Our editors give us a breakdown of this week’s biggest news stories
Market Spice: Week of 23 March
The outbreak of COVID-19 left few parts of the global economy untouched, with national governments struggling to coordinate swift responses. A multi-trillion dollar stimulus package in the United States, and further measures from governments around the world, spurred equities over the week, leading to record gains.
Highlights of the Week
Our editors give us a breakdown of this week’s biggest news stories
Market Spice: The Disease and the Cure
Market Spice: Week of 16 March 2020 Governments moved globally to combat the spread of the coronavirus, and to mitigate the effects of these measures on their economies. Uncertainty about the duration of the outbreak, and the policies halting social and economic activity used to combat it, produced a painful week for markets. Goldman Sachs…
Highlights of the Week
Our editors give us a breakdown of this week’s biggest news stories
Market Spice: It was the Best of Days, it was the Worst of Days
On Wednesday, the World Health Organisation officially declared COVID-19 a pandemic. Markets recorded both record losses and record gains as the U.S. confronted the outbreak, with the S&P 500 dropping 8.8% overall for the week.
Highlights of the Week
Our editors give us the breakdown of this week’s biggest news stories
Market Spice: A Supply Chain is as Strong as its Weakest Link
By Delany Higgins Market Spice: Week of March 2nd, 2020 The spread of COVID-19 caused further volatility in markets this week, with the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development warning that the outbreak could halve global economic growth for the year. The OECD cut their global forecast to as low as 1.5%, from 2.9% prior…
Art as Experience?
By Lucy Wright
Highlights of the Week
Our editors give us the breakdown of this week’s biggest news stories
Smashing Windows: The Economics of Disaster
By Cassi Ainsworth-Grace
Market Spice: Week of February 24th, 2020
Global markets suffered dramatically over the course of the week as traders assessed the potential damage caused by the COVID-19 outbreak. On Thursday, a spokesperson from the International Monetary Fund warned that it was likely to downgrade its forecasts from global growth.
The How-to Guide on Eliminating Education Disparity in the UK
By Jurin Katayama Income inequality is the biggest challenge that the UK’s education sector faces today. From law, politics, medicine and journalism, 39% of the top positions in these fields are dominated by the 7% of the total British population that has been lucky enough to afford and receive private education. Upper-class parents are more…
Highlights of the Week (17/02/2020)
Our editors give us the breakdown of this week’s biggest news stories.
Market Spice: Week of February 17th
Market Spice: Week of February 17th, 2020 By Delany Higgins Asia Chinese Communist Party leaders focused on business disruptions, noting that priority would be given to businesses with a high degree of integration into international supply chains. CCP officials spoke optimistically about the resumption of business in major export areas such as Guangdong and Jiangsu. …
Economics and the Environment: The Rise of Veganism
By Lucy Wright
How to Strangle a Student Town’s Economy—The St Andrews Housing Market
By Ryan Morrice There are few institutions better for a small town’s economy than a centuries-old world-renowned university. Businesses can expand over time, but they can also go bust. People can migrate to a town, boosting demand for local goods and services, but they can also leave, causing a slow irreversible decline. A university, on…
Highlights of the Week (10/02/2020)
Our editors give us the breakdown of this week’s biggest news stories.
Market Spice: Week of February 10th
Week of February 10th, 2020 Delany Higgins Asia In China, the CSI 300 and Shanghai Composite Indexes rose moderately, while Japan’s Nikkei 225 closed slightly down. Due to new measurement techniques, China announced over 14,800 additional cases of COVID-19, though the rate of spread appeared to be decreasing. China-U.S. relations faltered again after last week’s…
Valentine’s Day Special: Evaluating the Global Chocolate Shortage
By Jurin Katayama ‘Twas the day of Valentines, when all through St Andrews Chocolates were given, to show that they were true. Articles were flooded in all social media accounts, With click-bait titles blaring “Chocolate shortage!” to get the view counts. The culture of buying chocolates to illustrate love on an annual basis has caused…
Highlights of the Week (03/02/2020)
Our editors give us the breakdown of this week’s biggest news stories
Coronavirus’s Most Critical Patient
The brunt of the reaction has focused on the epicentre of the outbreak: the city of Wuhan, in Hubei province, though it has also extended to other areas in mainland China. If similar measures to those taken in Hubei were taken in Hong Kong, however, it could quickly spell a death-sentence for the pro-democracy movement.
