The Effects Of Food On The United States Of The State...

Until recently, I have never been consciously aware of my food choices. I was one of the many passive consumers in today’s society who viewed food as an abstract idea. I chose whatever I felt like eating that day without a second thought to what I was eating or how this food became available to me. Therefore, I found the trip to the Michigan State University’s Student Organic Farm an enlightening experience. It not only provides an opportunity for students to become engaged in the agriculture of their food, but it also allows them to also appreciate the amount of hard work that goes into cultivating their own produce. This is something that isn’t commonly available to the vast majority of communities. The concept of food has been revolutionized over the past few decades. They have been industrialized and packaged in a way that makes the process of consumption cheaper, and more convenient. Thus, quantity has been favored over quality. As a consequence of the chang ing food industry, consumers have become passive in regards to the substance on their dinner table; thus shaping the way in which the food industry operates today. Therefore, I believe that the consumers’ lack of knowledge about the food that they consume is one of the most pressing issues in today’s society. The passivity of consumers in regards to their food choices is indirectly contributing to the socially and economically unjust food system. Food products are often times portrayed as natural and fresh throughShow MoreRelatedEssay on The American Fast Food Industry1420 Words   |  6 Pages The fast food industry in America has many drawbacks at the cost of supplying food to the American population. Since many people are ignorant of the process their food goes through in order to become the edible meal they consume, American companies easily take advantage of them. In class, we discussed a â€Å"Food Bill of Rights†. 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Political economy of agrarian change Free Essays

string(77) " implementation far exceeds benefits of reform \(Rashid and Quibria, 1995\)\." Introduction Are redistributive land reforms possible and if so are they desirable today? Land reform (LR) is defined as a ‘legislation intended and likely to redistribute ownership of current farmland, and thus benefit the poor by raising their absolute and relative status, power, and/or income, compared with likely situations without the legislation’ (Lipton, 2009:124). Thus, land-based wealth and power are transferred from the monopoly control of private landed class to landless working poor. This, however, is far from being universal. We will write a custom essay sample on Political economy of agrarian change or any similar topic only for you Order Now LR has had a rollercoaster ride in the toolbox of development strategies from a panacea that would cure all ills and help replicate the successes of Japan and Korea, to venom that destroys property rights and creates unviable production units that lead to agricultural decline and urban migration as it has purportedly done in Latin America. The issue of LR is indeed complex and nuanced. A deeper understanding of LR, therefore, is imperative. This essay discusses the desirability and possibility of LR. On one spectrum, it will argue for the desirability of land reform in terms of efficiency and poverty reduction. On the other spectrum, it will venture arguments for the possibility of LR. It concludes that LR remains alive, active and acts as a beacon of hope for those with limited or no access to land. This essay begins assessing the possibility of LR in contemporary developing countries. It argues that LR is not only possible but an ongoing battle. It is back on the policy agenda of international development institutions since the 1990s and has not disappeared since then (Borras, 2010). It was in the mid-1990s when land struggles caught the attention of the world. Three of these were the most important, the Chiapas uprising in Mexico, the state-investigated land invasions by black landless poor of white commercial farms in Zimbabwe, and the resurgence of militant peasant land occupations in Brazil reminiscent of the actions by the peasant land of the 1950s but much greater in scale and political sophistication (Akram-Lodhi et al, 2007). While the international development community grappled with the meanings and implications of such complex conflicts, trans-national agrarian movements (TAMs) emerged (Borras, 2010). La Via Campesina (VC) is to be mentioned, beside the Internationa l Federation of Agricultural Producers and the IPC for Food Sovereignty. VC, for example, is an international movement of poor peasants and small farmers from the global South and North, which was established in 1993 as a critical response to neoliberalism and which is still very much active today (Ibid, 2010). VC validates what Ronald Herring (2003) observed, namely that LR was taken off the ‘policy agenda’ of national and international agencies in the 1980s, but