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Chapter 9: Labor Demand (page 327)
What is the inverse relationship in the demand for labor curve?
high wages equal to low employment levels
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You know that if a tax is imposed on a particular product, the burden of the tax is shared by producers and consumers. You also know that the demand for automobiles is characterized by a stock adjustment process. Suppose a special 20-percent sales tax is suddenly imposed on automobiles. Will the share of the tax paid by consumers rise, fall, or stay the same over time? Explain briefly. Repeat for a 50-cents-per-gallon gasoline tax.
About 100 million pounds of jelly beans are consumed in the United States each year, and the price has been about 50 cents per pound. However, jelly bean producers feel that their incomes are too low and have convinced the government that price supports are in order. The government will therefore buy up as many jelly beans as necessary to keep the price at \(1 per pound. However, government economists are worried about the impact of this program because they have no estimates of the elasticities of jelly bean demand or supply.
a. Could this program cost the government more than \)50 million per year? Under what conditions?Could it cost less than \(50 million per year? Under what conditions? Illustrate with a diagram.
b. Could this program cost consumers (in terms of lost consumer surplus) more than \)50 million per year? Under what conditions? Could it cost consumers less than $50 million per year? Under what conditions? Again, use a diagram to illustrate.
From time to time, Congress has raised the minimum wage. Some people suggested that a government subsidy could help employers finance the higher wage. This exercise examines the economics of minimum wage and wage subsidies. Suppose the supply of low-skilled labor is given by
LS= 10w
where, LS is the quantity of low-skilled labor (in millions of persons employed each year), and w is the wage rate(in dollars per hour). The demand for labor is given by
LD= 80 - 10w
a. What will be the free-market wage rate and employment level? Suppose the government sets a minimum wage of \(5 per hour. How many people would then be employed?
b. Suppose that instead of a minimum wage, the government pays a subsidy of \)1 per hour for each employee. What will the total level of employment be now? What will the equilibrium wage rate be?
The domestic supply and demand curves for hula beans are as follows:
Supply: P = 50 + Q
Demand: P = 200 - 2Q
where P is the price in cents per pound and Q is the quantity in millions of pounds. The U.S. is a small producer in the world hula bean market, where the current price (which will not be affected by anything we do) is 60 cents per pound. Congress is considering a tariff of 40 cents per pound. Find the domestic price of hula beans that will result if the tariff is imposed. Also compute the dollar gain or loss to domestic consumers, domestic producers, and government revenue from the tariff.
In 1983, the Reagan administration introduced a new agricultural program called the Payment-in-Kind Program. To see how the program worked, let鈥檚 consider the wheat market:
Suppose the demand function is QD = 28 - 2P and the supply function is QS = 4 + 4P, where P is the price of wheat in dollars per bushel, and Q is the quantity in billions of bushels. Find the free-market equilibrium price and quantity.
Now suppose the government wants to lower the supply of wheat by 25 percent from the free-market equilibrium by paying farmers to withdraw land from production. However, the payment is made in wheat rather than in dollars鈥� hence the name of the program. The wheat comes from vast government reserves accumulated from previous price support programs. The amount of wheat paid is equal to the amount that could have been harvested on the land withdrawn from production. Farmers are free to sell this wheat on the market. How much is now produced by farmers?How much is indirectly supplied to the market by the government? What is the new market price? How much do farmers gain? Do consumers gain or lose?
Had the government not given the wheat back to the farmers, it would have stored or destroyed it. Do taxpayers gain from the program? What potential problems does the program create?
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