Name -----------------------------------ID# -----------------------------------Public Finance Homework 2 Due in class – October 28 There are 20 multiple-choice questions, each is worth 5 points for a total of 100 points plus one extracredit question. Please, write with pen, print and staple this HW. I. Externalities Problem: Firms A and B each produce 80 units of pollution. The federal government wants to reduce pollution levels. The marginal costs associated with pollution reduction are MCA = 50 + 3QA for firm A and MCB = 20 + 6QB for firm B, where QA and QB are the quantities of pollution reduced by each firm. Society’s marginal benefit from pollution reduction is given by MB = 590 – 3Qtot, where Qtot is the total reduction in …show more content…
Does this vary depending on the fraction of would-be unemployed workers hired for the project? a) b) c) d) e) 2 million 4 million 3 Million It depends on the salary None of the above 3. How does the opportunity cost of a government purchase vary depending on whether the market for the purchased good is perfectly competitive or monopolistic? a) In a perfectly competitive market, the price will equal the marginal resource cost. It corresponds to the opportunity cost. b) In a monopolistic market, the price will be greater than marginal cost and thus than the opportunity cost c) The additional price paid to a monopolist is thus a transfer to the monopolist, not a benefit nor a cost d) The opportunity cost should be calculated as the resource cost of producing the input. e) All of the above 4. One approach to calculating the value of life involves the use of compensating differential studies. What informational problems make these studies difficult to carry out? a) A researcher would not be able to distinguish that part of the compensating wage differential that is attributable to increased risk and that part of the differential that is attributable to other amenities. b) A researcher will be unable to observe differences in risk attitudes. If workers who tend to be risk-takers are more likely to accept jobs with a high degree of risk, the compensating wage differential will reflect only the value to these workers and will
5. Incentives matter. Explain why businesses and entrepreneurs are more likely to voluntarily undertake the projects that consumers value highly relative to price and less likely to undertake the government-sponsored projects in which the per-unit cost of production is above the price consumers willingly
Refer to the above table. How much money was saved (between the two firms) to reduce emissions by 1 ton each by allowing for tradable pollution permits?:
23. A firm participating in a competitive market with costs described in the table below would always shut down:
What happen with firm’s price and revenue operating in competitive market if the firm doubles the amount of output it sells?
In these circumstances, the cost structures are not the same as with the competitive industry and so we cannot say that the oligopolistic firm results in higher prices than if a competitive market structure were to be adopted. In fact going along the theory of the downward sloping cost curve we can come to the conclusion that it would be the other way around and consumers would
The firm initially produces where MR=MC charging price P1 and quantity Qa. At this price the firm has a large amount of
v. Whether its price is above or below the average price of all companies competing in that geographic region
1B. In the real world, a perfectly competitive market rarely exists. One or more assumptions are violated in most markets and this is certainly the case in the pharmaceutical market.
The car firm does not care about the pollution. The owner is simply interested in maximizing profits. The equilibrium price for him is where demand equals his supply curve, at point B, so output will be Q1 with price at P1. Given that there is pollution, though, the optimal point for the whole of society is at C, where output is Q2 and price P2. Hence, if left to the free
a. The product is identical (ie, aluminum), all the companies procure the same resources to make production with same production line and process. The firms only differentiate in terms of controlling and lowering the variable cost in order to make a profit as a price-takers. Pricing is somehow fix in global level as aluminum is openly traded in the financial market.
(d) Price war is not beneficial for BPS since firstly it cannot sustain it and secondly it will shrink the market pie to an extent that BPS will not be able to command premium over its products.
Since the capacity is being expanded to increase production of Product C, it could be assumed that this increase should be allocated to this product. Production of Product A is to be scaled down, but its level of
* If the Incumbent opts to fight, it may benefit from the Entrant’s higher unit cost and therefore still capture the entire market though at less profit margin. Since the willingness to pay for the Incumbent is $40 more than that for the Entrant, the former can fix any price at 40 more than whichever price fixed by the Entrant. So for any price fixed by the Entrant (Pe),the Incumbent’s price will be given by,