Chapter 1
Problems and Applications 1.
a.
A family deciding whether to buy a new car faces a trade-off between the cost of the car and other things they might want to buy. For example, buying the car might mean they must give up going on vacation for the next two years. So the real cost of the car is the family's opportunity cost in terms of what they must give up.
b.
For a member of Congress deciding whether to increase spending on national parks, the trade-off is between parks and other spending items or tax cuts. If more money goes into the park system, that may mean less spending on national defense or on the police force. Or, instead of spending more money on the park system, taxes could be reduced.
c.
When a company president decides whether to open a new factory, the decision is based on whether the new factory will increase the firm's profits compared to other alternatives. For example, the company could upgrade existing equipment or expand existing factories. The bottom line is: Which method of expanding production will increase profit the most?
d.
In deciding how much to prepare for class, a professor faces a trade-off between the value of improving the quality of the lecture compared to other things she could do with her time, such as working on additional research.
2.
When the benefits of something are psychological, such as going on a vacation, it is not easy to compare benefits to costs to determine if it is worth doing. But there are two ways to think about the benefits. One is to compare the vacation with what you would do in its place. If you did not go on vacation, would you buy something like a new set of golf clubs? Then you can decide if you would rather have the new clubs or the vacation. A second way is to think about how hard you had to work to earn the money to pay for the vacation. You can then decide if the psychological benefits of the vacation were worth the psychological cost of working.
3.
If you are thinking of going skiing instead of working at your part-time job, the cost of skiing includes its monetary and time costs, which includes the opportunity cost of the wages you are giving up by not working. If the choice is between skiing and going to the library to study, then the cost of skiing is its monetary and time costs including the cost of getting lower grades in your courses.
4.
If you spend $100 now instead of saving it for a year and earning 5 percent interest,
you are giving up the opportunity to spend $105 a year from now.
5.
The fact that you have already sunk $5 million is not relevant to your decision anymore, because that money is gone. What matters now is the chance to earn profits at the margin. If you spend another $1 million and can generate sales of $3 million, you'll earn $2 million in marginal profit, so you should do so. You are right to think that the project has lost a total of $3 million ($6 million in costs and only $3 million in revenue) and you should not have started it. That is true, but if you do not spend the additional $1 million, you will not have any sales and your losses will be $5 million. So what matters is not the total profit, but the profit you can earn at the margin. In fact, you would pay up to $3 million to complete development; any more than that, and you will not be increasing profit at the margin.
6.
Harry suggests looking at whether productivity would rise or fall. Productivity is certainly important, since the more productive workers are, the lower the cost per gallon of potion. Ron wants to look at average cost. But both Harry and Ron are missing the other side of the equation?revenue. A firm wants to maximize its profits, so it needs to examine both costs and revenues. Thus, Hermione is right?it is best to examine whether the extra revenue would exceed the extra costs. Hermione is the only one who is thinking at the margin.
7.
a.
The provision of Social Security benefits lowers an individual’s incentive to save for retirement. The benefits provide some level of income to the individual when he or she retires. This means that the individual is not entirely dependent on savings to support consumption through the years in retirement.
b.
Since a person gets fewer after-tax Social Security benefits the greater his or her earnings are, there is an incentive not to work (or not work as much) after age 65. The more you work, the lower your after-tax Social Security benefits will be. Thus, the taxation of Social Security benefits discourages work effort after age 65.
8.
b.
The loss of benefits means that someone who cannot find a job will get no income at all, so the distribution of income will become less equal. But the economy will be more efficient, because welfare recipients have a greater incentive to find jobs. Thus, the change in the law is one that increases efficiency but reduces equity.
9.
By specializing in each task, you and your roommate can finish the chores more quickly. If you divided each task equally, it would take you more time to cook than it would take your roommate, and it would take him more time to clean than it would take you. By
a. When welfare recipients have their benefits cut off after two years, they have a greater incentive to find jobs than if their benefits were to last forever.
specializing, you reduce the total time spent on chores.
