Well, I'm flattered, Simon that you feel you need me! I am up to my
armpits in a job with an horrific deadline so can't promise to go
bananas and decaff just yet ... by the middle of next week I should be
OK if needed!
I haven't had the chance to follow all recent threads, of which there
has been scads, but in case no one's mentioned them, how about sites
like Traidcraft and similar? There was a highly emotional (to my mind)
discussion on Radio 4 this week, Tuesday, on coffee prices that had a
fair trader pitting his wits against the man from Nestle. Probably on
PM at 5 pm: I was driving through Scotland at the time and whilst
listening to the debate I wasn't concentrating on the times,
programming etc.
I tend to agree, though, that the debates tend not to be student
friendly and they do need more filling out that radio and television
tend to do. The Iraq issue is a classic case in point!
Duncan Williamson
> This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
>
>
> Dear all
>
> One of out topics in IB Economics is trade as a devlopment stategy
for
> LDC's, more specifically the problems related to this. This includes
> such ideas as declining terms of trade, reletive elasticities,
barriers
> to markets, diminishing returns in agriculture, perfectly competitive
> agricultural markets versus oligoplist selling markets etc.
>
> In the Summer 2002 exam there was a good question on the banana
market
> and how Ffyfes and co. were doing much the same to banana growers as
> Starbucks et al are doing to coffee growers. I would like to take
> advantage of the dearth of information on coffee at the moment to put
> something together for my Year 13 class on this. However, I see a
> number of pitfalls:
>
> Devlopment economics tends to be very descriptive and the real skill
as
> a teacher is getting economic concepts IN and keeping description
OUT.
> Letting the (im)morals of these markets drive students motivation but
> not their analysis or investigation. How does one focus on the
> theoretical explanations that are prevalent?
>
> There is so much info on this that students, and I, can get lost -
much
> of this descriptive.
>
> My question (there is a point to this e-mail) is: Does anyone have
any
> good ideas of resources that focus on WHY these growers receive so
> little? I am not looking for information that highlights capitalist
> greed, but information such as lack of market power by producers,
trade
> barriers, elasticties etc.
>
> I have a website here at school and can create a page specifically
for
> this. I am reluctant to do this if it means that I am just creating
> another list of links to descriptions of the problem. We need
Duncan.
>
> Any ideas on sources of information or how to get the key economics
> topics involved would be much appreciated.
>
> I'm off for a coffee (and judging by the normal taste of it 2.3
cents a
> cup is over the odds).
>
> Simon Foley
> Bangkok Patana School
> Thailand
>
>
>
>
>
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