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Guarda il tutorial

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Le #PilloleDelProf - Come realizzare infografiche e poster digitali

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Watch the tutorial. You can create videos or presentation or posters

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Guarda il tutorial per realizzare un'intervista impossibile digitale.

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App per prof #90 PLAYBUZZ (Interviste Impossibili)

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Here follow instructions about the kind of work each group should organise.

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How American Governments dealt with past recessions

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How American Governments dealt with past recessions

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emergency economic stabilization act (2008)

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How the Government Dealt With Past Recessions - Interactive Feature - NYTimes.com

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Since the Great Depression, presidents have tried many methods to fight recessions. Three economists explain what worked and what didn't.

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Finance & Development,
Sarwat Jahan, Ahmed Saber Mahmud, and Chris Papageorgiou PDF version The central tenet of this school of thought is that government intervention can stabilize the economy
Just how important is money? Few would deny that it plays a key role in the economy.

During the Great Depression of the 1930s, existing economic theory was unable either to explain the causes of the severe worldwide economic collapse or to provide an adequate public policy solution to jump-start production and employment.

British economist John Maynard Keynes spearheaded a revolution in economic thinking that overturned the then-prevailing idea that free markets would automatically provide full employment-that is, that everyone who wanted a job would have one as long as workers were flexible in their wage demands (see box). The main plank of Keynes's theory, which has come to bear his name, is the assertion that aggregate demand-measured as the sum of spending by households, businesses, and the government-is the most important driving force in an economy. Keynes further asserted that free markets have no self-balancing mechanisms that lead to full employment. Keynesian economists justify government intervention through public policies that aim to achieve full employment and price stability.

The revolutionary idea

Keynes argued that inadequate overall demand could lead to prolonged periods of high unemployment. An economy's output of goods and services is the sum of four components: consumption, investment, government purchases, and net exports (the difference between what a country sells to and buys from foreign countries). Any increase in demand has to come from one of these four components. But during a recession, strong forces often dampen demand as spending goes down. For example, during economic downturns uncertainty often erodes consumer confidence, causing them to reduce their spending, especially on discretionary purchases like a house or a car. This reduction in spending by consumers can result in less investment spending by businesses, as firms respond to weakened demand for their products. This puts the task of increasing output on the shoulders of the government. According to Keynesian economics, state intervention is necessary to moderate the booms and busts in economic activity, otherwise known as the business cycle.

There are three principal tenets in the Keynesian description of how the economy works:

* Aggregate demand is influenced by many economic decisions-public and private.Private sector decisions can sometimes lead to adverse macroeconomic outcomes, such as reduction in consumer spending during a recession. These market failures sometimes call for active policies by the government, such as a fiscal stimulus package (explained below). Therefore, Keynesian economics supports a mixed economy guided mainly by the private sector but partly operated by the government.

* Prices, and especially wages, respond slowly to changes in supply and demand, resulting in periodic shortages and surpluses, especially of labor.

* Changes in aggregate demand, whether anticipated or unanticipated, have their greatest short-run effect on real output and employment, not on prices. Keynesians believe that, because prices are somewhat rigid, fluctuations in any component of spending-consumption, investment, or government expenditures-cause output to change. If government spending increases, for example, and all other spending components remain constant, then output will increase. Keynesian models of economic activity also include a multiplier effect; that is, output changes by some multiple of the increase or decrease in spending that caused the change. If the fiscal multiplier is greater than one, then a one dollar increase in government spending would result in an increase in output greater than one dollar.

Keynes the master

Keynesian economics gets its name, theories, and principles from British economist John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946), who is regarded as the founder of modern macroeconomics. His most famous work, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, was published in 1936. But its 1930 precursor, A Treatise on Money, is often regarded as more important to economic thought. Until then economics analyzed only static conditions-essentially doing detailed examination of a snapshot of a rapidly moving process. Keynes, in Treatise, created a dynamic approach that converted economics into a study of the flow of incomes and expenditures. He opened up new vistas for economic analysis.

In The Economic Consequences of the Peace in 1919, Keynes predicted that the crushing conditions the Versailles peace treaty placed on Germany to end World War I would lead to another European war.

He remembered the lessons from Versailles and from the Great Depression, when he led the British delegation at the 1944 Bretton Woods conference-which set down rules to ensure the stability of the international financial system and facilitated the rebuilding of nations devastated by World War II. Along with U.S. Treasury official Harry Dexter White, Keynes is considered the intellectual founding father of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, which were created at Bretton Woods.

Stabilizing the economy

No policy prescriptions follow from these three tenets alone. What distinguishes Keynesians from other economists is their belief in activist policies to reduce the amplitude of the business cycle, which they rank among the most important of all economic problems.

