1

1. Price change from 250 to 300

%change in price = [(300 - 250) / 250] * 100 = 20%

i) Quantity demanded decreased from 1,900 to 1,800

%change in quantity demanded = [(1,900 - 1,800) / 1,900] * 100 = -5.26%

Elasticity of demand: (-5.26% / 20%) = -0.26

We can ignore the negative sign due to negative relationship between price and quantity demanded. Thus, elasticity of demand = 0.26

ii) Quantity demanded decreased from 600 to 400

%change in quantity demanded = [(600 - 400) / 600] * 100 = -33.33%

Elasticity of demand: (-33.33% / 20%) = -1.66

We can ignore the negative sign due to negative relationship between price and quantity demanded. Thus, elasticity of demand = 1.66

B) There are various factors which can make variations in elasticity of demand:

• Vacation travel have more substitute available than business travellers
• Business travellers cannot postpone their visit to Singapore
• Business travellers earn more than vacationers

2.

Poor Laws:

It's a set of laws taken to provide relief for the poor and it was developed in 16th-century in England and maintained with various changes until after the World War II.

The Poor Law 1601-1750:

In 1660 a third or more of parishes regularly were collecting poor rates and by 1700 poor rates were become universal. The Board of Trade estimated that, in 1696 expenditures on poor relief totaled £400,000 slightly less than 1 percent of national income. No official statistics exist for this period concerning the number of persons relieved or the demographic characteristics of those relieved. But it was possible to get some idea of the making up of the “pauper host” from local studies undertaken by historians. These suggest that during the seventeenth century, the bulk of relief recipients were elderly, orphans, or widows with young children. In the first half of the century orphans and lone-parent children made up a particularly large share of the relief rolls, while by the late seventeenth century in many parishes a majority of those collecting regular weekly pensions were aged sixty or older. Female pensioners outnumbered males by as much as three to one. On average, the payment of weekly pensions made up about two-thirds of relief spending in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.

The Poor Law 1750- 1834:

The period from 1750 to 1820 witnessed an explosion in relief expenditures. Real per capita expenditures were more than doubled from 1748 - 1750 to 1803 and remained at a high level till the Poor Law was amended in 1834. Relief expenditures increased from 1.0% of GDP in 1748 - 1750 to a peak of 2.7% of GDP in 1818 - 1820. There was a sharp increase in numbers receiving casual benefits as opposed to regular weekly pensions. The age distribution of those on relief became younger and the shares aged 60 and over declined. Finally, the share of relief recipients in the south and east who were males increased from about a third in 1760 to nearly two-thirds in 1820.

The New Poor Law 1834 - 1870:

There was an increase in spending on poor relief in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It combined with the attacks on the Poor Laws by Thomas Malthus and other political economists and the agricultural laborers’ revolt of 1830-31 (the Captain Swing riots), led the government in 1832 to appoint the Royal Commission to Investigate the Poor Laws. The Commission published its report, written by Nassau Senior and Edwin Chadwick, in March 1834. The report, described by historian R. H. Tawney (1926) as “brilliant, influential and wildly unhistorical,” called for sweeping reforms of the Poor Law, including the grouping of parishes into Poor Law unions, the abolition of outdoor relief for the able-bodied and their families, and the appointment of a centralized Poor Law Commission to direct the administration of poor relief. Soon after the report was published Parliament adopted the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, which implemented some of the report’s recommendations and left others, like the regulation of outdoor relief, to the three newly appointed Poor Law Commissioners.

By 1839 the vast majority of rural parishes had been grouped into poor law unions, and most of these had built or were building workhouses. On the other hand, the Commission met with strong opposition when it attempted in 1837 to set up unions in the industrial north, and the implementation of the New Poor Law was delayed in several industrial cities. In an attempt to regulate the granting of relief to able-bodied males, the Commission, and its replacement in 1847, the Poor Law Board, issued several orders to selected Poor Law Unions. The Outdoor Labour Test Order of 1842, sent to unions without workhouses or where the workhouse test was deemed unenforceable, stated that able-bodied males could be given outdoor relief only if they were set to work by the union. The Outdoor Relief Prohibitory Order of 1844 prohibited outdoor relief for both able-bodied males and females except on account of sickness or “sudden and urgent necessity.” The Outdoor Relief Regulation Order of 1852 extended the labor test for those relieved outside of workhouses.

The Iron Law of Wages:

In the natural advance of society, the wages of labour will have a tendency to fall, as far as they are regulated by supply and demand; for the supply of labourers will continue to increase at the same rate, while the demand for them will increase at a slower rate. It says thar, under these circumstances, wages would fall if they were regulated only by the supply and demand of labourers; but we must not forget that wages are also regulated by the prices of the commodities on which they are expended.

As population increases, these necessaries will be constantly rising in price, because more labour will be necessary to produce them. If, then, the money wages of labour should fall, while every commodity on which the wages of labour were expended rose, the labourer would be doubly affected, and would be soon totally deprived of subsistence. . . . These, then, are the laws by which wages are regulated, and by which the happiness of far the greatest part of every community is governed. Like all other contracts, wages should be left to the fair and free competition of the market, and should never be controlled by the interference of the legislature.

The clear and direct tendency of the poor laws is in direct opposition to those obvious principles: it is not, as the legislature benevolently intended, to amend the condition of the poor, but to deteriorate the condition of both poor and rich; instead of making the poor rich, they are calculated to make the rich poor; and while the present laws are in force, it is quite in the natural order of things that the fund for the maintenance of the poor should progressively increase till it has absorbed all the net revenue of the country, or at least so much of it as the state shall leave to us, after satisfying its own never-failing demands for the public expenditure.

This pernicious tendency of these laws is no longer a mystery, since it has been fully developed by the able hand of Mr. Malthus; and every friend to the poor must ardently wish for their abolition. Unfortunately, however, they have been so long established, and the habits of the poor have been so formed upon their operation, that to eradicate them with safety from our political system requires the most cautious and skillful management. It is agreed by all who are most friendly to a repeal of these laws that, if it be desirable to prevent the most overwhelming distress to those for whose benefit they were erroneously enacted, their abolition should be effected by the most gradual steps.

It is a truth which admits not a doubt that the comforts and well-being of the poor cannot be permanently secured without some regard on their part, or some effort on the part of the legislature, to regulate the increase of their numbers, and to render less frequent among them early and improvident marriages. The operation of the system of poor laws has been directly contrary to this. They have rendered restraint superfluous, and have invited imprudence, by offering it a portion of the wages of prudence and industry.