Unit 5 Assignment: Elasticity of Demand and Consumer Surplus
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This assignment focuses on calculating the Price Elasticity of Demand, understanding consumer choices based on marginal utilities, consumer surplus, and how buying choices and consumer surplus change based on various pricing schemes.
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Unit 5AB224 | Microeconomics Unit 5 Assignment: Elasticity of Demand and Consumer Surplus Name: Course Number and Section: AB224–0X Date: General Instructions for all Assignments 1. Unless specified differently by your course instructor, save this assignment template to your computer with the following file naming format: Course number_section number_Last_First_unit number 2. At the top of the template, insert the appropriate information: Your Name, Course Number and Section, and the Date 3. Insert your answers below, or in the appropriate space provided for in the question. Your answers should follow APA format with citations to your sources and, at the bottom of your last page, a list of references. Your answers should also be in Standard English with correct spelling, punctuation, grammar, and style (double spaced, in Times New Roman, 12–point, and black font). Respond to questions in a thorough manner, providing specific examples of concepts, topics, definitions, and other elements asked for in the questions. 4. Upload the completed Assignment to the appropriate Dropbox. 5. Any questions about the Assignment, or format questions, should be directed to your course instructor. Assignment In this Assignment, you will calculate the Price Elasticity of Demand, demonstrate a firm understanding of consumer choices based on differing marginal utilities, consumer surplus, and how the buying choice and amount of consumer surplus changes based on various pricing schemes. In this Assignment, you will be assessed on the following outcome: AB224-5:Demonstrate how the concept of utility affects purchasing decisions by individuals and consumer surplus. v.6.16.17Page1of10
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Unit 5AB224 | Microeconomics Questions 1. The accompanying table shows the price and monthly demand for barrels of gosum berries inGondwanaland. Price of gosum berries per barrel Native Demand for gosum berries per month $1000 $90100 $80200 $70300 $60400 $50500 $40600 $30700 $20800 $10900 $01000 a.Using the midpoint method (show your work), calculate the price elasticity of demand when the price of barrel of gosum berries rises from $10 to $20. What does this estimate imply about the price elasticity of demand of gosum berries? As price increases from $10 to $20, the demand for gosum berries decreases from 900 to 800 Priceelastityofdemand=Percentagechange∈quantitydemand Percentagechange∈price ¿ΔQ ΔP×Paverage Qaverage v.6.16.17Page2of10
Unit 5AB224 | Microeconomics ¿Q2−Q1 P2−P1 × P1+P2 2 Q1+Q2 2 800−900 20−10× 10+20 2 900+800 2 ¿100 −10×10 850 ¿−10×0.0176 ¿−0.176−0.18 b.Using the midpoint method (show your work), calculate the price elasticity of demand when the price of barrel of gosum berries rises from $70 to $80. What does this estimate imply about the price elasticity of demand of gosum berries? As price increases from $70 to $80, the demand for gosum berries decreases from 300 to 200 Priceelastityofdemand=Percentagechange∈quantitydemand Percentagechange∈price ¿ΔQ ΔP×Paverage Qaverage ¿Q2−Q1 P2−P1 × P1+P2 2 Q1+Q2 2 200−300 80−70× 70+80 2 300+200 2 ¿100 −10×75 250 ¿−10×0.3000 ¿−3 v.6.16.17Page3of10
Unit 5AB224 | Microeconomics c.Notice thatthe estimates from (a) and (b) above are different. Why do price elasticity of demand estimates change along the demand curve? Price elasticity is a measure of percentage change in nominal price and quantity, at different points of the demand curve elasticity differs. At a higher price, small change in price is a small percentage of the high price (McKenzie & Lee, 2016). A small change in quantity at this point however is a larger percentage of exiting small quantity, resulting in a higher elasticity of demand. Reverse is the case at the lower price. Here, price change seems to be very larger relative to quantity changes resulting in an inelastic demand. This is the reason why elasticity is relatively smaller when price increases from $10 to $20 compared to the situation where price increases from $70 to $80. 2. Matilda is downloading music and videos from an online site. She is currently buying three music downloads that cost $3 each and two video downloads that also cost $3 each. The table below indicates what she reports as the marginal utility of the last music download and of the last video download in this combination of purchases. QuantityPrice per Download MU per download Music downloads3$360 Video downloads2$345 As an assignment for her Microeconomics course, Matilda used the marginal utilities that she gave to her 3rdmusic download and her 2ndvideo download to complete the Experiment Tally Sheet below. v.6.16.17Page4of10
