studied how game theory can help determine the best, most efficient method for decision-making.

Essentially, the three men studied how game theory can help determine the best, most efficient method for decision-making. Continue Reading »

As those of you who are teachers know, summer is a time to detach yourself from school and learning, at least for a while, to rejuvenate in a place of beauty. My wife and I are off to Bali for two and a half weeks before we head home to Seattle and Idaho for the rest of the summer. It will probably be a few weeks before my next post, so please check back towards the end of June. Have a nice summer, wherever the wind and waves happen to take you! -Jason

Well, I’ve made it back in one piece after a five day “medical” vacation to Thailand. Four and a half hours under general anesthesia, two-titanium staples in my shoulder, and a bout 40 stitches to sew up the cut, and I’m back in business! Hopefully you all enjoyed your four day weekend in a more pleasant fashion than through a morphine haze in a hospital bed. But in all reality, the surgery couldn’t have gone better. By 11 am the morning after I felt much better and decided I didn’t need to spend a second night in the hospital, so I checked myself out and met some friends for brunch at Bangkok’s best breakfast place! Of course by 4 in the afternoon I was dying so retired to my friend’s apartment, popped some codeine and spent the rest of Sunday and the net day laying around watching DVDs trying to manage the pain.

Good news is I’m back in teaching form, just in time to lead my AP students on the homestretch towards their Micro and Macro exams, which are two weeks from this Thursday. Heads up, you can expect one long day of Economics, with the Macro exam at 8:00 am and the Micro exam at 12:00 noon. Both are in the high school gym. I should also alert you that calculators are NOT allowed on the exam, so as you complete practice FRQs and MC questions, try to do them without the help of a calculator. We’ll begin our review after this week’s Unit VI test, should have four or five class periods to review micro and macro. See you all in class!

Okay guys, here it is… I promise, you can count on it… the new home for Welker’s Wikinomics Blog!