Market Spice: This Week’s Roundup
On Monday, following the Lunar New Year holiday, the People’s Bank of China announced their plans to inject the equivalent of $21.7 in liquidity into the economy, as well as other measures amounting to $57 billion.
Can we use financial fraud to assess the health of economy? (A financial pyramid that challenged Russian leadership in the 1990s) – Part I
By analysing one of the biggest financial pyramids to ever exist, a point is made that financial corporate fraud can be used as a qualitative indicator to better comprehend the socio-economic reality.
Highlights of the Week (27/01/2020)
Our editors give us the breakdown of this week’s biggest news stories
Market Spice: Global Markets Catch Coronavirus
Week of January 27th, 2020 Delany Higgins Asia The impacts of coronavirus, declared a global health emergency on Thursday by the WHO, have spread far beyond China. Roughly 10,000 cases were reported before the end of the week. Hong Kong stocks sank, but with the emergence of some positive economic data, including on Chinese manufacturing,…
Investing in a Sustainable Society
By Hugh Gammon First created by the UK to fund a rehabilitation program for convicts in 2010, Social Impact Bonds (SIB) provide a meeting place for charity and capital, promising a return on investment from funding social initiatives and charitable efforts. The concept is now gaining increasing traction and publicity in the financial sphere as…
Highlights of the Week (20/01/2020)
Our editors give us the breakdown of this week’s biggest news stories
Market Spice: This Week’s Roundup
Week of January 20th, 2020 Delany Higgins Asia The coronavirus outbreak caused the most substantial single-day decline in Chinese stocks in the past eight months, with the Shanghai Composite Index losing 3.8% over the course of the week. Japanese stocks fell, though the yen strengthened somewhat. Japanese exports have been falling, and it is unclear…
Lebanon: A New Hope or Renewed Despair?
Recent protests across Lebanon, sparked in October by a proposed ‘Whatsapp Tax’, have spiralled into a much broader movement calling for a political and economic overhaul to the country, having lost no momentum with the resignation of former PM Saad al-Hariri and the appointment of Hezbollah-backed, Hassan Diab. The new President has thus far failed…
Highlights of the Week (13/01/2020)
Our editors give us the breakdown of this week’s biggest news stories Scotland: Ryan Morrice The UK government formally rejected a request for a second Scottish independence referendum by the Scottish government. Prime Minister Boris Johnson wrote that “another independence referendum would continue the political stagnation that Scotland has seen for the last decade”. First…
Highlights of the Week (06/01/2020)
Image Source: Chris Toward/christoward10 Our editors give us the breakdown of this week’s biggest news stories Economics: Lucy Wright Train passengers may be able to capitalise on cheaper rail fares as “split tickets” – a practice previously carried out by only a select group of consumers – becomes mainstream. Instead of buying one ticket, say…
Highlights of the Week (30/12/2019)
Image Source: Chris Toward/@christoward10 Our editors give us the breakdown of this week’s biggest news stories Scotland: Ryan Morrice Rail fares in Scotland increased by 2.4% on average on the 2nd of January. Meanwhile Abellio ScotRail has reported losses of £10 million over a 15 month period. This comes after news that they will be…
The Mesut Ozil Controversy: How Arsenal’s Response Explains Politics in Modern Sports
By Charlie Whiteley China’s strict censorship policy has again challenged the values of a major global brand. Arsenal Football Club player Mesut Ozil recently spoke out against the Chinese treatment of Uighur Muslims on Twitter, landing both Ozil and Arsenal in serious trouble with the Chinese government. China’s response has been characteristically swift and efficient, with Arsenal…
The Hawala System and Sharia Banking
How Terror Abuses Financial Institutions Hawala, حوالة, in Arabic translates as transfer in English and trust in Hindi. The Hawala System is an Informal Value Transfer System (IVTS) which is essentially a system whereby money or value in the form of commodities, is transferred nationally or internationally by an organisation that does not offer financial services as…
The Chrysanthemum and the Pork: The US and Japan Strike a Controversial Deal on Trade
The US-Japan agreement will likely be closely scrutinized in the coming months, hopefully providing clues into the economic and political precedent it may create.