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Unit 5AB224 | Microeconomics a.A consumer maximizes utility when the last dollar spent on any good generates the same satisfaction as the last dollar spent on every other good. Is Matilda maximizing her utility? Explain your answer. A consumer attains maximum utility when marginal utility obtained from last dollar spent is same for all the good (Nguyen & Wait, 2015). The marginal utility for Music download is 60 and price is $3. The marginal utility from last dollar spent on music download is therefore (60/3) = 20. The marginal utility for Video download is 45 and price is $3. The marginal utility from last dollar spent on Video download is therefore (45/3) = 15. As the marginal utility per dollar between music download and video download are not same, Matilda is not maximizing utility. b.Should Matilda consume one more video download, to move her closer to her optimum utility?Explain your answer. The marginal utility obtain per dollar for video download is 15. This is less than the corresponding marginal utility received from music download. Consuming one additional video download will further reduce marginal utility from video download. Therefore, consuming one more video download does not move Matilda closer to the optimum utility even though she is closer to exhausting all her budget. c.Should Matilda consume onelessmusic download and onemorevideo download, to move her closer to her optimum utility?Explain your answer. Consuming one less music download increase marginal utility from music download while Consuming one less video downloads will further lower the marginal utility from video download. This will create further divergence between music download and video download. Neither the marginal utility between two items equalize nor the decision leads closer to spending all her budget. Therefore, consumption of one less music download and one extra video download will not move Matilda closer to her optimum utility. d.Should Matilda consume one more music download, to move her closer to her optimum utility?Explain your answer. One more music download will lower marginal utility from the additional unit reducing the difference of marginal utility from last dollar spent between music download and video download (Cowell, 2018). This moves her closer to optimal utility and exhaust almost all here budget. v.6.16.17Page5of10
Unit 5AB224 | Microeconomics 3. Brandon and his family often rent movies from the new internet movie streaming service, Xanadu. The table below shows Brandon’s demand schedule for eight movie rentals that Brandon’s family is interested in watching. Number of internet video rentals Willingness to pay each rental 1stmovie rental$7 2ndmovie rental$6 3rdmovie rental$5 4thmovie rental$4 5thmovie rental$3 6thmovie rental$2 7thmovie rental$1 8thmovie rental$0 a. If the price of the price of each movie rental from Xanadu is $3, how many movie rentals will Brandon buy and how much consumer surplus does Brandon receive? Explain your answer. If price of each movie rental is $3, then Brandon and his family will buy 5 movie rental. Total consumer surplus at this price is the sum of consumer surplus from each unit of the movie rental (Baumol & Blinder, 2015). Consumer surplus from 1stmovie rental = Willingness to pay for the unit – market price = $7 - $3 = $4 Consumer surplus from 2ndmovie rental = Willingness to pay for the unit – market price = $6 - $3 = $3 Consumer surplus from 3rdmovie rental = Willingness to pay for the unit – market price = $5 - $3 = $2 Consumer surplus from 4thmovie rental = Willingness to pay for the unit – market price = $4 - $3 = $1 Consumer surplus from 5thmovie rental = Willingness to pay for the unit – market price = $3 - $3= 0 Total consumer surplus = 4+3+2+1+0 =10 b. Ifthe price of the price of each movie rental from Xanadu is $5, how many movie rentals will Brandon buy and how much consumer surplus does Brandon receive? Explain your answer. v.6.16.17Page6of10
