Reflection

Public Policy in Economics

Cody Henderson. Jessica Duncan, Robin Owens, Ryan Jewell and Karren Haslam

ECO/365

April 28th, 2014

Robert Watson

Public Policy in Economics

Week four’s objectives were to analyze the effect of externalities on market outcomes, to differentiate among horizontal, vertical, and conglomerate mergers, to analyze the effect of government interventions, taxation, and regulations on economic behavior. Learning Team A found that there were some subjects and objectives they were familiar with and some that were quite foreign. There were many triumphs and challenges that each team member had faced during week four while working through the objectives.

Jessica explains that week four objectives included were about Taxation and Government Intervention, Antitrust Policy and Regulation, Market Failure versus Government Failure and Politics and Economics: The Case of Agricultural Markets. I was not very familiar with these but after reviewing the material I am now able to understand how the government intervention, taxation and regulations affect the economic behavior. The government policies play a significant role in my job field, and we were affected by the budget sequestration in 2013. As a larger corporation that depends on the government funding, they had to plan for the worst-case scenario and design a cost structure to accommodate for the cutbacks by reducing head count, canceling programs and shutting down facilities. Externalities can either have a positive or negative effect if the decision maker does not take a third part decision into consideration. For instance, second-hand smoke affects the third parties that were otherwise not involved in the transaction. All Boeing facility have enforced a smoke free workplace policies to protect the health of their employees and to reduce the cost for healthcare, absenteeism and lost productivity, decreasing maintenance costs, and reducing insurance liability risks and premiums ("Corporate...