never left the ‘political agendas’ of the peasants and their organisations. Herring explained that ‘even dead LR are not dead; they become nodes around which future peasant mobilisations emerge because promises unkept keep movements alive’ (Ibid, 2003: 123). Today, as in the case 50 years ago, severe poverty remains mainly rural with extreme land inequalities. As the World Bank study in 2003 shows 17.8% of the population in East and South East Asia live under 1.25$. The figure however is much higher for Latin America (38.6%) and drastic in Sub-Saharan Africa (50.3%). Further, though the LR thrust weakened from the mid-1970s, observers (de Janvry and Sadoulet,1989) saw factors tending to revive it. First, form the mid-1980s, spreading democracy and political organisation led to civil-society activism, including land invasions to press for enforcement of unimplemented LR laws (Binswanger-Mkhize, 2009). Second, growth of new markets induced many giant, near-feudal haciendas to become commercial farms; turned tied workers from feudal workers into casual, part-time employees, who are freer to press for LR (Bernstein, 2003). Third, in faster-growing countries, urban growth shifted visible poverty priorities at national levels from farms towards cities (Lipton, 2009). Thus, internal dynamics – urbanisation, unequal land and power distribution, and the expansion of democratic-consciousness among the rural population – supported, rather than kill, LR in twenty-first century. Since the Mexican revolution of 1910, internal dynamics decide whether LR slows, pauses, resumes or accelerates. Sometimes it was seen as complete, either having reached its limits or succumbed to limitations, mainly underperformance and unpopularity due to collectivist rather than distributives approaches (Olsen, 1971). But in no country did LR quite die or became impossible rather it has resumed or speeded up. Indeed in some countries LR sputtered on with many stops and starts. The timing of slowdowns or reversals varied, from 1910 in Mexico or 1973 in Chile. The timing of resumption or acceleration also varied, from the early 1990s in Brazil to 2006-08 in Bolivia and Venezuela (Sen, 1997). Many huge farms have partly transformed from haciendas to partly modernised commercial farms but gross, growth-inhibiting, and largely inherited land inequality remains unaddressed – making LR vital and crucial as ever. LR, therefore, is not impossible. Much had happened; some is happening now; more remains relevant and likely. Globally, LR recedes and advances, is fulfilled or abandoned, inspires new pressures and programmes or becomes dormant with old ones. Since LR is still not only possible today but also a burning issue, the question now is whether it is also desirable. Opponents of LR, for example, Lipton (2008) argue that with increased expansion of capitalism, large farms become more suitable than small farms – rendering LR superfluous. Worldwide, rapid technical change and globalisation confront farmers with transformed processing and marketing arrangements, often impinging on production. Larger farms are considered under these circumstances as more efficient, thus advantages of smallness are reversed by economic development, globalisation and supermarkets. Moreover, it is argued that LR is internally inconsistent often due to loopholes inserted by lawmakers under pressure from large landowners (Ibid, 2008). LR, so argued, gives ‘too’ much power to the state so that the goal of putting control of land in the hands of the poor is subverted, and the reform abused to extract enforced surplus from rural people, in cluding the poor. Also argued is that LR is politically infeasible because political and social costs of implementation far exceeds benefits of reform (Rashid and Quibria, 1995). You read "Political economy of agrarian change" in category "Essay examples" Yet, all these arguments considered are as amiss. There are two different discourses arguing in favour of LR. The one is Marxist, positivist, evolutionist, the other, neo-liberal and technocratic (Borras et al, 2010). The one has developed in Eastern and Central Europe during the late nineteenth century; the other after World War II in the technocratic language of development policy. Both traditions have resonances in today’s LR debate, however with competing political ideologies, reasoning, and conclusions. While it must be acknowledged that the debate about LR also includes institutional economics or livelihood economics, a further inquiry thereof is beyond the scope of this essay (Cousins et al., 2010). The main neo-liberal argument for LR lies in the inverse-relationship paradigm (IR) (Deiniger, 1999). The rationale is that small scale farmers are residual claimants to profits and have an incentive to provide greater efforts in the process of production. The reason for this is the following: small farms have advantages in managing labour, but larger farms in managing capital. Capital and large-farm advantage loom larger as a source of higher land productivity in developed, labour scarce