LSE fantasy share game

Hullo everyone, I've recently joined this LSE fantasy share game (here's a link for anyone who wants to join http://game.lse.co.uk/). It's basically a simulation of the stock market, the London Stock Exchange specifically and it's open at certain times throughout the day, following Greenwich mean time. For anyone who wants to play the stock market when they're an adult or now, I would say this is probably one of the best ways to prepare yourself for it, I personally find it enjoyable (If there's anyone who wants to contact me in the game, my uusername is krumister). LSE are also offering prizes for monthly winners first prize: £150 second prize: £100 third prize: £50.

Moving on, if there are any students who want to expand their knowledge on economics there is a list of books that I suggest you should read such as:


1. The Undercover Economist
2. Freakonomics
3. The Truth About Markets
4. The Armchair Economist
5. The Mind of the Market
6. Why Most Things Fail
7. The Worldly Philosophers 
8. Capitalism and Freedom
9. The Wealth of Nations
10. Tipping the velvet
11. The misfortunes of prosperity
12. The elusive quest for growth: Economist's adventures and misadventures in the tropics
13. The bottom Billion: why the poorest countries are failing and what can be done about it
14. Globalization and its Discontents 
15. Making Globalization Work 
16. The Dragon and the Elephant 
17. The Age of Turbulence 
18. The Accidental Theorist 
19. The Roaring Nineties 
20. Butterfly Economics 
21. Everlasting Lightbulbs 
22. In Defence of Globalization 
23. Development as Freedom 
24. Capitalism and Freedom 
25. Peddling Prosperity 
26. Eat the Rich 
27. A Random Walk Down Wall Street 
28. Thinking Strategically 
29. Reinventing the Bazaar 
30. Lives of the Laureates 
31. The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008
32. Free Lunch 
33. The World is Flat 
34. The Next Global Stage
35. Wikinomics
36. Bad Samaritans 
37. Equality and Efficiency: The Big Tradeoff 
38. Rethinking International Trade 
39. Game Theory and Economic Modelling 
40. A Theory of Economic 
41. The Economic Naturalist 
42. The Affluent society
43. Keynes and After 
44. Road to Serfdom by Hayek
45. New ideas from dead economists


I will soon get Freakonomics myself and tell you my verdict on it as soon as possible, some of these books will be difficult to understand and even harder to grasp the concepts, but it requires nothing more than a determined mind to comprehend.

Why tuition fees, why?

As everyone probably knows in 2010 the British coalition government removed the £3,290 cap per year on universities, at first they decided to remove it completely but then they proposed to set the cap at £9,000 per cap. This was nearly triple the original amount that students had to pay per year, undoubtedly this sparked a major nation-wide protest particularly in central London against this review, which led to sporadic bouts of violence, causing a lot of disruptions and chaos across areas of London on different days. But it is not entirely the government's decision to increase tuition fees, they only set the cap. Universities themselves are deciding to increase the tuition fees but then again this is from cuts in public spending (education) from the government, so who shall we point the blame at?

Whether this was morally right or not is not my place to say, but I will explore the reasons behind the review.

One of the biggest reasons that contributed to the increase in tuition fees by the universities was massive cuts in government spending on education, this meant that universities were underfunded so they were not as able to improve facilities as they were originally, this meant students were less likely to go to the chosen university, leading UK to lose their world class status in terms of higher education.
The financial crisis led to the reduction in money spent on the education, which was only exacerbated by inflation which meant that students were still paying roughly the same amount as they did 6 years ago, but because of the rate of inflation (which was at a low of 1.1% in 2004 but peaked at 5.4% in 2009) this meant that improvement on facilities required more money to purchase and most probably professors and other employees of the universities were demanding an increase in pay due to the rise in prices.

Even though this meant that students would find it considerably harder to pay off their financial debt once they finished university, the government did make it easier for undergraduates to be able to gather their sums and pay it off. They agreed that incomes from £21,000 had to pay 9% towards their student fees, once your income starts increasing and it hits £41,000 they will have to pay 3% real interest on top of the inflation.


In the most basic terms universities are trying to earn some more pocket money to be able to continue to maintain their high profile status. And whom to blame? The financial crisis for persuading the government to reduce our most esteemed universities's pocket money.

Diamond Jubilee having fun playing with GDP

Hi everyone, I'm an AS student at Havering Sixth Form College studying economics, maths, biology and physics. This is my first blog post on my economy news blog which I intend to update every 2 days or so. This is more so I can discuss (with myself) general news about the UK economy (mostly) and other countries that have made the news recently.



Since this is my first blog post I want to talk about the most significant thing that happened this week.
THE DIAMOND JUBILEE!!!

I thoroughly enjoyed myself during the festivities even with the financial crisis looming over us, however even though this celebration of the queen's reign has renewed everyone's patriotism, it definitely has not helped out the UK's economy, which is in dire need of a rejuvenation. The 2 day holiday that we received has had a severe fiscal impact on the economy since everyone was celebrating the diamond jubilee or else spending time with the family.

What impact this will have on the UK's economy is very hard to pinpoint. The Economics and Business Research done a report in April on how much potential money is lost during a bank holiday, they estimated it was roughly £2.3 billion however being able to quantify how much money is lost is sketchy at best.

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport done a report also on the effects and they came up with a figure of a loss of £1.2 billion, but this is also not to be taken at face value since there is a very large spectrum of a GAIN of £1.1 billion to GDP or a loss of £3.6 billion, this is due to the fact that there will be a sharp increase in demand for many sectors and products E.g Leisure, retail, bunting, food.

However there is a fine line between money that is lost and money that is only going to be spent later, for instance, someone may have wanted a plumber to fix their water pipe but since it was a bank holiday they may have had to postpone it. But that scenario doesn't always apply, so it is incredibly hard to be able to create any approximate figure for money spent and lost.

There is also the fact that there are other events at play here, such as half-term and the forthcoming Olympics, so this creates a further layer of complexity since there isn't any definite way to pinpoint the loss/gain in money solely at the Diamond Jubilee.

But just remember that £2.3 billion may sound like a lot, but this is an amount that is made daily so it will have a small effect on the economy either way.