Our year 13 Economics learners were Joined by Muhammed from Balfour Beatty for a masterclass exploring market failure and market structures through the case study of electric vehicles.
Balfour Beatty have been supporting learners across the college, leading learners through exciting Employer Led Projects and Masterclasses. Through their involvement, we have been able to contextualise curriculum skills so that learners can understand their value in industry.
To begin the session, Muhammed set out the key discussion that he intended to explore with the learners: whether it is beneficial for the EV market to be more concentrated (monopoly/oligopoly), sacrificing allocative and productive efficiency in favour of dynamic efficiency to allow greater investment, or whether perfect competition would be a better model.
Through this starting point learners were able to discuss positive and negative externalities, as well as interpreting positive and negative externality graphs with the case study of electric vehicles. Cars are an example of negative externalities of consumption and EVs are one possible solution.
| A good is said to have a Positive Externality, if there is a significant external benefit associated with its production or consumption. Common examples include; -Education -Healthcare -Using “Green Fuels,” |
Learners also discussed the different ways in which the government could try and solve the market failure and whether the current EV infrastructure is the best approach.
| A good is said to have a Negative Externality, if there is a significant external cost associated with its production or consumption. Common examples include; -Tobacco -Alcohol -Driving -Consumption of Fossil Fuels |
Through this session, learners were able to widen their understanding of positive and negative externalities from a real-life context and gained insight into how the topics studied on the economics course are significant to industry leaders such as Balfour Beatty.
At the end of the masterclass, Muhammed also gave the opportunity for a Q&A where learners could hear about the opportunities at Balfour Beatty and what construction employers look for in a worker.
'Mohammed was amazing with the learners. Having an interactive discussion with the learners on how Market Externalities and Market Failure has an impact on EV was so valuble. The learners participated well by answering the questions and thinking about what is happening now in the economy - the negatives and positives,' Sharian, Business Teacher.