rural areas; labour, and small-farm advantage, count for more in developing, capital scarce countries. Griffin, Khan and Ickowitz (2002) conclude that since the ratio of interest rates to wages is relatively low in large farms with access to credit, they tend to adopt relatively more capital intensive method of production. Small farmers on the other hand, so argued, tend to have worse access to capital and therefore tend to economize on it by adopting relatively more labour intensive technology. Sma ll farmers, therefore, generate more employment. Since the factor proportions are typically skewed in favour of labour as the abundant, small farms utilize resources more efficiently. Following this line of reasoning, there appears to be a clear policy outcome; economic policies should be geared towards reallocating land away from large farm holdings to small family farms since it is the most effective means of boosting efficiency and output. The desirability of LR based on IR, however, is disputable. Today, it is assumed that the connection between size and productivity is fallacious – even among neo-liberal economists. While the World Bank supported the IR in 1975, it now claims that ‘land ownership ceiling have been generally ineffective†¦to facilitate the break-up of big farms, and instead have led to red tapes, spurious subdivisions, and corruption’ (Binswanger-Mkhize, 2009). To argue further, IR paradigm suffers from methodological shortcomings – semantic relativism. What is a ‘small’ farmThere is no general consensus on this and it varies with each case study on IR. For example, Van Zyl (1996) conducted a study into South African agriculture in which he stated that, ‘significant efficiency gains can be made if farm sizes in the commercial sector become smaller (in Sender and Johnston, 2004:152). However, the definition of a ‘small farm’ used in this st udy was one with over 500 hectares. To argue that a 500 hectare farm is a ‘small’ scale farm is preposterous when compared to a small farm in Bangladesh which normally counts for 1-2 hectare (Khan, 2004). The term ‘small’ is used ambiguously in many investigations into agriculture and productivity. Therefore, until there is a clear definition of what constitutes a ‘small’ farm, it is difficult to accept evidence about higher productivity on ‘small’ farms without a pinch of salt. Second, IR suffers from theoretical limitations. IR ignores peasant differentiation and differences in land quality (Byres, 2004b). Small peasants are not heterogeneous. In each size group, some farms are run and worked by kin, others by employees; some are remote, others peri-urban; some have favourable land, others not, some are well-managed, others not. Simple measures, which regress annual farm output per hectare against farm size, miss out these factors. In statistics term, the ‘bivariate’ IR hides ‘missing variables’, and thus hides ‘unobserved heterogeneity’ within farm size-groups (Dyer, 2004). Moreover, smaller farms may have higher output per hectare, not because of its smallness, but because of its higher land-water quality (Ibid, 2004). Small farm land with poor soil quality can not be a guarantee for higher agricultural output. The desirability of LR from a Marxist perspective, however takes a different stance. According to political economists, LR’s desirability lies in its contribution to the resolution of the agrarian question (AQ). The AQ constitutes ‘the continued existence in the countryside, in a substantive sense, of obstacles to an unleashing of accumulation in both the countryside itself and more generally — in particular, the accumulation associated with capitalist industrialisation’ (Byres, 2004a).Byres’ definition demonstrates the historical contribution of LR to develop capitalist economies. It was LR that unleashed the forces of production necessary for a ‘primitive accumulation’ by eroding feudal and semi-feudal relations of production and replacing them with a class of capitalist farmers and one of wage labourers. The resolution of the AQ was achieved in a variety of ways, ‘from above’, as in the case of nineteenth century Prussia, where a land owning class metamorphosed into an agrarian capitalist class, or ‘from below’ in America, where peasants differentiate themselves over time into classes of agrarian capital (Ibid, 2004a). To destroy the power of pre-capitalist property class, LR is required. The function of LR in this context, therefore, lies in its contribution as the promoter of capitalism in pre-capitalist areas. Contemporary AQ, however, is centred on the crisis of the reproduction of increasingly fragmented classes of labour within a capitalist system (Bernstein, 2009). Here, the desirability of LR is argued on the basis of securing the livelihood of peasants. Land is seen as ‘a basic livelihood asset, the principal form of natural capital from which people produce food and earn a living’ (Cousins et al 2010:32). Land also ‘provides a supplementary source of livelihoods for rural workers and the urban poor’ and ‘as a heritable asset, land is