UNIVERSIDAD NACIONAL DE MAR DEL PLATA

FACULTAD DE CIENCIAS ECONÓMICAS Y SOCIALES

NIVEL DE INGLÉS TÉCNICO 1 – CP/LA

Clase 8
Actividad individual
1. A. Copie y pegue, del texto que encontrará a continuación, la información solicitada.
(Busque en el diccionario el vocabulario necesario para comprender los datos incluidos.

Volanta
Título
Copete
Fecha
Autor

A. ¿Cuál es la temática del texto según los datos extraídos en el ejercicio 1 A?

2. Numere las ideas dadas a continuación, de 1 a 6, según el orden en que aparecen en el texto.
Cada una corresponde a un párrafo. ¿Pudo extraer la información de la primera oración de cada
párrafo?
a) Brand positioning.
b) The high demand for luxury brands.
c) In search for new markets.
d) High-end brands prestige.
e) The Chinese market relevance.
f) Exclusive brands hit by constant inflation and increasing interest rates.

3. Lea nuevamente cada parte del texto y complete brevemente, en castellano, el siguiente cuadro. Indique
el número de párrafo de dónde extrajo la información.

Idea principal del texto

Ideas secundarias (por párrafo) Detalles menores (indicar si son cifras, ejemplos,
etc.)

Conclusión
¿Se vuelve al tema presentado?
¿Se presenta alguna opinión o sugerencia?
¿Se incluye alguna predicción?

1
Nivel de Inglés Técnico 1 (CP/LA)
UNIVERSIDAD NACIONAL DE MAR DEL PLATA
FACULTAD DE CIENCIAS ECONÓMICAS Y SOCIALES
NIVEL DE INGLÉS TÉCNICO 1 – CP/LA

Champagne lifestyle Jun 1st 2023

1
Keeping their shine: is the luxury sector recession-proof?
Not all high-end brands will lose their shine
Hermès is a byword for exclusivity. Its signature Birkin
bag, one of which sold for $450,000 last year, cannot
be bought from the luxury firm’s website or by simply
walking into a store. There are neither ads in fashion
magazines nor glossy campaigns on Instagram. For the
not-so-famous, owning a Birkin can involve a years-
long waiting list.
Part of the reason for the wait is constrained supply,
which Hermès manages with the precision worthy of
its stitching. But another part is booming demand for
all manner of luxury goodies. Last year, net profits of Kering, which owns fashion labels such as Gucci and
Balenciaga, rose by 14%. Those at Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy (LVMH), owner of Tiffany and Louis
Vuitton, among other brands, grew by nearly a quarter. Hermès and Richemont, which owns Cartier, among
other baubles, surged by more than a third. Together, the four groups raked in over €33bn ($35bn) in
profits, on combined revenues of around $130bn.
That, though, was before persistent inflation and rising interest rates to combat it fears of a global
recession. Now, as those fears intensify, luxury brands are losing their shine, at least in the eyes of
investors. Luxury bosses’ unease expressed at an industry pow-wow 2 on May 22nd provoked a sell-off that
wiped $65bn, or 7%, from the four luxury groups’ collective market value. Once shareholders stop quaking
in their Louboutins, they may pay closer attention to two things in order to assess their luxury stocks’
prospects.
The first is a brand’s positioning within the luxury business. Mid-market houses that target the merely
affluent, such as Ralph Lauren, a maker of polo-themed apparel, are more sensitive to economic headwinds
than top-end brands catering to the obscenely wealthy. This was already evident last year. Shoppers who
had shelled out up to €1,000 on designer goods before the pandemic cut their average spending in half in
2022, according to Bernstein, a broker. By contrast, the truly loaded more than doubled theirs. These days
just 5% of buyers account for two-fifths of global luxury sales.
Exposure to China, one of the world’s biggest luxury markets, is another factor. Luxury merchants counting
on a sharp rebound from years of harsh zero-covid lockdowns to raise sales have been disappointed by
Chinese shoppers’ unobliging restraint. Brands including Estée Lauder, a pedlar of pricey cosmetics, have
slashed their outlook for the region. Burberry, a British maker of beige coats, generated less than a third of
sales from Chinese shoppers, down from 40% before the pandemic. Things could get worse for American
and European brands in China if Sino-Western geopolitical tensions ratchet up.
Luxury houses are already searching for new engines of growth. These include India, which though mostly
poor has growing ranks of the super-rich, and sub-Saharan Africa, where last year Chanel became the first
European luxury brand to stage an African fashion show, in Dakar, the capital of Senegal. But these markets
will take years to reach China’s scale, if they manage to do so at all. In the meantime, investors are likely to
become as discerning about their luxury stocks as they are about their posh wardrobes.

