Free Market Is the Most Efficient

1. The first chapter in the book is about the market and its inner workings. The book briefly explains the idea of supply and demand, in which the price of a certain good or service will reach the point where all the demand is equivalent to the supply. However, the value of something is not determined by its necessity, but its desire within society, as seen by the difference in cost between a diamond and life giving water. Markets operate as they do because people try to maximize the amount of utility for themselves. Nevertheless, a strict rationalism model cannot be used for predicting all the occurrences of a market because of the ever changing behavior of people; thus economists must take precautions against

ANSWER KEY Chapter 1 Chapter 1–1 II.D. the accumulation of those economic products that are tangible, scarce, useful, and transferable 1. scarcity of resources, which results from society not III.A. the market having enough resources to produce all of the things people would like to have III.B. the markets in which productive resources are bought and sold 2. A need is a basic requirement for survival and III.C. in product markets IV.A. the amount of output produced by a given amount of inputs in a specific period of time

1. On Market Failure – We said that the rationale for public policy is either market failure and/or government failure. Address the following with this rationale in mind:

3. (TCO 1) Are the goods that businesses offer for "free" to consumers also free to society?

1A. Market failure is a situation in which the allocation of goods and services is not efficient. In any given market, the quantity of a product demanded by consumers does not equate to the quantity supplied by suppliers. This is a direct result of a lack of certain economically ideal factors, which prevents equilibrium.

Market failure exists when the operation of a market does not lead to economic efficiency. It is a situation where a free market does not produce the best use of scarce resources. Typical examples are when externalities are present, when there is monopoly power or where it is necessary for public and merit goods to be provided by the government or even when there is possible excessive profits or

Government intervention corrects market failure resulting in environmental sustainability and improved accessibility to services. Goods or services with negative externalities are market failures because the operation of the price mechanism

In some industries, there are no substitutes and there is no competition. In a market that has only one or few suppliers of a good or service, the producer can control price, meaning that a consumer does not have choice, cannot maximize his or her total utility and

Discussion Questions: An economy may be inefficient for two reasons – market power and nonexistence of markets. (p. 46)

Market failure happens when the price mechanism fails to allocate scarce resources efficiently or when the operation of market forces lead to a net social welfare loss.

|To what extent does the Singapore Government’s policies on housing and immigration, help to increase the demand of the private |

Competition failure or monopoly may result from natural monopoly where it costs incurred in production becomes lower when only one firm is involved in production than several firms producing the same output. In a monopolist market under-production, higher prices become dominant contributing to market inefficiency. Winston cites cases of misuse of monopoly power can lead to market failures and sometimes may lead to acute shortage of essential commodities (130).

Often a market may be affected by a demand-side “shock” which takes away the pricing power of

Market failure is when a market fails to allocate resources efficiently. A public good can cause a market failure because if people get to use an item for free, firms cannot

externalities keep the market from reaching allocative efficiency because the gains or losses generated are external to the pricing system; they are unpriceable. The transaction costs of externalities misallocation of resources or a failure of the market economy to generate a Pareto optimum. positive externalities 3 types of interventions the government may engage in: