OCR Economics Synoptic 2888 June 09 - YOUR GAME PLAN?!

Using words like 'falls', 'reduce', 'higher' may be confusing.

In underproduction MPC would actually be to the left of MSC (I dont' know what you mean by 'higher'?) so you would shift MPC to the right.


I think the examiner would understand you a lot more if you wrote about them as shifts to the left/right as you would in a supply and demand diagram.

Vinsta and hanoi and everyone else thank you so much for this negative externalities discussion. i couldn't get my head round it until now so thank you.

Can i just double check the biofuels/negative externalities details?
So biofuels reduce negative externalities (of fossil fuel production?) by being a less carbon emitting substitute to fossil fuels. On a graph with MSB sloping downwards and MSC and MPC sloping upwards (MSC being to the left of MPC), MPC would shift to the left, moving closer to MSC and thus reducing the negative externality and decreasing the size of the welfare loss.
Is this correct?

Also could anyone give me a hand with the positive externalities. I understand that products with positive externalities are under consumed and underproduced but I have trouble relating this to biofuel production.
What are the positive externalities of biofuel production?

In terms of a graph, where MSC slopes upwards and MPB is to the left of MSB, is it that the provision of subsidies will cause production to increase causing MPB to shift to the right - ie closer to MSB? If this is in fact correct can someone please explain why?

Thanks!

Well if you need to, revise 2881, 2882, 2883 as this synoptic paper is based on those modules, read through the tutor2u pack and try to recognise what economic theory is being applied and make sure you understand how it works (ie you understand the associated diagrams).

Surprising that you are only revising less than 48 hours before the exam.

Thanks for the advices

48 hours left and it begins........tonight, with a nice up of coffee to start with, and the wonderful toolkit written by Riley of course.

I did had a look at the toolkit before, found it a bit confusing when all things are put together as I kinda be more marco than mirco. But this exam, as the toolkit says, is mainly about mirco.

Do I have to know, in detail, about the CAP and ETS? Or just the application of it to those extract?

And also, do you think integrating marco and mirco together are important? Or simply just apply theories to the extracts that are?

Has anyone done question 4 on the Tutor2u mock exam?
Which diagram did you all end up using, if you even DID use a diagram, negative externality or positive externality?
It's the question comparing food for crops or food for biofuels.

what is the difference between the CAP and the ETS

and roughly how much time should be spent on each question

I'm finding it so difficult to think of many questions that they could ask in this exam without them being completely unrelated to the stimulus material, which is unlikely to happen if past questions are anything to go by. Is it just me that seems as though the questions in the tutor2u mock and perhaps some other questions from teachers seem like the only potential questions? It's actually worrying me that this stimulus material is kind of narrow in its info., it means that examiners can surprise us with random topics. At least with broad stimuli in the past, there were always some questions which were bound to come up. Anyone feel the same?

I'm just going through the potential questions over and over and just remembering how to structure the questions now, it does not seem like I can do much more.

Fair shout, yeah.

How can we argue for biofuels? I mean they look ok but then there's that extract about them messing up the atmosphere through some other emission. In the exam, can we say that this article may be incorrect? To me, biofuels look like a clear example of a demerit good and government failure in trying to produce more of it.

I'm finding it so difficult to think of many questions that they could ask in this exam without them being completely unrelated to the stimulus material, which is unlikely to happen if past questions are anything to go by. Is it just me that seems as though the questions in the tutor2u mock and perhaps some other questions from teachers seem like the only potential questions? It's actually worrying me that this stimulus material is kind of narrow in its info., it means that examiners can surprise us with random topics. At least with broad stimuli in the past, there were always some questions which were bound to come up. Anyone feel the same?

I'm just going through the potential questions over and over and just remembering how to structure the questions now, it does not seem like I can do much more.

They may throw in something about the command economies, so something like "To what extent is the Russian policy for reducing food price inflation "a throwback to Soviet-style central planning".
I doubt this though, but I'm just going through the booklet to see what else they can ask us on, and this is the only other topic I can see in the extracts. Unless something on S+D side shocks, but there is not much to write about that at all, and for the question in extract 4 it is very unlikely they won't use biofuels as that is what the whole of extract 4 focuses on.