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In Example 11.1 (page 422), we saw how producers of processed foods and related consumer goods use coupons as a means of price discrimination. Although coupons are widely used in the United States, that is not the case in other countries. In Germany, coupons are illegal.

  1. Does prohibiting the use of coupons in Germany make German consumers better off or worse off?

  2. Does prohibiting the use of coupons make German producers better off or worse off?

Short Answer

Expert verified
  1. German consumers can be better or worse off after prohibiting coupons.

  2. German producers will be worse off on prohibiting coupons.

Step by step solution

01

Step 1. Explanation for part (a)

The consumer may be better or worse off depending on the price and demand as the total surplus may increase or decrease with the price discrimination. Let us suppose that a company sells a box of cereal at $5 and 2,000,000 boxes are sold per week. If a coupon of $1 is offered per box it results in an increase in the number of boxes of cereal sold, to 2,500,000 per week. It means the consumer demand and surplus have increased. Consumers will be worse off when the coupons are prohibited.

Let us suppose that the price of cereal increases to $5.5. With the price increase, there will be a reduction in demand if the after-coupon price is higher than the initial situation. Some consumers will also continue to purchase cereals without coupon. Some consumers will redeem the coupon, and the price will be $4.5; thus, the consumer surplus increases for one group and decreases for another. Hence, the total consumer surplus may increase or decrease. Thus, the German consumer may be better off or worse off on prohibiting coupons.

02

Step 2. Explanation for part (b)

The German producer will be worse off but not better off after prohibiting the coupons. The producer uses the coupons only if they profit; thus, those producers will be worse off; and the producers who do not use coupons will have no effect.

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Most popular questions from this chapter

A cable TV company offers, in addition to its basic service, two products: a Sports Channel (Product 1) and a Movie Channel (Product 2). Subscribers to the basic service can subscribe to these additional services individually at the monthly prices P1 and P2, respectively, or they can buy the two as a bundle for the price PB, where PB 6 P1 + P2. They can also forgo the additional services and simply buy the basic service. The company鈥檚 marginal cost for these additional services is zero. Through market research, the cable company has estimated the reservation prices for these two services for a representative group of consumers in the company鈥檚 service area. These reservation prices are plotted (as x鈥檚) in Figure 11.21, as are the prices P1, P2, and PB that the cable company is currently charging. The graph is divided into regions I, II, III, and IV.

a. Which products, if any, will be purchased by the consumers in region I? In region II? In region III? In region IV? Explain briefly.

b. Note that as drawn in the figure, the reservation prices for the Sports Channel and the Movie Channel are negatively correlated. Why would you, or why would you not, expect consumers鈥 reservation prices for cable TV channels to be negatively correlated?

c. The company鈥檚 vice president has said: 鈥淏ecause the marginal cost of providing an additional channel is zero, mixed bundling offers no advantage over pure bundling. Our profits would be just as high if we offered the Sports Channel and the

Movie Channel together as a bundle, and only as a bundle.鈥 Do you agree or disagree? Explain why.

d. Suppose the cable company continues to use mixed bundling to sell these two services. Based on the distribution of reservation prices shown in Figure 11.21, do you think the cable company should alter any of the prices that it is now charging? If so, how?

You are an executive for Super Computer, Inc. (SC), which rents out supercomputers. SC receives a fixed rental payment per time period in exchange for the right to unlimited computing at a rate of P cents per second. SC has two types of potential customers of equal number鈥10 businesses and 10 academic institutions. Each business customer has the demand function Q = 10 - P, where Q is in millions of seconds per month; each academic institution has the demand Q = 8 - P. The marginal cost to SC of additional computing is 2 cents per second, regardless of volume.

  1. Suppose that you could separate business and academic customers. What rental fee and usage fee would you charge each group? What would be your profits?
  2. Suppose you were unable to keep the two types of customers separate and charged a zero rental fee. What usage fee would maximize your profits? What would be your profits?
  3. Suppose you set up one two-part tariff鈥攖hat is, you set one rental and one usage fee that both business and academic customers pay. What usage and rental fees would you set? What would be your profits? Explain why the price would not be equal to marginal cost.

Elizabeth Airlines (EA) flies only one route: Chicago鈥揌onolulu. The demand for each flight is Q = 500 - P. EA鈥檚 cost of running each flight is \(30,000 plus \)100 per passenger.

  1. What is the profit-maximizing price that EA will charge? How many people will be on each flight? What is EA鈥檚 profit for each flight?
  2. EA learns that the fixed costs per flight are in fact \(41,000 instead of \)30,000. Will the airline stay in business for long? Illustrate your answer using a graph of the demand curve that EA faces, EA鈥檚 average cost curve when fixed costs are \(30,000, and EA鈥檚 average cost curve when fixed costs are \)41,000.
  3. Wait! EA finds out that two different types of people fly to Honolulu. Type A consists of business people with a demand of QA = 260 - 0.4P. Type B consists of students whose total demand is QB = 240 - 0.6P. Because the students are easy to spot, EA decides to charge them different prices. Graph each of these demand curves and their horizontal sum. What price does EA charge the students? What price does it charge other customers? How many of each type are on each flight?
  4. What would EA鈥檚 profit be for each flight? Would the airline stay in business? Calculate the consumer surplus of each consumer group. What is the total consumer surplus?
  5. Before EA started price discriminating, how much consumer surplus was the Type A demand getting from air travel to Honolulu? Type B? Why did total consumer surplus decline with price discrimination, even though total quantity sold remained unchanged?

Suppose that two competing firms, A and B, produce a homogeneous good. Both firms have a marginal cost of MC = \(50. Describe what would happen to output and price in each of the following situations if the firms are at (i) Cournot equilibrium, (ii) collusive equilibrium, and (iii) Bertrand equilibrium.

(a) Because Firm A must increase wages, its MC increases to \)80.

(b) The marginal cost of both firms increases.

(c) The demand curve shifts to the right.

As the owner of the only tennis club in an isolated wealthy community, you must decide on membership dues and fees for court time. There are two types of tennis players. 鈥淪erious鈥 players have demand

Q1 - 10 - P

where Q1 is court hours per week and P is the fee per hour for each individual player. There are also 鈥渙ccasional鈥 players with demand

Q2 = 4 - 0.25P

Assume that there are 1000 players of each type. Because you have plenty of courts, the marginal cost of court time is zero. You have fixed costs of $10,000 per week. Serious and occasional players look alike, so you must charge them the same prices.

  1. Suppose that to maintain a 鈥減rofessional鈥 atmosphere, you want to limit membership to serious players. How should you set the annual membership dues and court fees (assume 52 weeks per year) to maximize profits, keeping in mind the constraint that only serious players choose to join? What would profits be (per week)?
  2. A friend tells you that you could make greater profits by encouraging both types of players to join. Is your friend right? What annual dues and court fees would maximize weekly profits? What would these profits be?
  3. Suppose that over the years, young, upwardly mobile professionals move to your community, all of whom are serious players. You believe there are now 3000 serious players and 1000 occasional players. Would it still be profitable to cater to the occasional player? What would be the profit-maximizing annual dues and court fees? What would profits be per week?
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