Rather than seeing unbalanced government budgets as wrong, Keynes advocated so-called countercyclical fiscal policies that act against the direction of the business cycle. For example, Keynesian economists would advocate deficit spending on labor-intensive infrastructure projects to stimulate employment and stabilize wages during economic downturns. They would raise taxes to cool the economy and prevent inflation when there is abundant demand-side growth. Monetary policy could also be used to stimulate the economy-for example, by reducing interest rates to encourage investment. The exception occurs during a liquidity trap, when increases in the money stock fail to lower interest rates and, therefore, do not boost output and employment.

Keynes argued that governments should solve problems in the short run rather than wait for market forces to fix things over the long run, because, as he wrote, "In the long run, we are all dead." This does not mean that Keynesians advocate adjusting policies every few months to keep the economy at full employment. In fact, they believe that governments cannot know enough to fine-tune successfully.

Keynesianism evolves

Even though his ideas were widely accepted while Keynes was alive, they were also scrutinized and contested by several contemporary thinkers. Particularly noteworthy were his arguments with the Austrian School of Economics, whose adherents believed that recessions and booms are a part of the natural order and that government intervention only worsens the recovery process.

Keynesian economics dominated economic theory and policy after World War II until the 1970s, when many advanced economies suffered both inflation and slow growth, a condition dubbed "stagflation." Keynesian theory's popularity waned then because it had no appropriate policy response for stagflation. Monetarist economists doubted the ability of governments to regulate the business cycle with fiscal policy and argued that judicious use of monetary policy (essentially controlling the supply of money to affect interest rates) could alleviate the crisis (see " What Is Monetarism?" in the March 2014 F&D). Members of the monetarist school also maintained that money can have an effect on output in the short run but believed that in the long run, expansionary monetary policy leads to inflation only. Keynesian economists largely adopted these critiques, adding to the original theory a better integration of the short and the long run and an understanding of the long-run neutrality of money-the idea that a change in the stock of money affects only nominal variables in the economy, such as prices and wages, and has no effect on real variables, like employment and output.

Both Keynesians and monetarists came under scrutiny with the rise of the new classical school during the mid-1970s. The new classical school asserted that policymakers are ineffective because individual market participants can anticipate the changes from a policy and act in advance to counteract them. A new generation of Keynesians that arose in the 1970s and 1980s argued that even though individuals can anticipate correctly, aggregate markets may not clear instantaneously; therefore, fiscal policy can still be effective in the short run.

The global financial crisis of 2007-08 caused a resurgence in Keynesian thought. It was the theoretical underpinnings of economic policies in response to the crisis by many governments, including in the United States and the United Kingdom. As the global recession was unfurling in late 2008, Harvard professor N. Gregory Mankiw wrote in the New York Times, "If you were going to turn to only one economist to understand the problems facing the economy, there is little doubt that the economist would be John Maynard Keynes. Although Keynes died more than a half-century ago, his diagnosis of recessions and depressions remains the foundation of modern macroeconomics. Keynes wrote, 'Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slave of some defunct economist.' In 2008, no defunct economist is more prominent than Keynes himself."

But the 2007-08 crisis also showed that Keynesian theory had to better include the role of the financial system. Keynesian economists are rectifying that omission by integrating the real and financial sectors of the economy.■

Sarwat Jahan is an Economist and Chris Papageorgiou is a Deputy Division Chief in the IMF's Strategy, Policy, and Review Department. Ahmed Saber Mahmud is the Associate Director of Applied Economics at Johns Hopkins University.

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What Is Keynesian Economics? - Back to Basics - Finance & Development, September 2014

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Finance & Development, Sarwat Jahan, Ahmed Saber Mahmud, and Chris Papageorgiou PDF version The central tenet of this school of thought is that government intervention can stabilize the economy Just how important is money?

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Paris Peace Conference:Writing a Treaty to End World War I

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Paris Peace Conference:Writing a Treaty to End World War I

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Problem based Unit

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The Conference Commission requests your immediate presence in Paris as a delegate to the Paris Peace Conference. After months of deliberation, the Peace Treaty to end the war will undergo formal negotiations in four specific areas beginning 1 June 1919.

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Note: This lesson was originally published on an older version of The Learning Network; the link to the related Times article will take you to a page on the old site.

Teaching ideas based on New York Times content.

Overview of Lesson Plan: In this lesson, students define and examine the role of Keynesian economics during recessions and depression, then write a memo to President Obama advising him on how to put Keynesian principles into practice.

