Ex 1. Complete each sentence with the correct ending A-F from the box below
A.this field operates mostly with data and figures rather than with people’s desires and feelings.
B.they have a lot of opportunities to develop new theories together or consider each other’s opinions.
C.those who have an ability to get a glimpse of the future usually experiences high levels of satisfaction with the profession.
D.economic attitudes and ideas accepted within a certain professional community are more or less the same.
E.many more opportunities to find a wide range of careers open to them.
1. The field of Economies rewards creative and curious thinkers because…
2. Economists are always ready to share opinions, …
3. The most challenging aspect of the profession is that …
4. Those economists who are good at writing or speaking have …
5. Sometimes it may be difficult to distinguish oneself from other economists as …
Ex 2. Speak about your choice of profession using words and word combinations given below. Why have you decided on Economics as you future job? Do you think you’ll make a good economist? Why?
- to spot trends in economic activity
- to improve the efficiency of a system
- to find employment
- to predict economic scenarios
- to act as consultants
- to share ideas
- primary responsibilities
- the core of business life
- overall job satisfaction
- creative thinkers
- cross-discipline course
- to break from the pack
- technological breakthroughs
- to be well-suited for
Ex 3. Work in pairs. Discuss advantages and disadvantages of a certain profession. Make use of the following plan:
1. Required degree
2. Required skills
3. Demand
4. Salary
5. Responsibilities
6. Employment
7. Career prospects
8. Pros and Cons
Ex 4. Use additional sources and find some more detailed information about the work schedule of a financial economist (an international economist). Be ready to speak on it in class or make up dialogues (in the form on interviews).
Unit IX
Part 1
Globalization
globalization, integration, cross-border trade, driver, pros and cons, dissemination of information, transfer, interdependence
Text A
Globalization is a process of interaction and integration among the people, companies, and governments of different nations, a process driven by international trade and investment and aided by information technology. This process has effects on the environment, on culture, on political systems, on economic development and prosperity, and on human physical well-being in societies around the world.
Globalization is not new, though. For thousands of years, people—and, later, corporations—have been buying from and selling to each other in lands at great distances, such as through the famed Silk Road across Central Asia that connected China and Europe during the Middle Ages. Likewise, for centuries, people and corporations have invested in enterprises in other countries. In fact, many of the features of the current wave of globalization are similar to those prevailing before the outbreak of the First World War in 1914.
But policy and technological developments of the past few decades have spurred increases in cross-border trade, investment, and migration so large that many observers believe the world has entered a qualitatively new phase in its economic development. Since 1950, for example, the volume of world trade has increased by 20 times, and from just 1997 to 1999 flows of foreign investment nearly doubled, from $468 billion to $827 billion. Distinguishing this current wave of globalization from earlier ones, author Thomas Friedman has said that today globalization is “farther, faster, cheaper, and deeper.”
This current wave of globalization has been driven by policies that have opened economies domestically and internationally. In the years since the Second World War, and especially during the past two decades, many governments have adopted free-market economic systems, vastly increasing their own productive potential and creating myriad new opportunities for international trade and investment. Governments also have negotiated dramatic reductions in barriers to commerce and have established international agreements to promote trade in goods, services, and investment. Taking advantage of new opportunities in foreign markets, corporations have built foreign factories and established production and marketing arrangements with foreign partners. A defining feature of globalization, therefore, is an international industrial and financial business structure.
Technology has been the other principal driver of globalization. Advances in information technology, in particular, have dramatically transformed economic life. Information technologies have given all sorts of individual economic actors—consumers, investors, businesses—valuable new tools for identifying and pursuing economic opportunities, including faster and more informed analyses of economic trends around the world, easy transfers of assets, and collaboration with far-flung partners.
Globalization is deeply controversial, however. Proponents of globalization argue that it allows poor countries and their citizens to develop economically and raise their standards of living, while opponents of globalization claim that the creation of an unfettered international free market has benefited multinational corporations in the Western world at the expense of local enterprises, local cultures, and common people. Resistance to globalization has therefore taken shape both at a popular and at a governmental level as people and governments try to manage the flow of capital, labor, goods, and ideas that constitute the current wave of globalization.