1
From Economist.com https://www.economist.com/business/2023/06/01/is-the-luxury-sector-recession-proof
2
(Informal, colloquial) a conference or meeting for discussion, especially among friends or colleagues.
2
Nivel de Inglés Técnico 1 (CP/LA)
UNIVERSIDAD NACIONAL DE MAR DEL PLATA
FACULTAD DE CIENCIAS ECONÓMICAS Y SOCIALES
NIVEL DE INGLÉS TÉCNICO 1 – CP/LA

Actividad grupal
Lea en texto “Higher taxes can lower inequality without denting economic growth” y responda las siguientes
preguntas
1. What is the Gini coefficient? What is is like in advanced economies?
2. How do tax policies impact on inequality nowadays? Why? What’s the most rational reason for this?
3. Do economies grow more with a progressive tax scheme?
4. What does the IMF suggest as regards taxation of higher incomes?
5. Where do companies prefer to settle down? How have some countries responded to this?
6. According to the author, is inequality through taxation likely to be reduced? Why? Why not?
7. What does the graph show? How is it related to the text?

Finance and economics Oct 19th 2017

Higher taxes can lower inequality without denting economic growth
A new study by the IMF finds no strong correlation between lower taxes and higher growth

INEQUALITY is one of the big political issues of the 21st century, with many commentators citing it as a
significant factor behind the rise of populism. After all, nothing could be more indicative of the triumph of
the common man than the elevation of a property billionaire to the American presidency.
A new IMF report looks at how fiscal policy can help tackle inequality. In advanced economies, taxation
already has an impact. The Gini coefficient (a standard measure of income inequality) is around a third
lower after taxes and transfers than it is before them. But whereas such policies offset around 60% of the
change in market inequality between 1985 and 1995, they have had barely any impact since.
That is because of a change in policy direction. Across the West, taxes on higher incomes have generally
fallen. This could be for a number of reasons, the IMF says. The tax take from high earners could have
become more “elastic” (sensitive to rate changes) In a mobile world, the elite will move to reduce their tax
bills. But there is no sign that elasticity has increased in recent decades. A second possibility, easily
dismissed, is that the share of income taken by the rich might have fallen; on the contrary, it has increased.
A third option is that society reached a consensus that tax rates needed to be cut to help the rich. In fact,
surveys show that people are more in favour of redistributive policies than they were in the 1980s. Another
reason that governments might have driven down top tax rates could be to create greater incentives to
invest, thereby boosting economic growth. That certainly seems to be the rationale behind the cuts being
proposed by President Trump.
But the IMF, after analysing tax rates in OECD countries between 1981 and 2016, found no strong
relationship between how progressive a tax system is and economic growth. Indeed, the study adds that for
countries wanting to redistribute wealth, there may be “scope for increasing the progressivity of income
taxation without significantly hurting growth”. The latter sentence will be seized on by politicians on the
left. But the argument works better in some places than in others. The IMF reckons that the optimal tax
rate on higher incomes, assuming the aim is revenue maximisation, is 44%. Britain’s highest rate is already
45%. So, the IMF study does not really provide much ammunition for Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the
Labour Party, the main opposition, who wants to raise it to 50%. It is a better argument, perhaps, for Bernie
Sanders, the Democrat, since the top American tax rate, before any Trump cuts, is only 39.6%.

3
Nivel de Inglés Técnico 1 (CP/LA)
UNIVERSIDAD NACIONAL DE MAR DEL PLATA
FACULTAD DE CIENCIAS ECONÓMICAS Y SOCIALES
NIVEL DE INGLÉS TÉCNICO 1 – CP/LA

Even here, a note of caution is needed. Companies are

inclined to move in search of more favourable tax
treatment—hence the success of Ireland in attracting
business with its 12.5% corporate-tax rate, and the row
about “inversions” where American companies move
overseas to lower-tax jurisdictions. In response,
countries have steadily lowered corporate-tax rates;
since 1990 the average rate in advanced economies has
fallen by more than 13 percentage points (see chart).
Many rich individuals can choose to shift the way they
report their income to take advantage of lower
corporate-tax rates. So, it is difficult to push up the tax
rate on individual incomes while simultaneously lowering
the corporate rate. As the IMF report remarks:
“International tax co-ordination could potentially
address this problem but has proved very difficult to
implement.” So, are there other ways to reduce inequality via the tax system? Another option discussed by
the IMF is taxing property, which is an immovable asset. Inheritance taxes are another possibility, although
they are costly to administer, and no G7 country raises more than 1% of GDP through this route.
Given the political clout of the rich, it seems unlikely that an international consensus on reducing inequality
through higher taxes is going to emerge. In the absence of such a consensus, few governments will take the
risk of raising their own rates unilaterally. Step forward, however, a future Corbyn government, which plans
to increase the tax rate on companies as well as on individuals—all in the context of Brexit, when
companies might in any case be reconsidering their decision to invest in Britain. It will be an economic
experiment closely watched by other countries, suggesting a new national slogan: “Britain—we try policies
so you don’t have to.”

4
Nivel de Inglés Técnico 1 (CP/LA)