Author(s):
Sandhya Nankani, The New York Times Learning Network

Suggested Time Allowance: 1-2 class periods

Activities / Procedures:
1. WARM-UP/DO NOW:
Make five posters to post around the classroom. On each one, write one of the following: furloughs, or temporary leave; wage reductions; hiring freezes; shortened hours; job cuts.
Have students imagine that they are executives at a large public company, such as Home Depot or Microsoft, that is in a difficult economic spot. They, the executives, have to come up with solutions. Divide students into five groups and assign each group to one poster. Explain that their assigned poster contains one strategy on it, and direct the groups to write the causes and effects of their assigned strategies on the posters. They should think about the effects of the strategies on the company and on the employees themselves, including how the predicted effects on their spending habits.
When they have finished, have students examine all the posters to identify both common and strategy-specific causes and effects. Then take an informal poll. Ask: How would you order your preferences and priorities if you were running a company, and why? Then ask: How does this entire scenario reflect the current economic situation?
Then, extend the conversation to the topic of the current economic recession. Tell students that these strategies are some of the ways that companies have attempted to cope with profit losses. Ask them to help you define the term and discuss its impact on the overall economy. Depending on how in-depth you wish to go, the HowStuffWorks guide to How Recessions Work provides simple, clear explanations of the economic cycle, focusing on recession, and The New York Times also provides a comprehensive definition of "recession" on the Times Topics page on Recession and Depression.
Wrap up by telling students that they will be examining how the economic theories of an economist John Maynard Keynes have been put into practice by U.S. presidents during past recessions and could be implemented during the current one under the administration of President Obama.
2. ARTICLE QUESTIONS:
As a class, read and discuss the article F.D.R's Example Offers Obama Cautionary Lessons, focusing on the following questions:
a. What economic theory did FDR's New Deal embrace, and how it was put into practice?
b. What was President Roosevelt's greatest strength? What was his greatest weakness?
c. What, according to the article, are two similarities between the FDR years and current times?
d. What are two "cautionary lessons" that the author of this article says should be drawn from the FDR years by today's administration?
e. What are some of the steps the Obama administration is taking to solve the current banking crisis?
3. ACTIVITY:
Using the handout What Would Keynes Do?, have students further explore Keynesian economics, which were a guiding principle for FDR. Divide the class into small groups of three or four and have them conduct research, using the provided list of sources on the handout, to define the ideas of John Maynard Keynes and instances in which they have been used in recent history.
The interactive Times graphic How the Government Dealt With Past Recessions provides a timeline and audio analysis of the actions of various presidents over the past fifty years.
4. FOR HOMEWORK OR FUTURE CLASSES:
Students write a memo to President Obama advising him as to whether and how he should put the ideas of Keynes into practice. Encourage them to be specific by citing examples of situations that need attention, recent administration decisions that should be remedied or retained, and examples from history.
Invite students to turn back to the article "F.D.R's Example Offers Obama Cautionary Lessons" and the warm-up activity to consider how Obama can also model solutions and methods of previous presidents, including FDR. If time permits, they may also wish to consider the theories of at least one other economist, such as Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Milton Friedman, John Kenneth Galbraith, Amartya Sen, Simon Kuznets or Paul Krugman.
Wrap up by having students to discuss and evaluate their memos and compare responses and points of view.
Related Times Resources:

ADDITIONAL TIMES ARTICLES AND MULTIMEDIA:
Article: Layoffs Spread to More Sectors of the Economy
Companies across the board are resorting to mass job cuts, suggesting that employers expect a long downturn.
Editorial: Bad Faith Economics
A criticism of arguments against Obama's plans for stimulus spending.
Article: What Would Keynes Have Done?
How the insights of Keynes explain the current economic challenges.
Interactive Graphic: How the Government Dealt with Past Recessions
Three economists chronicle the history of government policy during past recessions and explain what worked and what didn't.

LEARNING NETWORK RESOURCES:
Lesson Plan: I'll Trade You
Researching a Nobel Prize-Winning Economist's Theories Through a Scavenger Hunt
Lesson Plan: Bubble Trouble
Analyzing Causes of the Economic Crisis
Teaching With The Times: Understanding Economics
Student Crossword: Economics Basics

ARCHIVAL TIMES MATERIALS:
Hand of Keynes is Seen in Revised Recovery Plan
Article from June 5, 1934.
Lord Keynes Dies of a Heart Attack
Obituary from April 22, 1946.
What's New in Economic Circles
Article from January 18, 1987.
Reviving the Economics of Fear; In Bad Times, Consumers Might Simply Refuse to Spend
Article from July 2, 1999.

OTHER RESOURCES:
Economicae
An Illustrated Dictionary of Economics
Time 100 Most Influential People of the Century: John Maynard Keynes
Concise Encyclopedia of Economics: John Maynard Keynes
HowStuffWorks guide to How Recessions Work
Interdisciplinary Connections:
Mathematics – Make a chart that tracks unemployment rate by presidential terms in office, starting with John F. Kennedy to the present.

