Assessment 1: Market forecast report (40%) For this assessment, imagine you have been asked by your board to forecast the market for a good or serv

Assessment 1: Market forecast report (40%) For this assessment, imagine you have been asked by your board to forecast the market for a good or service (of your choice) a decade from now and present them with a short, written report outlining your findings. This report should be approximately 1200 words (+/- 10%). To do this, you should employ the demand and supply framework introduced in Module 2. The report is to be structured as follows: Introduction (introduce the good or service). Demand forecast (describe the non-price determinants of demand for this good or service and their forecasted trends over the next decade. At the end of the decade, will demand have increased, decreased or stayed approximately the same?). Supply forecast (describe the non-price determinants of supply for this good or service and their forecasted trends over the next decade. At the end of the decade, will supply have increased, decreased or stayed approximately the same?). Conclusion (given your forecasts for the demand and supply of this good or service, what do you think will be the net impact on equilibrium price and quantity?). CRICOS: 00233E | TEQSA: PRV12076

Frank, R. (2006). The economic naturalist writing assignment. The Journal of Economic Education, 37(1), 58-67.

Hill, R. and Myatt, T. (2022). The Microeconomics Anti-textbook: A Critical Thinkers Guide (2nd ed.). Bloomsbury Publishing, UK (pp. 1-10).

Any episode of Freakonomics Radio that looks interesting. There are almost 600 episodes, so there must be at least one... CRICOS: 00233E | TEQSA: PRV12076 Photo by Julia Kicova on UnsplashBarter, N. and Fleming, C. (2024). Future Normal: 8 Questions to Create Businesses Your Children Will be Proud Of. Routledge, USA. (pp. 8-24).

Hill, R. and Myatt, T. (2022). The Microeconomics Anti-textbook: A Critical Thinkers Guide (2nd ed.).

Bloomsbury Publishing, UK (pp. 11-30). Freakonomics Radio, Episode 525. In Search of the Real Adam Smith. December 7, 2022.

Buchholz, T. (2021). New Ideas from Dead Economists: The Introduction to Modern Economic Thought (4th ed.). Penguin, UK.*Module overview This module will briefly provide an overview of economics from a micro and macro perspective and explain how the history of economic thought has evolved into the modern subject of economics. Economics is an old discipline, certainly the oldest of any business discipline. Many business disciplines are built upon an economic base (whether they acknowledge it or not). Some of the earliest works in economics were written by the 'Classical Economists', including Adam Smith (1723-1790), Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), Thomas Malthus (1766-1834), David Ricardo (1772-1823) and John Stuart Mill (1806-1873). The latter is my favourite. He was the first to recognise that natural resources had an amenity value. He thought this value would become more important as material living standards rose. He was also concerned about continual economic growth to the detriment of all else, as you can see in the quote below: Nor is there much satisfaction in contemplating the world with nothing left to the spontaneous activity of nature: with every rood of land brought into cultivation, which is capable of growing food for human beings; every flowery waste or natural pasture ploughed up, all quadrupeds or birds which are not domesticated for mans use exterminated as his rivals for food, every hedgerow or superfluous tree rooted out, and scarcely a place left where a wild shrub or flower could grow without being eradicated as a weed in the name of improved agriculture. If the earth must lose that great portion of its pleasantness which it owes to things that the unlimited increase of wealth and population would extirpate from it, for the mere purpose of enabling it to support a larger, but not a happier or better population, I sincerely hope, for the sake of posterity, that they will be content to be stationary long before necessity compels them to it. And he was concerned about the distribution of wealth: Those who do not accept the present very early stage of human improvement as its ultimate type may be excused for being comparatively indifferent to the kind of economic progress which excites the congratulations of ordinary politicians: the mere increase of production.It is only in the backward countries of the world that increased production is still an important object; in those most advanced, what is needed is better distribution Mill, 1857 Book IV Economics is sometimes divided into conventional and heterodox theories. Conventional theories belong to the neoclassical school of economic thought, which has dominated economic research, education and policy for decades. It is the economics you will see on the news and the economics that any economist you bump into is likely to have been trained in. Heterodox schools of thought include institutional, evolutionary, feminist, social, post-Keynesian, ecological, Austrian and many more. Such is the dominance of neoclassical economics, that when a heterodox school has an idea or theory that gains traction, it tends to get absorbed into neoclassical thought or discourse. For example, behavioural economics is (or perhaps was) heterodox, but has been absorbed into the mainstream, is found in many policy institutions and think tanks, and is typically taught as an elective at most universities. Unfortunately, we don't have the time to cover all of the heterodox schools, and the core of this course remains neoclassical. However, we will challenge the neoclassical view when appropriate and, in so doing, will introduce some heterodox thinking along the way.

Module overview This module will introduce you to economic models and a key framework in neoclassical economics, demand and supply. This is the framework that dominates Assessments 1 and 2. We will introduce some important concepts in economics, including 'absolute advantage' and 'comparative advantage'. The latter was introduced by David Ricardo in 1817 and was used to demonstrate the gains from specialisation and trade. We can see this in our own lives, most of us do not try to produce all of the goods and services we want to consume. Instead, we specialise in producing a narrow range of goods or services and then trade the 'surplus' (usually in the form of salaries or wages) for other goods or services. Similarly, Australia does not produce all the goods and services it consumes, it specialises in things it is relatively good at and trades the surplus production with other countries. However, these concepts are more 'rules of thumb' than absolute laws. Comparative advantage fails to explain why we often trade the same goods and services between countries. For example, Australian wine is sold in New Zealand, and New Zealand wine is sold in Australia. So there are other factors at play - including consumer preferences. Nonetheless, the key lesson remains - trade makes us better off most of the time. The demand and supply framework is arguably the most often used of all economics frameworks, although it is quite rare for an economist to use data to estimate demand and supply curves, rather the framework is used as a 'rule of thumb' to consider possible outcomes of changes in policy or other factors. One of the things to be careful with in this topic is the distinction between changes in demand (or supply) and changes in quantity demanded (or supplied). The latter is caused by a change in the price of the good or service and is illustrated by a shift along the demand or supply curve. The former is caused by a change in anything but the price and is illustrated by shifting the demand or supply curve - right if we expect demand or supply to increase, left if we expect demand or supply to decrease. Hopefully, this will make more sense after the webinar and reading. Note the framework is built on several assumptions, and thus will not apply in all cases - or will require some modifications. When using the framework it is important to consider whether the assumptions underlying the framework hold and, if not, the implications of violating these assumptions. Economics models are, by necessity, simplifications of reality. Thus building an economic model involves making assumptions. When applying the model it is important not to forget those assumptions. A robust economic analysis will acknowledge these upfront and perform a 'sensitivity analysis' to test the consequences of the assumptions on the model's outcomes. Unfortunately, this rarely happens in many applications. Thus, the most important question when reviewing an economic analysis is 'Who paid for this?' Followed by 'Does the analysis somehow advantage the person or group who paid for it?' If you are commissioning an economic analysis and you need confidence in the results, always ask for a transparent sensitivity analysis and have the analysis peer-reviewed.