the basis for the wealth and livelihood security of future rural generations’ (Ibid, 2010:33). Moreover, Kay (1988) buttresses LR by arguing that small-scale farming is multiplier-rich. LR enhances growth for the overall economy because family farmers spend more of their incomes in the locally produced goods than do larger farms, creating a positive relationship between family farms and non-farm incomes in the loca l economy. In China, for instance, access to land enabled peasants to take increased risk and move into non-farm activities which produced the boom in small-scale entrepreneurship (Bramall, 2004). From a Marxist perspective henceforth, desirability of LR not only results in capital accumulation but in improved prospects for the livelihood security of differentiated classes of labour, for whom farming may be only one source of income. So far we have considered the desirability of LR entirely from an economic perspective. Leaving this aside, LR has also major socio-political implications – buttressing the desirability argument. Advocates of political LR, appreciate, for instance, the dissolution of feudal relationships of production and excessively concentrated and exploitative elite power structures (Bhaduri, 1973). While the main goal of land reformers is to enhance the rural poor’s access to land, it is also to reduce poverty, inequality, and to increase liberty (Sen, 2001). Having land on their own, the poor rely less on non-farm employment, emergency loans, or trade with local ‘rural tyrants’ (Hall, 2004) who are almost always major land controllers, but often also employers, landlords, lenders with interlocking market power over things that the local poor can neither live without nor, in many cases readily get elsewhere. Political LR, also include the creation of political stability and peace. In post-conflict situations, this would suggest a focus on provision of land to war-veterans and people displaced by war. In Zimbabwe, for instance, LR focused on white-owned farms and exempted black owners from expropriation (Jacobs, 2000). In post-colonial situations, the political LR also included correcting the racial imbalance in land ownership (Algeria, East-Southern Africa) and empowering members of the new elite (Kenya and Zimbabwe) (Lipton, 2004). Therefore LR, apart from having economic benefits, contributes to unlock many of today’s rural societies from quasi-feudalism. LR – its desirability and possibility – has been hotly debated among various economic ideologies. Yet, in a world of continuing poverty and inequality, slow agricultural growth, changing economic structures, rapid urbanisation, profound challenges of climate structures, and rapid urbanisation, institutions, policies and pressures concerning access to and use of land are as important as ever. In the past century, LR played a central role in the time-paths of rural and national poverty, progress, freedom, conflict, and suffering. Arguing that LR is ‘passe’- is therefore erroneous. And such thinking underrates the reach of LR. LR, like education or tax reform, is a thrust towards more equitable and efficient distribution. The thrust weakens or strengthens with economic situations and power balances, but does not become impossible. For the next half-century at least, where agriculture continues central to the lives of the poor, the role of LR will not decline. Indeed growing populations, scarcer land, and the low and falling employment intensity of non-farm growth may well increase pressures for and resistance to LR. Although, it carries the potential for severe land conflicts, it nevertheless permits huge gains, in terms of liberty and peace as well as growth and reduced inequality. Bibliography Akram-Lodhi, A.H., Borras, M. Jr, Kay,C., and McKinley, T. (2007), Land, poverty and livelihoods in an era of globalization.London: Routledge. Bernstein, H. (2009), ‘Agrarian questions from transition to globalization’, in A Haroon Akram Lodhi and C Kay (eds), Peasants and Globalization. Political economy, rural transformation and the agrarian question, London: Routledge. Bernstein, H. (2003), ‘Land Reform in Southern Africa in World-Historical Perspective’, Review of African Political Economy, vol.30, no.96. Bhaduri, A. (1973), ‘A study in economic backwardness under semi-feudalism’. Economic Journal vol.5, no.83. Binswanger-Mkhize, H. P (2009), Agricultural Land Redistribution. Towards a Greater Consensus. Washington, D.C: World Bank. Bloch, M. (1964), Feudal Society: The growth of ties of dependence. