Contributor(s): Professor Danny Quah | Your clothes, trainers, Xboxes, TVs and much, much more are all made in the East. And by selling us all this stuff, countries such as China and India are becoming wealthier and more powerful than ever before. But if the East is becoming stronger – is the West becoming weaker? Should we be scared by this? What does it mean for you anyway? In a highly interactive online lecture for schools, Professor Danny Quah explores how the world is changing, with countries such as China and India becoming wealthier and more powerful than ever before. Using simple ideas from economics, he explains why this is happening and what it means for our future. The lecture is most suitable for students in Year 9, and more motivated students in Years 7 and 8 and has been designed with elements of the KS3 citizenship curriculum in mind. It will give students an understanding of: - How the East's economic power is growing and what this means for Western countries such as the UK, and potentially for the students themselves. - The importance of viewing the changes in local, national and global contexts, whilst also taking into account moral, historical and social dimensions of the changes. - What an economy is and how trade works. - The benefits of economic development for a country. - How economics provides a useful way to interpret the world. The Big Questions lecture builds on the approach and success of LSE100 -The LSE Course, the pioneering, compulsory course in which first year LSE students apply rigorous social science thinking to important issues of our time. Danny Quah is Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics and Political Science. . Professor Quah has consulted for among others the World Bank, the Bank of England, and the Monetary Authority of Singapore. He is a Member of the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on Economic Imbalances. Professor Quah holds degrees from Princeton and Harvard, and was Assistant Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before joining LSE. In 2010 he was Visiting Professor at the School of Economics and Management, Tsinghua University; in 2011, at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University. Quah is also Tan Chin Tuan Visiting Professor in the Economics Department at the National University of Singapore. He was born in Malaysia and holds a blackbelt in taekwondo and used to compete regularly in regional and national championships. Both his two teenage sons are much better at Halo Reach on the Xbox than he is, as he is usually splattered by Covenant forces while reloading. The Big Questions Lecture is supported by the LSE HEIF 4 Bid Fund.