No 20: Talks last week

LAST week was a good one for interesting talks.

Apart from Mr. Krawiec's on Friday afternoon - see previous post, and make sure to ask any really hard questions about it to economics teachers who are not me :)  - two students made presentations in my A2 classes.

In the morning A2 class, Yerke Bektayev spoke about this article on gender discrimination:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8366765.stm

We won't fully study theories of discrimination until A2 Module 3, but it is an interesting issue, particularly the question of whether or not there should be "positive discrimination" in favour of certain groups.

In the afternoon class, Sanzhar Ospanov picked this "Economist" story about China's amazing productivity improvements:

http://www.economist.com/businessfinance/economicsfocus/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14844987

This introduces the idea of total factor productivity (TFP) which is fast becoming the accepted measure, as well as providing very useful details about  how a country can successfully improve the productivity of its economic resources.

Thanks to all these interesting speakers!

(Note: also many thanks to Mr. Krawiec for allowing me to post his presentation on this blog.)