...Fernando Mata General Management March 8th, 2015 Assignment The Economist - Written Assignment 1. Why has The Economist been so successful despite the terrible results of its competitors? The Economist has been able to succeed for different reasons. One of them has been the increase number in its target audience. The market's increase demand for sophisticated and challenging information has led this magazine to increase its subscribers and readers throughout the globe. Another reason, and perhaps the most important, is that they provide high quality analysis and straight to the point articles & news, which provide the reader a faster and easier way of going through and digesting information. The Economist has also been focused on providing a wide range of topics, not only news & articles surrounding on one aspect, such as politics and business, but also about cultural and innovative topics, that provide a global focus about what's currently going on around in different countries. Throughout the years this magazine has positioned itself as a reliable source of information that people trust. Thus, many readers and subscribers have a higher income and education than the average magazine consumer, which enables customers to keep subscribed even at economic crisis times. As well as taking into consideration that an economic crisis would be a relevant topic to learn and read about (causes, consequences, impact, etc.) in a magazine of this type. People are willing to pay for this...
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...Schumpeter: A guide to skiving | The Economist 10/23/14, 3:56 PM Schumpeter A guide to skiving How to thrive at work with the minimum of effort Oct 25th 2014 | From the print edition THE best way to understand a system is to look at it from the point of view of people who want to subvert it. Sensible bosses try to view their companies through the eyes of corporate raiders. Serious-minded politicians make a point of putting themselves in their opponents’ shoes. The same is true of the world of work in general: the best way to understand a company’s “human resources” is not to consult the department that bears that ugly name but to study the basic principles of one of the world’s most popular, if unrecognised, sciences: skiving. The first principle of skiving (or shirking, as Americans call it) is always to appear hard at work. This is the ancient jacket-on-the-back-of-the-chair trick: leave a coat permanently on display so that a casual observer—a CEO practising “managing by walking around”, for example—will assume that you are the first to arrive and the last to leave. The skill of skiving is subtle: ensure you are somewhere else when the work is being allocated. Successful skivers never visibly shy away from work: confronted with the inevitable they make a point of looking extremely eager. This “theatre of enthusiasm” has fooled almost everyone. Policymakers bemoan the epidemic of overwork. But as Roland Paulsen, of Sweden’s Lund University, explains...
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...The Economist, 10/17/2009 ------------------------------------------------- Battle of the clouds The fight to dominate cloud computing will increase competition and innovation THERE is nothing the computer industry likes better than a big new idea--followed by a big fight, as different firms compete to exploit it. "Cloudcomputing" is the latest example, and companies large and small are already joining the fray. The idea is that computing will increasingly be delivered as a service, over the internet, from vast warehouses of shared machines. Documents, e-mails and other data will be stored online, or "in the cloud", making them accessible from any PC or mobile device. Many things work this way already, from e-mail and photo albums to calendars and shared documents. This represents a big shift. If you store more and more things online, and access more and more software through an ordinary web browser, it suddenly matters much less what sort of computer you have, and what kind of software it is running. This means Microsoft, which launches the newest version of its Windows operating system this month, could lose out--unless, that is, the software giant can encourage software developers and users to migrate to its new suite of cloud-based services. Its main rival is Google, which offers its own range of such services, and continues to launch new ones and interlink them more closely. Yahoo!, which is allied with Microsoft, and Apple also offer cloud services for consumers;...
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...SYNOPSIS OF DEAR UNDERCOVER ECONOMIST INTRODUCTION The book offers witty, charming and at times caustic answers to our most pressing concerns all through the lens of economics. Does money buy happiness? Is the one really out there? Can cities be greener than farms? Can you really dress for success? When’s the best time to settle down? The book provides brilliant, hilarious, unexpected and wise answers to these and other questions. It lends an outrageous, compassionate and indispensable perspective on anything that may ail a book well worth the investment. The author delivers an informative book, accomplished through the fluid use of economic principle to dissect everyday problems, as seen from Tim Harford’s “Dear Economist” column in the Financial Times newspaper of London. He uses fictional type questions that effortlessly lend themselves to his dry English humor, and both the questions and the answers he provides are quite interesting. Harford commonly employs sophisticated economic principles alongside everyday rules, and makes us entertained by his instructive empirical evidence. SUMMARY In this book, one of the letters is from a man who can’t decide whether to propose to his girlfriend on the upcoming Valentine’s Day, or wait until next year. The Undercover Economist discusses and applies the principle of value creation to the situation. He advises that value creating moves should be applied sooner rather than later, because of the limitation of time. However,...
