King Kylie on the Rise

Jenna Anderson

Mr. Reuter

Economics

18 April 2017

King Kylie on the Rise

The makeup industry is growing at a rapid speed, with the US being the single-handed largest buyer of beauty products in the world. It is estimated that we spent over $62 billion on cosmetics and beauty related services in 2016(Bates). There is such a high demand for these products because people want to achieve the look of chiseled cheek bones, full lips, and long lashes. There is a lot of buzz over these products due to YouTube videos and online reviews of the products. The one brand that is growing quickly currently is Kylie Cosmetics by Kylie Jenner.

In spring of 2014, tragedy struck America when Kylie Jenner lip injection rumors spread like a wildfire. From these came infinite lip plumping products, the Kylie Jenner lip challenge, and a multi-million dollar company called Kylie Cosmetics, which sells one of the most popular lip kits ever. The lip kits include a lipstick and lip liner, and come in over 30 different shades, and Jenner also releases limited edition shades for holidays and family members. The demand for Kylie’s lipsticks started because she claimed she never had lip injections, she just used good lipstick. Although this was a lie, her products have withstood all of the tests and tend to be very high quality compared to the knock off versions like Colourpop lipsticks. These lip kits are so popular that they often sell out within hours - one time even 7 minutes according to Jenner’s Twitter. One lip kit that immediately sold out called “22” had such scarcity that it was being sold online for $3,000. The scarcity of the product produced a shortage, so the demand and price went up for it.

Jenner’s name has been under some scrutiny for the price of her products, because it is said that they’re unreasonably high and that there are cheaper alternatives that are just as nice. There are many users that have compared the lip kits to other products, and some say that it’s not worth the price, but her products continue to sell out. There is such a high demand for products like these because of the Kylie Jenner name that comes with it. Her makeup is considered a luxury good, not a necessity because there are other cheaper alternatives, but her fans pay the price for the high quality and the brand name.

As her brand continues to grow, and reviews continue to be positive, the Kylie Cosmetics brand is steadily growing and releasing new products like Kylighter highlighter, eyeshadow palettes, glosses, blushes, and there’s much more to come as she continues to develop her company. As an A-list celebrity, it’s a little easier for Jenner to get her brand out there. She’s used her fame to her advantage to create a successful business become an entrepreneur.

Works Cited

Bates, Shelby. "Capitalism, Consumerism And Kylie Jenner's Lip Kits." Odyssey. N.p., 21 Apr. 2016. Web. 18 Apr. 2017.

Canal, Emily. "Kylie Jenner's Lip Kits, Social Status, And The Economics Of Scarcity." Forbes. Forbes Magazine, 03 Mar. 2016. Web. 18 Apr. 2017.

Schaefer, Kayleen. "Kylie Jenner Built a Business Empire out of Lip Kits and Fan Worship." Vanities. Vanity Fair, 30 Jan. 2017. Web. 18 Apr. 2017.

Is Social Media taking over our Economy?

Is Social Media Taking Over Our Economy?

Zoe Bierce

Through generations the use of Instagram, Twitter, facebook, and other social media has become so intertwined in our daily lives that it is becoming an essential thing for some. Everywhere you look people are taking pictures to post on their snapchat stories, or are typing a long rant that they want to post on a facebook page. With social media becoming more and more crucial in our day to day lives, it has begun to affect our economy too.

Social media has continued to advance, they create new ways to shop, spend, and show off people’s money. “Social media is transforming banking relationships in very significant ways, from improving customer service to allowing users to send money to others via online platforms. New financial technology companies are using social media to help people simply open a bank account. Social media can even impact your ability to get a loan.”(World Economic Forum) By allowing people to follow links on social media platforms it offers an opportunity benefit to both the consumer and producer, and that is it gives a simpler way for people to transfer money and a quicker time for people or banks to receive the money. Since it also affects your chances of receiving a loan, it allows banks to determine whether or not someone will be able to pay off their loan. By improving their decision making, it will allow banks to make more money by having reliable people pay their loans back. By having social media make it easier to spend money, it is boosting the economic GDP(Gross Domestic Product) per Capita.

The graph above shows the amount of social media in each city and the GDP per capita for each. According to the graph above, the more prominent social media is in the area the GDP per capita is usually higher. “It stands to reason that the adoption of the use of social media at the city level would rise alongside local incomes and the overall level of economic development. And that is what we find. Social media is associated with both economic output and income.”(The Atlantic) By allowing it to be easier to spend money online right from a store or banks account, consumers are spending their money faster allowing companies to make money faster. By increasing the spending for finals goods or services online, it is increasing the amount of money being brought into the economy, raising the GDP per capita thus increasing the GDP for the country.

Overall, with the increase of popularity in social media it is allowing producers and consumers to exchange more money, increasing both GDP and GDP per Capita.

