Saturday 18 October 2014

DD309 : Doing economics: people, markets and policy - Week 3

Week 3 – Saving and working: decisions over time

PartTask
3.1 Saving and working: decisions over timeRead DEPMP, Book 1, Part I: Chapter 3
3.2 Saving behaviour and savings policyView some short video clips
3.3 Online tutorials – indifference curvesComplete Indifference curves V and VI
3.4 Econometrics – getting startedGetting started with gretl and revision with the DD202 tutorials
3.5 Online tutorial – econometricsStart Econometrics I and Practice exercises I



Week 3's reading has been very interesting, but the model appears to rely on some huge simplifications and assumptions regarding relative opportunity costs and how things work in the real world, which you need to accept or ignore in order to move forward with the points they are trying to make.

Once you can do this, it is relatively straight forward and exactly what you need for TMA Part 1.

I have had a look forward to TMA1 - Part A, and it is pretty much covered by the Indifference Curve Online Tutorials, especially tutorials 5 & 6, so I guess if every point they make in the tutorial is reflected in the TMA answer you will pretty much be there or thereabouts.

First of three face to face tutorials, about a third of the tutor group attended which considering how far some came to be there was a pretty good attendance. As usual they were a nice bunch of people from very diverse backgrounds and ages, and I probably got more out of meting them at the tutorial than actually learning anything particularly new.


Deflation Update
Bank of England announced in the last couple of days that interest rates will remain low until next autumn which should help inflationary pressures in the short term, but Europe's problems are, I think, still the biggest threat to the UK recovery.


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