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Borras, S., Kay C., and Lahiff E. (2007), ‘Market-Led Agrarian Reform: Policies, Performance and Prospects’, Third World Quarterly, vol.28, no.8. Borras, S., and Franco, J. (2010), ‘Contemporary Discourses and Contestations around Pro-poor Land Policies and Land Governance’, Journal of Agrarian Change, vol. 10, no.1. Borras, S. (2010), ‘The Politics of Transnational Agrarian Movements’, Development and Change, vol. 41, no.5. Bramall, C. (2004), ‘Chinese Land Reform in Long-Run Perspective and in the Wider East Asian Context’, Journal of Agrarian Change, vol.4, no 12. Byres, T.J. (2004a), ‘Neo-Classical Neo-populism 25 Years On: Deja vu and Deja Passe. Towards a Critique ’, Journal of Agrarian Change, vol. 4, no.12. Byres, T.J. (2004b), ‘Introduction: Contextualizing and Interrogating the GKI Case for Redistributive Land Reform’, Journal of Agrarian Change, vol. 4, no 12. Chimhowu, A. and Woodhouse, A. (2006), ‘Customary vs. Private Property RightsDynamics and Trajectories of Vernacular Land Markets in Sub-Saharan Africa’, Journal of Agrarian Change, vol.6, no.3. Cousins, B. and Scoones I. (2010), ‘Contested paradigms of ‘viability’ in redistributive land reform: perspectives from Southern Africa’. Journalof Peasant Studies, vol. 37, no. 1. Deininger, K. (1999), ‘Making Negotiated Land Reform Work: Initial Experience from Columbia, Brazil and South Africa’, World Bank Policy Research Working Paper, Washington D.C: World Bank. Deininger, K. (2003), Land Policies for Growth and Poverty Reduction. Washington, D.C: World Bank. Dyer, G. (2004), ‘Redistributive Land Reform: No April Rose. The Poverty of Berry and Cline and GKI on the Inverse Relationship’, Journal of Agrarian Change, vol.4., no12. De Janvry, A. and Sadoulet, E. (1989), ‘Path dependent policy reforms: from land reform to rural development in Columbia’, in Hoff et al., 2003, the Economics of Rural organisation: Theory, practise, and Policy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Griffin, K., Khan, R., and Ickowitz, A.(2002), ‘Poverty and the Distribution of Land’, Journal of Agrarian Change, vol. 2, no.3 Griffin, K., Khan, A.R., and Ickowitz, A. (2004), ‘In Defence of Neo-Classical Neo-Populism’, Journal of Agrarian Change, vol. 4, no 3. Hall, R. (2004), ‘A Political Economy of Land Reform in South Africa’, Review of African Political Economy, vol.100, Herring, R. (2003) Carrots, Sticks and Ethnic Conflict: Rethinking Development Assistance. Michigan: University of Michigan Press. Jacobs, S. (2000), ‘Zimbabwe: Why Land Reform is a Gender Issue’, Sociological Research Online, vol. 5, no.2. Johnston, D. and Le Roux, H. (2007), ‘Leaving the Household out of Family Labour: The Implications for the Size-Efficiency Debate’, European Journal of Development Research. Kay, C. (1998), ‘Latin Americas agrarian reform: lights and shadows’. Land reform, Land Settlement and Co-operatives, vol.2, no.7. Kevane, M. and Gray, L.C. (1999), ‘A Woman’s Field is Made at Night: Gendered Land Rights and Norms in Burkina Faso’, Feminist Economics, vol. 5, no.1. Khan, M.H. (2004), ‘Power, Property Rights and the Issue of Land Reform: A General Case Illustrated with Reference to Bangladesh’, Journal of Agrarian Change, vol.4, no 12. Lipton M. (2009), Land Reform in Developing Countries. Property rights and property wrongs. London: Routledge. Manji, A. (2003), ‘Capital, Labour and Land Relations in Africa: A Gender Analysis of the World Bank’s Policy Research Report on Land Institutions and Land Policy’, Third World Quarterly, vol. 24, no.1. Olsen, M. (1971), The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Peters, P. (2004), ‘Inequality and Social Conflict Over Land in Africa’, Journal of Agrarian Change, vol.4, no.3. Rashid, S. and Quibria, M. (1995), Critical Issues in Asia Development: Theories, Experiences and Policies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schultz, T. (1964) Transforming Traditional Agriculture. New Haven: Yale University Press. Sen, A. K. (1997), ‘Radical Needs and Moderate Reforms’, in J. Dreze and A.K Sen (eds), Indian Development: Selected Regional Perspectives, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sen, A. K. (2001), Development as Freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sender, J. and Johnston, D. (2004), ‘Searching for a Weapon of Mass Production in Rural Africa: Unconvincing Arguments for Land Reform’, Journal of Agrarian Change, vol. 4, no.12. Vergera-Camus, L. (2009), ‘The MST and the EZLN struggle for land: new forms of peasant rebellions’, Journal of Agrarian Change, vol. 9, no.3. Walker, C. (2002). ‘Agrarian Change, Gender And Land Reform: A South African Case Study’, UNRISD Social Policy Development Programme, Paper no 10. Woodhouse, P. (2003), ‘African Enclosures: A Default Mode of Development’, World Development vol.31, no.10. How to cite Political economy of agrarian change, Essay examples

Financial Markets and Monetary Policy †MyAssignmenthelp.com