Academic Content Standards:
Grades 6-12
Civics Standard 29- Understands the importance of political leadership, public service, and a knowledgeable citizenry in American constitutional democracy.
Economics Standard 1- Understands that scarcity of productive resources requires choices that generate opportunity costs
Economics Standard 2- Understands characteristics of different economic systems, economic institutions, and economic incentives
Economics Standard 3- Understands the concept of prices and the interaction of supply and demand in a market economy
Economics Standard 5- Understands unemployment, income, and income distribution in a market economy
Economics Standard 6- Understands the roles government plays in the United States economy
Economics Standard 8- Understands basic concepts of United States fiscal policy and monetary policy
Language Arts Standard 4- Gathers and uses information for research purposes.
United States History Standard 24- Understands how the New Deal addressed the Great Depression, transformed American federalism, and initiated the welfare state
United States History Standard 23- Understands the causes of the Great Depression and how it affected American society
United States History Standard 24- Understands how the New Deal addressed the Great Depression, transformed American federalism, and initiated the welfare state
United States History Standard 31- Understands economic, social, and cultural developments in the contemporary United States
This lesson plan may be used to address the academic standards listed above. These standards are drawn from Content Knowledge: A Compendium of Standards and Benchmarks for K-12 Education; 3rd and 4th Editions and have been provided courtesy of the Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning in Aurora, Colorado.

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Note: This lesson was originally published on an older version of The Learning Network; the link to the related Times article will take you to a page on the old site. Teaching ideas based on New York Times content.

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Resources, strategies and ideas for teaching with The New York Times.

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RECESSION

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On Jan. 21, 2008, stock prices tumbled around the world. Most analysts pointed to fears surrounding the United States economy and a possible recession as the reason for the drop. Ironically, economic conditions in the United States were affecting the world economy on a day when its own markets weren't even in session -- they were closed for the Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday. Three days later, news outlets were already reporting a new economic stimulus package, designed in part to try to prevent a recession.

This isn't the first recession news in recent memory. On Nov. 26, 2001, the news media announced the United States was officially in a recession and had been since March of that year. To most Americans, this wasn't all that surprising: Rising unemployment and a weak stock market had been in the news for months.

Both the 2008 market drop and the 2001 news blitz raised a lot of questions. Who decides when the economy is in recession, and on what grounds? What actually constitutes a recession, anyway? When a nation's economy enters a recession, is life guaranteed to get harder for most of its citizens? And how often does a recession lead to a depression?

In this article, we'll find out what recessions are, see why they occur and examine the criteria economists use to identify them. We'll also look at the effects of recession as well as explore some of the ways a country can turn the economy around again.

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­­On Jan. 21, 2008, stock prices tumbled around the world. Most analysts pointed to fears surrounding the United States economy and a possible recession as the reason for the drop. Ironically, economic conditions in the United States were affecting the world economy on a day when its own markets weren't even in session -- they were closed for the Martin Luther King Jr.

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What's the difference between a recession and a depression?

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There are people whose entire careers are spent tracking and detecting the presence of recessions and depressions. These people look at a whole array of economic indicators -- from the Bureau of Labor Statistics' employment reports to the National Association of Home Builders' number of new homes being built. While there are lots of organizations dedicated to sniffing out recession, the National Bureau of Economic Research ( NBER) is the group whose opinion on the matter is most widely relied upon. In other words, if the NBER says we're in a recession or a depression, we're probably in one.
Recession Image Gallery
Although the word can strike fear in the hearts of white collar and blue collar workers alike, recession in and of itself isn't a bad thing. Still, it can have massive and far-reaching consequences. Unemployment goes up as businesses find their customers less willing to part with money. When there's less money to go around, consumers spend less. As profitability declines, so, too does the value of companies' stocks. Recessions are like ouroboros -- the snakes that eat their own tails, forming a never-ending circle.

But recessions do end. In fact, some economists believe they're a natural part of an economic cycle that is characterized by peaks and troughs. But what about depressions? If recessions are economically painful, then depressions are like having your financial teeth yanked without Novocain. What exactly is the difference between a recession and a depression? That depends on your point of view. Recessions and depressions are definitely related -- to understand one you have to understand the other. Read about recessions on the next page.

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What's the difference between a recession and a depression?

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There are people whose entire careers are spent tracking and detecting the presence of recessions and depressions. These people look at a whole array of economic indicators -- from the Bureau of Labor Statistics' employment reports to the National Association of Home Builders' number of new homes being built.

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News about recession and depression. Commentary and archival information about recession and depression from The New York Times.