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...While the Israel Manufacturer's Association and a coalition of exporters have long complained that Israel's currency is too strong, they got an unlikely endorsement on Friday from McDonald's. More specifically, The Economist released its latest Big Mac Index, a simple, lighthearted and popular indicator of whether currencies are valued correctly. The idea, according to the newspaper, is this: The price of a Big Mac captures a lot of what's going on in a given economy, from labor to rent to the price of produce. Since Big Macs are just about the same in most countries, they should, according to the economic theory of purchasing power parity, cost about the same when converted into the same currency. "Since a Big Mac costs 48 kroner ($7.76) in Norway and only $4.80 in America, the kroner is overvalued by 62 percent according to this lighthearted, protein-rich analysis, making it the most puffed-up currency in the index," The Economist offered by way of example. In Israel, the cost of a Big Mac in 2014 is NIS 17.50, which at the NIS 3.41 exchange rate comes out to $5.13. That figure is 6.9% more expensive than the US Big Mac price of $4.80, meaning that - in the flurry-filled world of the Big Mac economics, at least - the Shekel is about 6.9% too strong. If Ronald McDonald were the world's central banker, the shekel would be 3.65 to the dollar (and Israel's exporters would be thrilled, as their products would suddenly seem much cheaper to customers around the globe)...
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...their common terminology serves to make for more precise communication. It allows ideas to be communicated clearly and exactly. This exactness and clarity of terminology serves society by allowing economists to discuss economics with each other and with society with clarity so that other economists have a better understanding of what an economist is saying. A common terminology also serves to divide insiders from outsiders. For outsiders, for example economic students, who do not have a clue what these terms mean, economists’ terminology is exclusionary. It makes economists the gatekeepers of economic ideas. Economists’ terminology serves as a barrier to entry, restricting the supply of economists, and increasing the value of the services provided by existing economists. Which of these two reasons is the strongest? To answer that question let us consider two examples given by Amanda Bennett, the author of The Wall Street Journal article, “Economists + Meeting = A Zillion Causes and Effects” [The Wall Street Journal, January 10, 1995]. The two examples are the concepts of externality and utility, Why do economists use these terms? Based on her article, and on my classroom experience, I would judge that, of the two reasons, the self-serving reason is the stronger. Essentially, economists create their terminology primarily to make life difficult for students. Consider the first example: externality. Why no simple call externalities “unintended side effects”? It would be much easier...
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...welcome fashion The Economist, Nov 15th 2001 | From the print edition IT IS more than 200 years since Adam Smith observed that people enjoy their daily bread thanks not to the benevolence of their baker, but to his selfish pursuit of profit. In that observation and its implications lies the case for market capitalism. In their economic lives, people behave as though they had no regard for the public good. Yet the outcome, through the operation of the invisible hand, serves the public good better than any social planner could ever do. Nowadays the triumph of the market is taken for granted. But this victory is far from complete—because Smith's insight is, even now, not widely believed. Social progress is still thought to issue not from profit-seeking behaviour, nor even from enlightened government policy (current orthodoxy, after all, frowns on too much of that), but from the benevolence of the baker. Companies are enjoined to do more than serve their customers and make money. Instead they must be “good corporate citizens”; they must attend to the needs of their “stakeholders”; they must contribute to “sustainable development”; they must strive to “raise standards” at home and abroad. Increasingly, companies respond to these admonitions, or affect to, with zeal. So firmly has this view taken root that only a brave man would be willing to go on record against it. In a new booklet for the Institute of Economic Affairs*, David Henderson, formerly the chief economist at the OECD, has...
