Mr. Niall Douglas

 9am-10am: Last night’s reading  10am-11am: Analysing World Trade Theory  11.20am-12.20pm: Business Vocabulary  12.20pm-1.20pm: Tonight’s reading + Check on group work plan

1. Vocabulary check 2. Comprehension check Note to self: remember to collect the worksheets afterwards!

 We are going to watch a piece of propaganda about world trade  This type of propaganda is very common. It is based on Economic Theory  But Economics pretends that it is value free when it fact it is an ideology  Economics has more to do with religious belief than a rational belief system

 Things to watch out for: 1. Factual inaccuracies 2. “Cherry picking” facts to make your argument sound better (cherry = cerise) 3. Circular reasoning (when you argue Rationale A using Rationale B as proof, then use Rationale B to justify Rationale A)

 Economics is ideological because it assumes a very restricted interpretation of what it means to be a human being  Technically these are called the “Sonnenschein–Mantel–Debreu theorem”

From Wikipedia ( Debreu_theorem): Debreu_theorem Formally, the theorem states that the Walrasian demand aggregate excess demand functions inherit only certain properties of individual excess demand functions:  Continuity  Homogeneity of degree zero,  Walras' law, and a …  Boundary condition assuring that as prices approach zero, demand becomes large. In turn, these inherited properties are not sufficient to guarantee that the aggregate excess demand functions obey the weak axiom of revealed preference which implies that it may have more than one root – more than one price vector at which excess demand is zero (the standard definition of equilibrium in this context).

 What this means in English: 1. All human beings are identical and equally substitutable 2. All human beings have perfect knowledge of all future states (i.e. They are God Himself) 3. Time goes backwards as well as forwards 4. More is always better no matter what 5. One person consuming €10m is equal to 10m people consuming €1

 If you want to know about the problems in Economic Theory:  “Debunking economics” by Steve Keen  “The Death of Economics” by Paul Ormerod  And more interestingly: “Butterfly Economics” by Paul Ormerod

 We are now going to do a series of multiple choice worksheets with Business vocabulary  Each person will fill in a worksheet alone. Then we will compare our answers

 Your closed book exam on Friday will consist of the following: 1. A random selection of vocabulary from this week’s nightly exercises 2. One short written question on one topic from this week  The exam will take about 45 minutes

 Time for the very final reading for this week  It is on commodity price inflation again (but is short)  Do you all get the difference between commodity price inflation and general price inflation?

 Break into your groups – I want to find out how your Group Task is going