Archive for September 23, 2009
Command (or Planned) Economies
Sep 23rd
Image by bobster855 (flickr.com Some rights reserved )
All economies need to answer the three basic questions which result from the fact of scarcity:
- What to produce
- How to produce
- For whom to produce
For a planned economy, we need to research the following:
a) How it works – how does it answer the three basic questions above?
b) Advantages of this economic system
c) Disadvantages of this economic system
d) Examples covering the three above points
Some useful ‘starting point’ web sites follow:
Wikipedia on Planned Economies
enotes.com on Planned Economies
Fact Archive on Planned Economies (probably from various sources)
BBC News on North Korea (one of the last planned economies?)
Population Pyramids – Part 1
Sep 23rd
Before moving on it is worth recapping the Demographic Transition model:
Now we compare population structures (also known as age-sex structures or ‘population pyramids’) between MEDCs and LEDCs. The following animation should make sense before moving on:
BBC Scotland Education Population Pyramid Flash Animation
Now download the following worksheet and follow the instructions:
Worksheet – Population Pyramids on the Net
Now visit here and repeat the quiz until you can score full marks:
http://www.geography.ndo.co.uk/populationmatch.htm
Putting it all together – watch this:
You should also be able to complete the second set of tasks (already introduced in the Demographic Transition Model post) – click on the Part 2 tab and check your Answers before moving on – not there are three pyramids to analyse.
http://www.ngfl-cymru.org.uk/vtc/demographic_trans/eng/Introduction/plenary.swf
Review:
Read the following pages carefully. Add notes where appropriate.
BBC Bitesize for Population Structure Revision [1]
BBC Bitesize for Population Structure Revision [2]
At the bottom of the last page you can take a test bite.
Dependency Ratios
This module helps with our understanding of dependency ratios:
