- •Гоу впо «алтайский государственный университет»
- •Предисловие
- •Basics of Economics
- •Defining Economics
- •Types of Economies
- •I variant
- •II variant
- •Part II
- •Words and word combinations you may need
- •Interview with the Economist
- •Note on the dialogue
- •I variant
- •II variant
- •Read for more information
- •Economics and Its Great Men
- •Management
- •Job Titles
- •Traditional interpretation
- •Another interpretation
- •Vocabulary
- •Vocabulary
- •Vocabulary
- •Management functions
- •In the first paragraph the writer says that managers:
- •Part II Selection of Personnel
- •Vocabulary Notes on the Text
- •Text 2. (Dialogue) Discussing a Candidate for the Post of a Product Executive
- •Vocabulary Notes on the Dialogue
- •International management Global Careers
- •Vocabulary Notes on the Text
- •For Additional Reading
- •Visiting Customers
- •Vocabulary Notes on the Text
- •To get more information about global management try to do the following tasks:
- •1. Managers from this country:
- •2. Managers from this country:
- •3. Managers from this country:
- •5. Managers from this country:
- •Management
- •Planning and decision making
- •Organizing
- •Leading
- •Controlling
- •More about Management
- •Finance and Credit Part I. Banks
- •Part II Money
- •What is a Gold American Eagle?
- •Characteristic of Money
- •Types of Money
- •Background
- •1. The Business
- •2. The Product or Service
- •3. Marketing
- •4. Finance
- •For Additional Reading
- •The Central Banking System
- •The us Treasury
- •Personal Finances
- •Accounting and Auditing
- •Accounting: Changes and Prospects
- •The Budget. Taxes
- •Vocabulary List
- •Vocabulary List
- •Texts for Additional Reading
- •The Federal Budget
- •Taxation
- •Factors of Production
- •Taxation
- •Vocabulary List
- •Information in Economics
- •Dialogue 1. Computers in Russia
- •Vocabulary List
- •Texts for additional reading
- •The Birth of the Web Browser
- •How does email work?
- •Vocabulary
- •Vocabulary
Economics and Its Great Men
Text 1. Adam Smith
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Task 1. Sum up what you know about Adam Smith and his investigations
Task 2. Pronounce correctly the following words:
Economics, economy, economical, monopoly, competition, competitive, society, productivity, to export, to import, social, production, substitution, political, wealth, nation, industrialism
Task 3. Write out:
from sentence 1, para 1 the group of words related to the word science;
from sentence 1, para 5 the group of words related to the word ranged;
the subject and the predicate in the last sentence, para 7.
Task 4. Read and translate the text.
Economics is a social science concerned with how mankind organizes itself to accommodate scarce resources to their wants through the process of production, substitution and exchange.
By the beginning of the eighteenth century economics had taken shape as an academic discipline, largely as a branch of political economy. It should be noted that the old name of economics was “political economy”. Adam Smith was the founding father of modern economics as an academic discipline.
Adam Smith was born in 1723. For most of his life he was a professor of philosophy in Glasgow, Scotland. His first and only economics book, The Wealth of Nations, was not published until 1776, when he was 53.
Smith’s purpose was to explain why some nations become wealthier than others. He was fascinated by the rise of industrialism in the England and Scotland of his time.
Over his lifetime Adam Smith’s economic investigations ranged from the theory of trade to economic growth and an attempt to model the working of the economy. He believed that a free market would maximize the welfare of the population. It followed from his works that the role of government in the economy should be minimal. The government should provide defence, justice and public works. The only market intervention should be to prevent monopoly and to promote competition.
Smith argued that competitive business was not just a possible way but the best way to increase the wealth of a nation. He thought government restraints on competition did more harm than good.
Division of labour was seen by him as the source of society’s capacity to increase its productivity. According to Adam Smith technical progress and free trade between nations were central to economic growth. If a country wished to improve its standard of living it had to export more than it imported.
Text 2. David Ricardo and the Theory of Comparative Advantage
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Task 1. Read the text and answer the questions in written form.
David Ricardo, the greatest of the classical economists, was born in 1772. His father, a Jewish immigrant, was a member of the London stock exchange. Ricardo entered his father’s business at the age of 14. In 1973, he married and went into business of his own. The young Ricardo quickly made a large fortune.
In 1799, Ricardo read Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of Nations” and developed an interest in political economy (as economics was then called). In 1809, his first writings on economics appeared. These were a series of newspaper articles on “The High Price of Billion”. In 1814 he retired from business to devote all his time to political economy.
Ricardo’s major work was “Principles of Political Economy and Taxation”. This work contains, among other things, a pioneering statement of the principle of comparative advantage as applied to international trade.
Ricardo showed why it was beneficial for both countries, for England tp export wool to Portugal and import wine in return< even though both products could be produced with less labour in Portugal.
The book covers the whole field of economics as it then existed. Ricardo held that the economy was growing toward a future “steady state”.
Ricardo’s book was extremely influential. For more than half a century thereafter, much of economics was an expansion of or a commentary on Ricardo’s work. Although Karl Marx eventually reached conclusions that differed radically from any of Ricardo’s views, his starting point was Ricardo’s theory of value and method of analyzing economic growth.
1. What was David Ricardo?
2. To what did he devote himself after retiring from business?
3. Ricardo’s works influenced the most famous economist Karl Marx, didn’t they?