Question: Discuss about the Financial Markets and Monetary Policy. Answer: Introduction: Efficient Market Hypothesis refers to a conjecture within the financial economics that describes that the price of an asset totally reveals all the information that is available from the asset. It is seen that a direct inference is that, it is unfeasible to overcome the market every time on the basis of the risk adjusted as the prices in the market only responds to the fresh data or information and the transformations in the rate of discounts (Burton and Shah 2017). It is seen that the rate of discount can be estimated or may be capricious. The model was constructed by Professor Eugene Fama Management, who made an argument that the stock always try to operate at their fair value and thus makes it unfeasible for the investors to either trade on the stocks that are undervalued or trade off the stocks for a higher price. Therefore, it is seen that it becomes almost impossible to surpass the whole market through expertise selection of stock or even the timing of the market and that the best process an investor can probably gain increased profits or returns is with the help of the opportunity or by buying certain investments that are very risky (Suliman 2017). The study undertaken by Bodie (2013) makes a confirmation about the explanation that has been discussed in the paper and reveals that the allocation of the returns that are abnormal in nature of the any mutual funds that are very alike to expectation that there are no fund managers who possess the skills that are a mandatory aspect for holding an Efficient Market Hypot hesis. It is seen that there are three types of Efficient Market Hypothesis namely, Weak, Semi-strong and Strong. The three types of Efficient Market Hypothesis are discussed below: The Efficient Market Hypothesis that is weak in nature reveals that one cannot forecast the prices of the future stock by looking at the previous stock prices. The Weak form Efficient Market Hypothesis is an attempt that directly aims at the technical analysis. It is seen that if the previous stocks are not able to forecast the prices of the future stocks, then there is no option of observing them and no points of making an attempt to discriminate the trend in the chart of the stocks. Gandhi et al. (2013) reveals that most of the studies reveal that the weak form of Efficient Market Hypothesis stands up well as they have the ability to create an abnormally increased rate of returns. Efficient Market Hypothesis that is in the nature of being semi-strong reveals that it cannot make use of any discovered information to forecast the future prices of stock. Efficient market Hypothesis that is semi-strong in nature aims at the fundamental analysis. It is seen that if all the information that have been published is reflected on the prices of the stock, then it is seen that nothing can be achieved by observing the financial reports or by paying anybody like the fund managers (Frahm 2014). This form market hypothesis even stands up pretty well as it is seen that for instance, a variety of active fund managers who surpass the market has traditionally has no more power than to simply feature the clear randomness of the prices of the stock. This form of market hypothesis does not look to be an ironclad but it is seen that there exists a handful of investors who have overcome in this market by an adequate level and thus it becomes extremely hard to forecast that whether it is just for luck or not (Graziani 2015). The strong nature of Efficient Market Hypothesis reveal that all the information is known and can be known and even the information that have not been published are even seen in the current stock prices (Hu 2014). The inference in this case would be that even if some internal information is known and can therefore be traded legally by looking into it, there would be no gain by trying to do so. Narayan et al. (2015) reveals that the strong nature of Efficient Market Hypothesis is not specific to most of the investors as it is rare that the investors do not have data or information regarding any current and future stock prices in the share market. In this question it is revealed with the help of the diagram that how the investors react in the market before and after the establishment of an innovative and newly constructed product that may revolutionise the international market. The diagram suggests that the market where the product is launched is efficient but however, it is seen that there is a variance in the reaction of the investors at various levels before and after the establishment of the product that have explained with the help of lines in the diagram. It is seen that in Line 1, that depicts the characteristics of the investors just after the announcement date. In this case, it is seen that the share prices of the product starts to rise as the investors have started to estimate the product and the future prices of the product as they feel that this product would be highly demanded in the market (Westerlund and Narayan 2013). Therefore, it is seen that with the increase in the speculation, the share prices start to rise gradually showing that there is an improvement in the share market. Line 2 in the diagram reveals the condition of the investors and the share prices before the announcement date of the new product. It is seen that before the new product was announced, the market was operating in its own way and therefore, no changes and introduction of new products revealed that the prices of shares were going down as the economy of the market remained same and functioned in the ordinary way (Fievet and Sornette 2016). The investors