Unit 5AB224 | Microeconomics If price of movie rental become $5, them Brandon will buy 3 movie rentals. The consumer surplus corresponding to this price can be obtained as Consumer surplus from 1stmovie rental = Willingness to pay for the unit – market price = $7 - $5 = $2 Consumer surplus from 2ndmovie rental = Willingness to pay for the unit – market price = $6 - $5= $1 Consumer surplus from 3rdmovie rental = Willingness to pay for the unit – market price = $5 - $5 = 0 Total consumer surplus is therefore = (2+1+0) =3 c. Ifthe Xanadu online service offers as many movie rentals as the customer wants to download, all for on-time yearly subscription fee of $25.00, how many movie rentals will Brandon download and how much consumer surplus will Brandon receive? Explain your answer. The willingness to pay for all the 8 unit of movie rental for Brandon equals = ($7+$6+$5+$4+$3+ $2+$1+0) = $28. Therefore, if the subscription fee is $25 and customers can download as many movie as they want this would benefit Brandon, as the fee is lower than the willingness to pay (Friedman, 2017). At the fixed subscription fee of $25.00, Brandon now will download all 8-movie rental. Brandon will receive a consumer surplus of ($28 - $25) = $3 d. Ifthe Xanadu online service offers as many movie rentals as the customer wants to download, all for on-time yearly subscription fee of $35.00, how many movie rentals will Brandon download and how much consumer surplus will Brandon receive? Explain your answer. If for all on-time yearly subscription fee is $35, then Brandon will not subscribe as the fee exceeds maximum willingness to pay of $28 for Brandon. Therefore, he will not subscribe to movie rental. e. If the Xanadu’s market research showed that Brandon’s demand represented what most of Xanadu’s customers wanted, what would be the most that Xanadu could charge as a one-time annual fee for all the downloads that the customer wanted? v.6.16.17Page7of10
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Unit 5AB224 | Microeconomics The maximum willingness to pay for 8 movie rentals is $28. Xanadu therefore should charge $28 as a one-time annual fee for all download that customers wanted. 4. Newspaper vending machines are designed so that once you have paid for one paper; you have access to all the papers in the machine and could take multiple papers at a time. However, other vending machines dispense only one item (the item you bought). You do not have access to all the goods (sodas, candy, snacks, etc.) at one time. Using the concept of marginal utility, explain why these vending machines differ? For newspaper vending machines, one-time payment give access to all the papers. People benefit a little from getting two or more of the same paper. The marginal utility is close to zero for another same paper. The case is however different for other vending machines. For example, as consumers consuming sugary soda, salty snacks and other get more and more utility from consuming more and more (Cowen & Tabarrok, 2015). The difference in marginal utility raises the need for increasing security for other vending machines compared to newspaper vending. v.6.16.17Page8of10
Unit 5AB224 | Microeconomics -------------------------------------------- References: Baumol, W. J., & Blinder, A. S. (2015).Microeconomics: Principles and policy. Nelson Education. Cowell, F. (2018).Microeconomics: principles and analysis. Oxford University Press. Cowen, T., & Tabarrok, A. (2015).Modern principles of microeconomics. Macmillan International Higher Education. Friedman, L. S. (2017).The microeconomics of public policy analysis. Princeton University Press. McKenzie, R. B., & Lee, D. R. (2016).Microeconomics for MBAs: The economic way of thinking for managers. Cambridge University Press. Nguyen, B., & Wait, A. (2015).Essentials of Microeconomics. Routledge. v.6.16.17Page9of10
Unit 5AB224 | Microeconomics Unit 5 Assignment: Elasticity of Demand and Consumer Surplus Grading Rubric: Content Percent Possible Points Possible Full Assignment100%80 Overall Writing:20%16 Correct coversheet information at the top of 1st page5%4.00 APA format for answers3%2.40 Correct citations3%2.40 Standard English, no errors4%3.20 At least one, or more, references5%4.00 Answers: provides complete information demonstrating analysis and critical thinking:80%64 Individual Questions: 1. a. - Calculate price elasticity of demand ($10-$20), Explain.10%8.00 1. b. - Calculate price elasticity of demand ($70-$80), Explain.10%8.00 1. c. - Why do these Dpe estimates change at various prices?10%8.00 2. a. Is utility maximized at 3rd music and 2nd video? Explain.5%4.00 2. b. Is utility maximized at 3rd music and 3rd video? Explain.5%4.00 2. c. Is utility maximized at 2nd music and 3rd video? Explain.5%4.00 2. d. Is utility maximized at 4th music and 2nd video? Explain.5%4.00 3. a. Brandon's number of video rentals and Consumer Surplus at $3/rental.5%4.00 3. b. Brandon's number of video rentals and Consumer Surplus at $5/rental.5%4.00 3. c. Brandon's number of video rentals and Consumer Surplus at $25 subscription price.5%4.00 3. d. Brandon's number of video rentals and Consumer Surplus at $35 subscription price.5%4.00 3. e. Xanadu's maximum subscription price.5%4.00 4. - What are the differences between newspaper and snack vending machines (considering utility)?5%4.00 Sub-total for Individual Questions:80%64 v.6.16.17Page10of10