SEMI 240 – Economics for global travelers
Final Exam
1. Globally, incomes vary dramatically; some countries have high incomes and others are extremely poor. Activists blame capitalism for this inequity and call for radical changes in the world economic system to eliminate poverty. Others respond that low-income countries have poorly functioning markets and the surest path out of poverty is to strength markets and extend market access for the poor. Evaluate these two positions, using at least three citations from out class readings.
Today, as the rich countries have become even wealthier through capital accumulation and reinvestment, it is still difficult for the less developed countries to get rid of the poverty trap. On one …show more content…
The multi-nuclei theory developed in 1945 explained it as a result of geographic mismatch between where people live and where they work, while providing a city land usage pattern based on human ecology. It maintained that even though a city may have begun with a central business district (CBD), multiple centers has been developed outside the city core, providing more valuable lands and lowering the transportation cost from outskirts of the city to congested downtown. Cities were still organized by zones based on land-use intensity and transportation cost. Residential districts surround the business and industrial zones, while richer people living farther away from the center for a better environment and larger open space. However, those rational decisions create inefficient land use pattern as people faces long commute between home and working places. While the rich drives far away to work in the original CBD, low-income workers face long distance between their home in old city and new manufacturing jobs in industrial suburbs (Stull, …show more content…
Nowadays, car ownership grows as city expanded and purchasing power of people arises. When excessive amount of journey times taken by road users, it is inevitable that traffic congestion would emerge. Roads are quasi-public goods that have element of non-excludability and non-rivalry. Once they are provided by the government, most people can use them, such as those who have a driving license. However, when one person uses a road, the amount others can benefit is reduced to some extent, since the space on a road is limited. Nonetheless, people would still choose to drive on a road since they do not pay for the side effects caused by them, such as noise, air pollution and a waste of others’ time. It is a rational decision for them, as long as the benefits of using the road is larger than their personal marginal cost, including expenses in fuel and an opportunity cost of time. Therefore, the government could collect a tax on gasoline or congestion, raising the price of driving, and helps contain