Works Cited

Florida, Richard. "Is Social Media Driving the Economy?" The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, 27 Oct. 2010. Web. 04 Apr. 2017.

Guzman, Alejandra; Vis, Farida “6 Ways Social Media is Changing the World” World Economic Forum. World Economic Forum, 3 Apr. 2017. Web. 04 Apr. 2017

Economic Impact of the NBA Season

Economic Impact of The NBA Season

Patrick Cullen

With just five games left in the regular season, the NBA Playoffs are fastly approaching. The NBA season can sometimes be a grueling one being eighty-two games long, but a lot can happen for each team from a game standpoint to the entire organization. Being the third most viewed sport in the United States has it’s benefits from an economic standpoint. In that long season of an NBA team, earnings come from all aspects of the organization. These things range from ticket sales, concessions, apparel sales, television views, and even on court success. For some teams the on court success is not the most important aspect to increase their total revenue.

Two teams who have had a long history of success in the National Basketball Association have had some trouble in recent years. The Los Angeles Lakers and New York Knicks are two big name teams in big time cities who have had a history of talented players such as Kobe Bryant and Carmelo Anthony to appeal to their large consumer markets. In 2016, the two teams had a combined record of 72-95. Despite these losing records they were the two highest incomes in the league with a combined revenue $5.7 billion. Here is a chart from forbes magazine showing the team’s net income broken down by category and how they match up to other teams in the league:

As you can see the least amount of money was made through the actual play of the sport for the Knicks and Lakers. The majority of money was made in the other three categories of Market, Arena and Brand. This goes to show how much more goes into the entertainment that we take from such a sport as basketball.  The arena makes money by providing things such as concessions and security. With these services are job opportunities. With the job growth within sports organization’s arenas, our country’s GDP is on the rise along with employment rates.

The NBA is more than just a source of entertainment. It is a source of job growth and a service provided to the people. Without sports leagues and associations such as the NBA we would be a much less successful nation with a much lower GDP.

Works Cited

Brautigan, Bailey. "Here's How Every NBA Team Makes Its Money, Visualized." Forbes. Forbes Magazine, 21 Mar. 2016. Web. 04 Apr. 2017.

"Sports in the United States." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 31 Mar. 2017. Web. 04 Apr. 2017.

Easter Economics

Jordan Schlender
As we approach the Easter holiday, it probably doesn’t catch you by surprise when you see plastic eggs and piles of candy lining the store shelves. Normally Halloween classifies as the “candy holiday,” but Easter ranks second. Every one in four consumers who celebrate, spend a total of about $16.8 billion dollars on the holiday; this is about $145.28 on average per person (Report). About 90 million chocolate Easter bunnies, 700 million Marshmallow Peeps and about 16 billion jelly beans will be bought each year. This demand for candy has increased over the years. Compared to 2011, the demand increase has escalated by about eleven-percent (Report).

Gwartney

As the visual demonstrates, when the demand curve shifts from D1 to D2 during the holiday season, this creates a higher point of equilibrium between suppliers and consumers. This means the selling price for eggs alone, will increase drastically. In fact, overall as easter egg hunts and celebrations become bigger and better than ever, producers are able to increase the supply of Easter goods. This brings in more revenue as they also increase the prices around Easter time for their benefit.

If the price of P1 stayed consistent all year round, during the holiday season there would be a higher demand than suppliers are willing to supply, so this is why it results in a shift to the right- so the price of equilibrium changes as well (Gwartney).

No matter what their motive is, people will continue buying products relating to Easter. Between cards, outfits, and candy, the majority of the product goes toward family members and for various parties. Most think the easter candy tastes awful because chocolate bunnies are a million times sweeter than your average candy bar, but people continue to purchase the chocolate bunnies because they are easter related and children would rather receive bunnies in an Easter basket than a Kit Kat that they could buy any time at the store.

One controversy is about whether all of the bunny decorations and candy take away from the true meaning of Easter. As the holiday itself relates to Christian ideals, the church attendance rates increase specifically increase on this day.

As indicated, the church attendance is expected to increase by almost double this year (Rankin). Churches are doing all they can to bring people into the church. With the holiday, they increase the amount of activities they offer and amp up their services to draw in more attendance after the holiday as well. At my church, they offer a giant egg drop where they drop thousands of eggs from helicopters in an open field. Families love this event. But churches don’t only put this on for appreciation, they use the holiday for their advantage in hopes of recruiting new regular attending members.

This isn’t just churches. Stores go all out with decorating their stores and offering the best products. There is competition between the goods at various stores and when they set them out. Just like Christmas decorations, Easter goods make appearances earlier and earlier each year, making people eager to buy them specifically from their store. As spring approaches, most people can’t resist.