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...The following 5 questions are based on this information: An economist claims that average weekly food expenditure of households in City 1 is more than that of households in City 2. She surveys 35 households in City 1 and obtains an average weekly food expenditure of $164. A sample of 30 households in City 2 yields an average weekly expenditure of $159. Historical data reveals that the population standard deviation for City 1 and City 2 are $12.50 and $9.25, respectively. City 1 City 2 x1(bar)=164 x2 (bar) =159 σ(1)=12.5 σ(2) =9.25 n(1)=35 n2=30 Let μ(1) be the mean weekly food expenditure for City 1 and μ(2) be that for City 2. Question 1 Answer saved Points out of 1.00 To test the economist’s claim, the competing hypotheses should be formulated as Select one: Flag question a. H0:μ1μ2>0 versus Ha:μ1μ2≤0 b. H0:μ1μ2≥0 versus Ha:μ1μ20 Question 2 The standard error of x(1)bar x(2) bar is Answer saved Points out of 1.00 Select one: Flag question a. 0.82 b. 2.70 c. 12.5 d. 9.25 Question 3 The value of the test statistics is Answer saved Points out of 1.00 Select one: Flag question a. 0.40 b. 1.85 c. 0.54 d. 27.78 Question 4 The pvalue of the test is Answer saved Points out of 1.00 Select one: Flag question a. 0.34 b. 0.03 c. 0.29 d. 0.08 Question 5 At α=0.05, Answer saved Points out of 1.00 Flag question Select one: a. We can reject H(0) in favor of H(a) ...
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...Sex and advertising: Retail therapy | The Economist 18/10/2012 22:28 Log in Register Subscribe Digital & mobile Events Topics A-Z Newsletters Jobs Thursday October 18th 2012 Search Multimedia Print edition World politics Business & finance Economics Science & technology Culture Blogs Debate The World in 2013 We use cookies to support features like login and allow trusted media partners to analyse aggregated site usage. Keep cookies enabled to enjoy the full site experience. By browsing our site with cookies enabled, you are agreeing to their use. Review our cookies information for more details. Sex and advertising Comment (28) E-mail Print Reprints & permissions Retail therapy How Ernest Dichter, an acolyte of Sigmund Freud, revolutionised marketing Dec 17th 2011 | from the print edition Like 1.7k Tweet 874 Advertisement THESE are thrilling days for behavioural research. Every week seems to yield a new discovery about how bad people are at making decisions. Humans, it turns out, are impressionable, emotional and irrational. We buy things we don't need, often at arbitrary prices and for silly reasons. Studies show that when a store plays soothing music, shoppers will linger for longer and often spend more. If customers are in a good mood, they are more susceptible to persuasion. We believe price tends to indicate the value of things, not the other way around. And many people will squander valuable time...
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...Question One: “FedEx has built superior physical, virtual and people networks not just to prepare for change but to shape change on a global scale…FedEx is not only reorganizing its internal operations around a more flexible network computing architecture, but it’s also pulling-in and in many cases locking-in customers with an unprecedented level of technological integration (Janah and Wilder, 1997; Annual Report 1999; cited in De Wit and Meyer, 2004, p.647).” In the context of the above statement, critically analyse the Global express transportation and logistics industry in which FedEx operates using Porters Value Chain and Five Forces frameworks. From the results of your analysis evaluate the ‘core competencies’ and ‘dynamic capabilities’ that enabled FedEx to build an efficient and effective transportation, logistics and a virtual information infrastructure. [35 % marks] Question Two: Discuss the events leading up to the January 2000 reorganisation in the context of FedEx’s three major strategic initiatives: (1) A new branding strategy that involved changing the Company’s name to FedEx Corporation, and extending the ‘FedEx’ brand to four of its five subsidiary companies; (2) The need for one point of access to sales, customer services, billing and automation systems; and (3) A new low-cost residential delivery service, FedEx Home Delivery (De Wit and Meyer, 2004, pp. 657-661). Your answer should be based on a critical review of FedEx’s...
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...Question One: “FedEx has built superior physical, virtual and people networks not just to prepare for change but to shape change on a global scale…FedEx is not only reorganizing its internal operations around a more flexible network computing architecture, but it’s also pulling-in and in many cases locking-in customers with an unprecedented level of technological integration (Janah and Wilder, 1997; Annual Report 1999; cited in De Wit and Meyer, 2004, p.647).” In the context of the above statement, critically analyse the Global express transportation and logistics industry in which FedEx operates using Porters Value Chain and Five Forces frameworks. From the results of your analysis evaluate the ‘core competencies’ and ‘dynamic capabilities’ that enabled FedEx to build an efficient and effective transportation, logistics and a virtual information infrastructure. [35 % marks] Question Two: Discuss the events leading up to the January 2000 reorganisation in the context of FedEx’s three major strategic initiatives: (1) A new branding strategy that involved changing the Company’s name to FedEx Corporation, and extending the ‘FedEx’ brand to four of its five subsidiary companies; (2) The need for one point of access to sales, customer services, billing and automation systems (3) A new low-cost residential delivery service, FedEx Home Delivery (De Wit and Meyer, 2004, pp. 657-661). Your answer should be based on a critical review of FedEx’s...