Similarly, countries can specialize and trade, making both better off. For example, suppose it takes Spanish workers less time to make clothes than French workers, and French workers can make wine more efficiently than Spanish workers. Then Spain and France can both benefit if Spanish workers produce all the clothes and French workers produce all the wine, and they exchange wine for clothes.
10.
a.
To produce the right number of CDs by the right artists and deliver them to the right people requires an enormous amount of information. You need to know about production techniques and costs in the CD industry. You need to know each person's musical tastes and which artists they want to hear. If you make the wrong decisions, you will be producing too many CDs by artists that people do not want to hear, and not enough by others.
b.
Your decisions about CDs will carry over to other decisions. You have to make the right number of CD players for people to use. If you make too many CDs and not enough cassette tapes, people with cassette players will be stuck with CDs they cannot play. The probability of making mistakes is very high. You will also be faced with tough choices about the music industry compared to other parts of the economy. If you produce more sports equipment, you will have fewer resources for making CDs. So all decisions about the economy influence your decisions about CD production.
11.
Countries that have corrupt police and court systems do not enforce individual property rights, including the rights over the goods and services produced by households and firms. Firms will not choose to produce products and individuals will choose not to work if there is no guarantee that they will receive payment for their efforts. Therefore, these countries end up with a lower standard of living.
12.
a. Efficiency: The market failure comes from the market power of the cable TV
firm.
b. Equity
c. d. e. f.
13.
a.
If everyone were guaranteed the best health care possible, much more of our nation's output would be devoted to medical care than is now the case. Would that be efficient? If you believe that doctors have market power and restrict
Efficiency: An externality arises because secondhand smoke harms nonsmokers.
Efficiency: The market failure occurs because of Standard Oil's market power. Equity
Efficiency: There is an externality because of accidents caused by drunk drivers.
health care to keep their incomes high, you might think efficiency would increase by providing more health care. But more likely, if the government mandated increased spending on health care, the economy would be less efficient because it would give people more health care than they would choose to pay for. From the point of view of equity, if poor people are less likely to have adequate health care, providing more health care would represent an improvement. Each person would have a more even slice of the economic pie, though the pie would consist of more health care and less of other goods.
b.
When workers are laid off, equity considerations argue for the unemployment benefits system to provide them with some income until they can find new jobs. After all, no one plans to be laid off, so unemployment benefits are a form of insurance. But there is an efficiency problem?why work if you can get income for doing nothing? The economy is not operating efficiently if people remain unemployed for a long time, and unemployment benefits encourage unemployment. Thus, there is a trade-off between equity and efficiency. The more generous unemployment benefits are, the less income is lost by an unemployed person, but the more that person is encouraged to remain unemployed. So greater equity reduces efficiency.
14.
Because average income in the United States has roughly doubled every 35 years, we are likely to have a better standard of living than our parents, and a much better standard of living than our grandparents. This is mainly the result of increased productivity, so that an hour of work produces more goods and services than it used to. Thus, incomes have continuously risen over time, as has the standard of living.
15.
If Americans save more and it leads to more spending on factories, there will be an increase in production and productivity, because the same number of workers will have more equipment to work with. The benefits from higher productivity will go to both the workers, who will get paid more because they are producing more, and the factory owners, who will get a return on their investments. There is no such thing as a free lunch, however, because when people save more, they are giving up spending. They get higher incomes at the cost of buying fewer goods.
16.
To make an intelligent decision about whether to reduce inflation, a policymaker would need to know what causes inflation and unemployment, as well as what determines the trade-off between them. This means that the policymaker needs to understand how households and firms will adjust to a decrease in the money supply. How much will spending decline? How much will firms lower output? Any attempt to reduce inflation will likely lead to higher unemployment in the short run. A policymaker thus faces a trade-off between the benefits of lower inflation compared to the cost of higher unemployment.
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