Category: Economics: Ch 14
A number of UK supermarkets, including Sainsbury’s, Asda and Safeway, have been fined £116m by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) for price fixing. The OFT is still investigating other supermarkets, including Tesco which denies that it was involved in the price collusion. The collusion is estimated to have cost consumers around £270m in higher prices.
Supermarkets fined £116m for price fixing Guardian (8/12/07)
OFT hands out £116m in fines for milk price fixing Guardian (7/12/07)
Supermarkets admit milk price fix BBC News Online (7/12/07)
Videos
Farmers reaction to price fixing claims BBC News Online
Questions
| 1. |
Explain how Sainsbury’s and the other supermarkets colluded to fix milk prices. |
| 2. |
Assess the market conditions most likely to lead to price collusion in a market. |
| 3. |
Examine the role of the OFT in reducing uncompetitive and restrictive practices in markets. |
Transfer pricing is a technique used by multinational companies to avoid tax liabilities in countries they regard as having high levels of taxation. The articles below from the Guardian give the results of an investigation by Guardian journalists into the elaborate structures that have been created by multinational companies in the banana industry to funnel their profits through tax havens like the Cayman Islands, Bermuda and the British Virgin Islands. In some cases they have paid an effective tax rate as low as 8% when the tax rate in their home country is 35%.
Revealed: how multinational companies avoid the taxman Guardian (6/11/07)
Bananas to UK via the Channel islands? It pays for tax reasons Guardian (6/11/07)
‘I get up at 4am, work to 6-7pm – it doesn’t feel like a life’ Guardian (6/11/07)
Questions
| 1. |
Define the term ‘transfer pricing’. |
| 2. |
Explain how multinational banana companies use transfer pricing to reduce their tax liabilities. |
| 3. |
“The trend in the last 30 years has been to shift the burden of tax away from companies on to the consumer and labour. Capital is increasingly going untaxed.” Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of this shift in the method of taxation. |
A report from Cycling England has suggested that a £70m investment in cycling each year could save the government £520m per year. The savings result from the positive benefits of increased cycling – lower carbon dioxide emissions and lower NHS costs as we become healthier. But, do the numbers add up?
Investment in cycling could save £520m, government told Guardian (17/9/07)
Questions
| 1. |
Define the terms (i) external benefits (ii) external costs and (iii) marginal social benefit. |
| 2. |
Identify three external benefits that result from increased cycling. |
| 3. |
Using diagrams as appropriate, show how the market equilibrium and the socially optimum level of cycling will differ. |
| 4. |
Discuss policies that the government could adopt to move the market closer to the social optimum. |
British Airways has been fined £270m for their part in a price-fixing cartel. Fines were levied by both the US Department of Justice and the UK Office of Fair Trading following an agreement between British Airways and Virgin to fix the level of surcharges charged to passengers as a result of rising fuel prices.
Where’s Branson’s apology? BBC News Online (Robert Peston blog) (7/8/07)
BA’s price-fix fine reaches £270m BBC News Online (1/8/07)
OFT defends ‘snitch’ policy Guardian (5/8/07)
BA boss speaks out over price fixing Guardian (3/8/07)
How arch rivals colluded to hike up cost of air travel Guardian (2/8/07)
Questions
| 1. |
Define what is meant by the term ‘price-fixing cartel’. |
| 2. |
Explain the characteristics of a market that are most likely to result in a cartel. |
| 3. |
Discuss policies that the government could put in place to prevent this kind of price-fixing arising in the future.. |
The widening of the M6 will cost £3bn or £1000 an inch. What does this fact tell us about the government’s green priorities? Are we really leading the world on climate change as the government likes to claim? In the article below Ashley Seager (Economics Correspondent for the Guardian) looks at these issues and argues that we may be the poor man of Europe when it comes to ‘green’ policies.
Green means slow to this government Guardian (6/8/07)
Questions
| 1. |
Explain what Ashley Seager means by the sentence “What the government has also not done is send out new “price signals”, as economists call them” (paragraph 7). |
| 2. |
Explain what is meant by a feed-in tariff (FIT). Why does Ashley Seager argue that this is a vital policy tool in the fight against climate change? |
| 3. |
Discuss two policies that the government could adopt to help raise the proportion of renewable energy generated in the UK. |