are always looking for a kick in the market due to any external and internal factors that that can jump the market with a rise in the prices of the stock. However, prior to the announcement of the product there was no information available to the investors that would help them to speculate the market. It is seen that the prices of the share slowly tend to increase as the date of announcement closes in revealing that the investors have knowledge about the announcement of a new product. Line 3 in the diagram reveals the situation when the announcement is made regarding the new product. During the announcement of the new product, the price pf shares in the market leaps up to the highest as the shareholders have new information regarding a product and they start speculating that this product may improve the lifestyle of human beings and therefore the demand for the product will be extremely high (Duncan et al. 2017). The introduction of a new product always raises the price of the shares as the investors are in the opinion that investing in the shares of this product will raise their returns by a certain margin. It is during this time that the stock prices are higher than the level of the efficient market. It is seen that after the prices rise just after the announcement, gradually the price starts falling as days pass after the announcement. Line 4 of the diagram reveals that the prices of the shares have fallen with respect to the efficient market and with time it slowly rises but after a certain level remains constant (Titterington et al., 2015). The rise in the share price is even lower to Line 1 and therefore it suggests that the investors have adequate knowledge about the future stock prices and the stock market and therefore are reluctant to invest in the share market. The Gordon Growth Model is even known as the Dividend Discount Model that is known to be a process for computing the internal stock value by excluding the present market conditions. The model computes the value that is created with the current value of the future dividend of the stock that grows at a constant rate (Madoroba and Kruger 2015). It is seen that that the dividend per share that will be payable by the company in one year, this model resolves for the problems of the present value of the in numerous series of the future dividends. The model values the stock of a company by making use of the estimation of steady growth in the company payments that are given out to the general equity shareholders. There are three significant factors that are available with the model and they are namely the rate of growth, the dividend per share and the rate of return (Ferrs et al. 2016). The annual payment given out by a company to their shareholders is known as the dividend per share. The growth rate over the dividend per share reveals the level of rise in the dividend in the next year with respect to the current year. The required rate of return on the other hand is the minimum expectation or the return that an investor expects and accepts when they purchase the stock of a company (Turnbull et al. 2014). By looking at the question that is given with the help of the diagram, it is seen that if the growth rate of the company is approaching to closer to the required rate of return on an investment in equity then one should not invest in such stocks until the growth rate is equal to the required rate of return. An investor should always invest in stocks which have a growth rate equal to higher than the required rate of return as the required rate of return is the minimum amount that an investor expects to receive when they invest in an equity stock (Sloboda et al. 2016). It is seen that if the growth rate is closing in to the required rate of return, it suggests that the value is lower than the expected minimum amount and it is not certain that the growth rate in the next year can reach the expected return as though the Gordon Growth Model describes that the dividend grows at a constant rate, it may not be the case all the time, as the growth may cease due to the availability of business cycles. Therefore, an investor should always invest in a stock in the equity when the growth rate is more than the required rate of return as in case of any loss due to the internal and the external factors in the market, the investors are sure to receive their required rate of return and investing in shares where the growth is approaching the required rate of return may not give out the minimum expectation of the investors (Scott 2015). Therefore, according to the question, one must not invest in the shares of the company that has growth rate that approaches the required rate of return. Reference List Bodie, Z., 2013.Investments. McGraw-Hill. Burton, F.E.T. and Shah, S.N., 2017. Efficient Market Hypothesis.CMT Level I 2017: An Introduction to Technical Analysis. Duncan, J., Anderson, S.C., Price, S. and Thomas, C., 2017. The Gordon Growth Model: A Teaching Case.Journal of Business Case Studies (Online),13(1), p.23. 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