demand and supply in competitive and monopoly markets

Order Description

This TMA expects you to produce an essay based on what you have learned in your DD202A course (Arab Open University), chapters four and five, “Economics and Economic Change”. It is marked out of 100 and is worth 20% of the overall continuous assessment. This TMA requires you to apply the course concepts to your own experience and to discuss the economic change of such an application.
The TMA is intended to:
• Develop your evaluative skills in analysing factors that affect demand and supply in competitive and monopoly markets and to examine the relationships between numbers of economic factors.
• Show how the relationship between demand and supply can be explained using the graphics.
The TMA:
This TMA requires you to write a structured essay in which you try to analyse the price changes in the oil market. The oil price has fallen from $115 a barrel in June 2014 to nearly $60 a barrel in February 2015. The OPEC, which controls nearly 40% of the world market, failed to reach an agreement, sending the price dropping. Unlike earlier oil price collapses, this time both demand and supply moved and both pushed the prices down. The question of this TMA is to discuss the factors that were responsible for dropping the oil price. Why is the price of oil falling? You are expected to write a well-structured essay in four parts and in no more than 850 words considering the following guidelines.
Guidance notes for TMA
For this TMA you are required to write a structured essay of no more than 850 words. This means that your TMA should be in the four parts indicated in the question above. It is acceptable to use headings for each of the four sections, but you should not number your paragraphs or include an executive summary or contents sheet. For this TMA, part (a) can be considered as equivalent to the introduction to the essay and part (d) can be considered as the conclusion.

Part (a)
In this part you need to describe the oil market status and how it has changed during the last two or three years. Try to use this part as an introduction to your essay and provide a brief description on the current world oil market trends based on the latest data. Give some figures that show the trends of oil prices during the last 5 years, which would enable you to analyse it in the following parts of your essay. It is probably best to spend no more than 250 words on this part. (20 points)
Part (b)
In this part of the TMA you are required to select course concepts from chapters 4 and 5, Economics and Economic Changes, textbook and use these concepts to analyse the situation described in part (a). You may discuss briefly a theory associated with the relationships between oil price movement and economic change, provide some conclusions from previous studies related to oil market movements and build the necessary theoretical background. Again this part should not exceed 250 words. (20 points)
Part (c)
This part of the TMA asks you to discuss the demand and supply factors that were responsible for changing prices in oil market. The oil price drops in the early 1980s were driven by increased supply from the North Sea; falling oil prices reflected slower economic growth. This time, there are several factors that might have affected both demand and supply sides resulting in a large drop in oil prices. Describe these factors using latest data from reliable sources. You may translate your data into diagrams to illustrate your findings. Show whether there is a shift in demand or in supply curves or both. You should spend no more than 500 words on this part of the TMA. (40 points)

Part (d)
This final part can be considered as a conclusion to your essay. This part of the TMA asks you to think about how the issues you have discussed in parts (a) (b) and (c) could have some socioeconomic implications upon the economic growth of your country, whether your country is exporting or importing oil. If you feel there are no socioeconomic implications whatsoever to this change, you should explain why you think this is the case. You should spend 150 to 200 words on this part of the TMA. (20 points)
Your essay should be within the specified range of words, and you must follow the Harvard Style of Referencing. You are expected to present a well structured and organized piece of work that is of your own. Plagiarism will be penalized by deduction of marks. The assessment of the quality of your essay will be based on how you impress the reader (grader) about your knowledge and understanding of the topic