Spilling the Beans on Fairtrade Coffee
Fairtrade’s long-term value to both consumers and producers is more likely in the information it conveys about method of production, not in the extra premium it ostensibly conveys to producers.
A Radically Shifting Overton Window
“I believe that marriage is the union between a man and a woman. Now, for me as a Christian… it is also a sacred union. God’s in the mix.” If I was to ask you what politician said this quote, you would probably think it was Mike Pence or someone on the right that was trying to appeal to evangelical voters in the Midwest.
Trumpty Dumpty sat on his wall; will it be his downfall?
The now infamous signature slogan of Trump’s 2016 Presidential campaign to ‘Build the Wall!’ bears little relevance to the current status of said border perimeter. Instead, the wall has now been modelled as a metaphorical, rather than a literal, construction.
The Poor Opposition Parties of Scotland
The next general election is a few weeks away and the dominant party in Scotland, the Scottish National Party (SNP), look set for another strong performance. Polls predict they will take a majority of seats in Scotland again.
The Ulterior Motives Behind Boris Johnson’s Winter Election
Boris Johnson has laid down the gauntlet to Jeremy Corbyn, challenging the Labour leader to a general election in December. This is the first time that a general election has occurred in the month of December since 1923. Yet the PM is prepared to take such an unprecedented step and depart from the usual springtime electoral season as he, like his predecessor
History doesn’t Repeat itself, but it Rhymes
As Democrats move closer to impeachment, we explore how lessons from the 2016 campaign being heeded and why historical impeachments are not necessarily the best examples for comparison.
Climate Change: Could it just be natural? Part 2
By Beatrice Omotosho Climate as a Phenomenon Climate is characterized by mean air temperature, humidity, winds, precipitation, and frequency of extreme weather events over a lengthy period of time, at least thirty years scientists say. The climate forms and follows long term trends usually of periods of warming and cooling. Climate change is therefore a…
Climate Change: Could it just be natural?
By Beatrice Omotosho The science of climate change is a field in which most laypersons are not knowledgeable in nor familiar with. Now this means if you: like I, are a fellow believer, you may find yourself faced with a situation where a climate change sceptic is disputing the facts you believe to know, and…
Onions in India: A Political Economy of Layers
By Lawrence Ho Not one onion is leaving India. This is the policy implemented by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government. You may think that this is a trivial issue, but is arguably a very scary prospect for the onion markets, as a country that exports 2.2 billion kilograms, worth around $514.3 million of fresh…
Testing the Theory: New Research on Asymmetric Information
By Cassi Ainsworth-Grace
Nike, Believe in Something
By John Mann
Booze, Drugs, and Death
By Ryan Morrice Scotland is known for many things: its beautiful Highlands and lochs; its world-renowned whisky; its inventors who gave the world a multitude of innovations such as the telephone and penicillin; and lesser known is the great number of preventable deaths that happen every year: in 2018 there were 1,187 drug-related deaths. Per…
Regional giants: South Africa’s economic crisis
By Camille Capelle Historically, there has been an expectation in the post-apartheid era that South Africa would ascend into the role of regional leader on the continent. However, even in the new democratic era, persistent economic instability and the inertia of the political establishment has meant that this potential has never been realised. Recent power…
Unscathed or Undetected? Southeast Asia and Coronavirus
Should we be relieved? Or should we consider this the calm before the storm?