Altogether, the overall demand for Easter goods/ clothing and decorations increases drastically, giving suppliers the opportunity to sell at higher prices. Since people will buy decorations and especially candy, no matter what, both the consumers and suppliers end up happy. The number of candy projected to be bought has only been increasing over the years, and this is because the demand increases each year. This is expected to be this way for the next several years. I hope everyone has a good dentist they can see to get rid of the jelly jeans stuck in their teeth.

Works Cited

• Gwartney, James D. Economics: Private and Public Choice. Australia, South-Western Cengage Learning, 2009.
• Rankin, Russ. “Survey: One in Five Americans Undecided About Easter Church Attendance.” Survey: One in Five Americans Undecided About Easter Church Attendance, www.lifeway.com/Article/research-survey-one-in-five-americans-undecided-about-easter-church-attendance.
• Report, Post Staff. “Easter's Economics.” New York Post, 8 Apr. 2012, nypost.com/2012/04/08/easters-economics/.

Wilson, Jerry. “The Traditions of Easter.” CBN.com (Beta), 26 May 2016, www1.cbn.com/onlinediscipleship/the-traditions-of-easter.

Baseball Tickets Now or Later

Antonio Gonzales

Mr. Reuter

Economics

3/20/2017

Baseball Tickets Now or Later?

As spring rolls around fans all around the country are getting ready for the baseball season by buying their favorite players shirts, their favorite teams hats, and food for their cook outs causing fans to look at opportunity costs of choosing their team for the year and most importantly, game tickets. Nothing is better than opening day for stores all around the world. As the demand basebal goods increases the prices begin to rise as the quantity supplied also decreases. Many of these suppliers are places like, Wal-mart, sporting good stores, grocery stores, and many other clothing stores.

The revenue that the baseball stadiums and organizations bring in increases due to an increase in price for season tickets, and game tickets. According to, CBNC, tickets on secondary sites are 144% pricier than regular tickets that are bought closer to the actual game itself. But with the worry of not getting premium seats or seats at all, fans are still willing to pay whatever the price to get their spot in the games. This all leads to higher profits for the producers. There is plenty of price control in this market with limited seats in each stadium which is a big advantage and the producers side. The key is to get the consumers to buy sooner than later.

The key is also to meet the consumer's requests as well. This can be done by meeting price equilibrium. This is done by having the amount of tickets not too many, but not too little, and the price not being too much, but also not too little. This usually happens as game day nears and instead of the prices rising, the prices will go lower because a lot of times and team will have a surplus of tickets and they need to get rid of them to bring in more revenue. Now the real question for the consumers is whether you should buy your tickets now or later.

Many will do it before hand debating whether it is worth it or not. Yet there are a lot of factors that come into play as well such as, weather, seats, and most importantly, prices. Prices vary depending on when you buy the tickets and where the seat is located. According to, Quartz, they state that it is better the buy the tickets closer to game day versus buying them 30 days before hand. They also say that opening games in the beginning of the season are also a lot more pricey than tickets later in the season. This is where people have to look at the opportunity cost. Whether to see the opening games and spend more money, or to wait and save money to see other games. What seems to be the most logical choice is to spend less money to see more game because the consumers will have more money to spend when they do go see a cheaper game. Allowing them to buy food, beverages, and souvenirs. But that is a matter of opinion.

Works Cited

Cameron, Dave, Tz Said..., Marc Said..., JD Said..., Eric R. Said..., Maqman Said..., Pft Said..., Bookbook Said..., Mr Punch Said..., Stephen Zielinski Said..., and Marc Schneider Said... "10 Lessons I Learned About the Baseball Economy." The Hardball Times. N.p., 02 May 2014. Web. 04 Apr. 2017. <http://www.hardballtimes.com/10-things-i-learned-about-the-baseball-economy/>.

Grant, Kelli B. "For Best Baseball Deals, It Pays to Procrastinate." CNBC. CNBC, 06 Apr. 2015. Web. 04 Apr. 2017. <http://www.cnbc.com/2015/04/02/baseball-season-looms-heres-how-to-get-a-good-deal.html>.

Yanofsky, David. "Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Baseball Ticket Prices." Quartz. Quartz, 02 Apr. 2013. Web. 04 Apr. 2017. <https://qz.com/69086/everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-baseball-ticket-prices/>.

The Dark Side of March Madness

Written by: Josh Swanson

The Dark Side of March Madness

March Madness is single handedly one of the most popular eventful basketball event that occurs throughout the entire year. With it comes once in a lifetime opportunities for players, schools, and fans. However, there is another side to March Madness that is over sought. Every year, millions of people fill out brackets and just about the same amount stream or attend the games while at work or school. Lots even take off of work or school. Focusing on work, many people don’t realize the negative effect March madness has on many businesses. When March Madness Arrives, productivity of many workers significantly drops. Now yes, march madness brings in millions and millions of dollars in revenue to the economy, but many businesses whose profits and customer base is not directly correlated with March Madness are hurt by it every year due to the productivity decrease seen by the employees.