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...last social trend that seems to be quite prevalent is the use of spam mail. When businesses want to easily promote something like a product or service, it is fairly easy to do this by bombarding people will e-mails by way of advertising and phishing. While most respectable businesses don’t normally do this, many others take advantage of be able to reach multiple people without them having to visit their home web site directly. I then looked at three technological trends that are affecting business and found something like a new industrial revolution. Each day, as technology advances we are given more tools to make our job easier, but in some cases jobs can be automated by machines. “Smart machines and robots will redefine society” (The Economist Newspaper Limited, 2014). As an...
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...Running head: GENDER SELECTION Is Gender Selection of a Fetus Ethical? Emily Myer Grand Canyon University NRS 437V 08.21.2010 Gender Selection It is a commonly known fact that countries such as China and India prize their male children far above their females. Investigations have also shown that many parents in these countries have been illegally aborting these less desirable female children as a means of gender selection. As a result, it is estimated that there will be nearly 60 million more men of marriageable age in China than women by the year 2050. (The Economist, 2011) A recent technological development published in the Journal of the American Medical Association report that, “a new maternal blood test can determine a fetus’ sex as early as seven weeks into a pregnancy” (Ravitsky, 2011). Is it possible that this technology, in and of itself, can pose an ethical threat to humanity? Some are already saying that it does. One such critic is Vardit Ravitsky, an assistant professor in the bioethics program at the University of Montreal. She is also the editor of “The Penn Center Guide to Bioethics”. In her opinion piece published on CNN’s website, she asserts that this new technology is safer, less invasive, and more accurate than the options that are currently available to the public, making it much easier to use for non-medical purposes such as gender selection (Ravitsky, 2011). For the purpose of this assignment, the ethical implications of gender selection...
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...Gillette Taking it on the chin Apr 16th 1998 | BOSTON From The Economist print edition The launch of a new razor will test whether Gillette deserves to be so admired by management gurus HOW many ways can there be to remove the 15,000 bristles that sprout so relentlessly on the male chin? Gillette, saved from humiliation eight years ago by the launch of the Sensor range, with not one but two blades, this week unveiled an even more revolutionary advance in shaving: the Mach3 (see article). Gillette’s future may not exactly be on a razor’s edge—it has 71% of the North American and European market for razors and blades—but it needs those bristles. The company, whose consumer brands include Duracell batteries, Oral-B toothbrushes and Parker and Waterman pens, is beloved by management consultants. But investors have begun to fret about slowing growth, lacklustre sales and an imminent change in top management. Growth has slowed in the hugely profitable razors division, partly because Schick, its smaller rival, has recently launched a new razor of its own. Last August, the mildest of profit warnings was enough to send the shares tumbling nearly 20%, although they have since recovered. The Mach3 is the company’s biggest and most important new product since the Sensor, and the company hopes it will have a similar effect. Eight years ago, Gillette was losing its grip on the razor market to cheap throwaways and facing the fourth in a succession of hostile takeover bids. Sensor...
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...fabrics, and continue all the way to public stores. Due to the lack of middlemen, they are able to cut production costs, and because they are entirely in the United States, they are able to cut shipping costs by not using foreign vendors (American Apparel. This supplies American’s with jobs rather than outsourcing to another country (American Apparel). People like the idea of supporting their country rather than a foreign one, so people tend to buy American-products (Economist), giving American Apparel an advantage over other companies. Vertical integration gives society more competitive prices, meaning the consumer saves money as well as the companies. Vertical integration creates more jobs, leading to more people being paid so more money is spent, helping everyone. The only disadvantage of vertical integration is how competitive the pricing is. If a local business has to compete with a big one that is vertically integrated, the small business will have to charge more due to more expenses in the middlemen (Economist). However, some people would rather buy things from a small merchant than a...
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