By Zeno Morra Di Lavriano, Y12
On the 4th of February, the members of the economics society assembled to attend a presentation regarding the economic recession due to the Covid 19 outbreak by two year 12 IB students, Vanya Saksena and Jahnavi Babbar. The presentation masterfully depicted the key concepts of macroeconomics and illustrated the various ups and downs of economic actions from a macro economic perspective.
The presentation itself was divided into 4 main sections. First, the two students looked into the broad concept of macro economics. This field of economics is the study of the behavior of the national or regional economy as a whole. For some further precision, the two students delved into some smaller sub concepts of macro economics such as unemployment and economic growth. On this note, the second main part of the presentation was on unemployment, more specifically, the impact of the covid pandemic on jobs and the rise in unemployment rate in various countries. The main focus was on the rise of the unemployment rate in both the US and India in April 2020. In the US, this rise in unemployment reached 14.3 % which was a yet unprecedented rate since the start of the tracking, back in 1948. The rise in unemployment was caused by a massive loss of approximately 22.1 million jobs between January and April 2020. Many individuals left the labor force over this period and by April 2020, the labor force participation rate hit 60.2%, a level not seen since the 1970’s. Following this look at unemployment, the students delved into the impact of the covid pandemic on international trade. The main point to note is that, during this period, international trade fell by roughly 22%. The students explained this by relating the fall in imports/exports to the change in price, quality and availability of goods and services worldwide, putting much emphasis on the concept of scarcity. The two students closed their presentation with a thorough look at inflation rates and deflation rates, as well as the impact of covid on their rise and fall.
Altogether, the two year 12 students were calm, thorough in their analysis and confident which certainly added to the relaxed atmosphere of the presentation. In addition, the way the two students interacted with the audience led to a much appreciated fun twist at some of the more “conceptually heavy parts”. This was achieved by making some fun reference to popular figures and the use of amusing diagrams.
As a whole, the presentation was, without a doubt, enjoyable and relaxing yet incredibly informative and interesting. We look forward to more presentations like this from the members of the Economics Society. The group was immensely thankful to Vanya and Jahnavi for their valuable work on the presentation!
Join the Economics Society in CH 15 every Friday from 10:30-10:55 to have the opportunity to present! We hope to see you there!