According to Fox Business, over 23.7 million workers will use company time to research, perfect, and build their March Madness brackets for 2017. Sadly, not only is that true, but U.S. employers may suffer over $615 million in hourly wages meaning that they will be paying over $615 million for workers to do nothing but bracket related stuff. Additionally, it is estimated on the higher end that if say 81.5 million workers spent an hour or more on their brackets, businesses would lose over 2.1 billion. To put this in the correct perspective, the term “losing money” could mean either the business is physically losing money due to the negative productivity or they could just be losing the opportunity to profit more money. To be honest, due to the fact that consumer spending is at such a high rate and the private spending rate at a low from people spending so much money on things having to do with March Madness, businesses that indirectly deal with March Madness could take advantage of the imbalanced disposable income of consumers.

With the overall increase in technology and technological platforms in the recent years, the overall demand for march madness has increased due to the rise in technological advances. Workers now have numerous ways they can stream the games without leaving their desks.Due to this, over $6.3 billion is lost just in productivity showing the major decrease in the labour force.

Many cities received serious positive benefits economically from the tournament. For example, March Madness affected Milwaukee with a $6.6 billion impact as they hosted a couple of very good games. This is great for Milwaukee as a city, but it is interesting to think about how many Milwaukee based business lost out on sales or profits because of worker productivity. In fact, there were probably many workers who took the day off to either go to the game since it was so local, or went to work and “took the day off.” Due to the fact that in order to stream games, it is basically free for any person who wants to, the opportunity cost for workers when handling their own personal money is not as high because they don’t have to use it to still see the games.

The amount of money that is lost through the negative productivity is something that seriously affects businesses as many businesses are in firms that strive to get most of their business within the months of March and April. Either way, March Madness has its positive aspects and and its negative ones too. Yes, March Madness does help local economies such as Milwaukee which increase the city's revenue as well as increasing the gross domestic product, but it also decreases businesses productivity and profits during these couple weeks due to the major drop in employee productivity.

Works Cited

Barrabi, Thomas. “March Madness 2017: U.S. Companies Will Lose Billions to Slacking Workers.” Fox Business, Fox News, 1 Mar. 2017, http://www.foxbusiness.com/features/2017/03/01/march-madness-2017-u-s-companies-will-lose-billions-to-slacking-workers.html

Shafer, Dan. “March Madness Economic Impact in Milwaukee Exceeds Expectations.” Industry News, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 21 Mar. 2017, http://www.bizjournals.com/milwaukee/news/2017/03/21/march-madness-economic-impact-in-milwaukee-exceeds.html

The Economic Impact of Dead Zones

The Economic Impact of Dead Zones

By: Eric Rogowski

Dead zones are areas of ocean near the mouth of a river that are affected by high amounts of pollutants and algae. It is nearly impossible for fish and other aquatic life to survive in these dead zones. The pollutants come from farms, sewage treatment plants, industry, and other polluters further up the river, then flow down the river to the mouth.  The pollutants give the perfect environment for algae to grow. The algae will then multiply indefinitely, die, then the dead algae bodies will fall to the bottom of the ocean. The decomposition of all the algae will consume all the oxygen in the water, making the area uninhabitable or a dead zone. This can spell disaster for not only the fish and environment, but also fishing, tourism, and local communities.

In the gulf of mexico alone, over $82 billion dollars are spent  yearly dealing with dead zones. This is to contain and help wildlife and local industry. Nearly forty percent of all seafood comes in the U.S. comes from the gulf of mexico. The dead zones are threatening fisherman farther out into the waters, while driving fish prices up higher. Shrimp prices in 2014, a year with the dead zones being larger than normal, were $17 per a pound. That’s up from $10 only a year earlier. Also, the tourism industry, which support 600,000 jobs and is estimated to be worth $9 billion annually is threatened by dead fish and algae washing up on the beaches. Bills have been  put forth for the U.S. government to take greater action, however none have passed through.

Shrimp prices in the last 20 years

Works cited

"Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone | The Nature Conservancy." Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone | The

Nature Conservancy. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 Apr. 2017.

"Ocean Dead Zones (--)." Environmentalproblems5 - Ocean Dead Zones (--). N.p., n.d.

Web. 03 Apr. 2017.

"Shrimp Monthly Price - US cents per pound." Shrimp - Monthly Price - Commodity

- Price Charts, Data, and News - IndexMundi. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 Apr. 2017.

"We need your help!" 2015 Gulf of Mexico dead zone 'above average' N.p., n.d. Web.

03 Apr. 2017.