Hello, everyone! I am taking an extra GCSE in Economics, and I do not have a teacher so I have worked very hard and taught myself. I would like to know if there are any A-Level Economics students who could mark a 15 mark GCSE essay I have written about price stability. It is absolutely vital that I can definitely get a grade 9 in Economics because I want to study it at college and university and become an economist as soon as possible.
TLDR: Could anyone please mark this Economics (GCSE!) essay, as I do not have a teacher. Would be highly appreciated.
Thank you for reading. Here is the essay I wrote:
Question: Do you think that aiming for price stability should always be an economic priority for governments? [15 marks]
I believe that aiming for price stability should always be an economic priority for governments.
A lack of price stability in the economy can decrease the confidence of the public in the state of the economy, which could decrease consumer spending as MPS increases, as people will wish to save money to protect them from a potential recession in the future. The lowered aggregate demand would likely decrease the revenue and profits of businesses, which could reduce economic growth and also decrease tax revenue for the government. This could lead to a reduction in spending on public services, which would damage the welfare of the economy and society as a whole. The confidence of businesses in the economy is also likely to decrease as they cannot accurately predict the future price levels. This may decrease the amount of investment in the economy, both from domestic firms and also FDI. This would reduce the economic potential of the country and furthermore the lack of investment in new technologies could increase average costs of production and make the country less competitive internationally. This could mean that the entire productive capacities of the country could be destroyed in the long run by inflation.
Price instability would be very likely to lead to high menu costs for firms, as they would have to continue changing their prices constantly. This can be particularly dangerous for small firms, and some could be forced to go out of business if this problem is particularly severe. The decline of smaller firms in a market could make it less competitive, which causes many problems for both the producer and the consumer, such as price rises and inefficiency. However, if the instability of prices is quite minimal, menu costs are likely to remain low. The consumers would also be affected by price instability due to shoe leather costs – they may have to spend a long period of time / lots of money searching for cheaper alternatives to goods they frequently buy. This is an inconvenience and stops the economy from working efficiently.
A high rate of inflation is also likely to reduce any benefits of economic growth. For example, even if nominal wages appear to increase after a rapid increase in productivity, if the rate of inflation is higher than any increase in nominal wages, real wages will actually decrease, meaning people are worse off than before. As mentioned previously, a fall in consumer incomes can reduce aggregate demand, which harms the economy as a whole. This fall in real wages accompanies by a rising cost of living is likely to lead to a wage-price spiral, particularly if trade unions have lots of power in the country. Workers are likely to demand higher wages through collective bargaining, and these higher wages would cause higher spending, further increasing inflation and restarting the cycle. This creates more instability, so perhaps the government should aim to keep inflation low and restricted to 1-3%.
On the other hand, if the government focuses excessively on maintaining price stability, their policies resulting from this could conflict with other macroeconomic objectives set by the government. For example, of the government attempts to use contractionary fiscal policy instruments such as increasing taxes (to decrease consumer spending), economic growth is likely to decrease. A rise in interest rates would also have the opportunity cost of further economic growth, and the effects of a reduction in government spending could be compounded by the loss of the multiplier effect – it could actually be profitable for the government to spend money. This shows that aiming for price instability could conflict with the other objective of economic growth.