Suppose that an employer hires workers with blue eyes and workers with brown eyes. Each type of worker has the same productivity. Which of the following is correct if the employer discriminates by offering blue-eyed workers lower wages than brown-eyed workers?
a. The employer will be just as cost efficient as a nondiscriminating employer.
b. The employer will face higher costs than a nondiscriminating employer.
c. The employer will have lower costs.
d. The employer will have higher profits.
e. Both a and c are correct.
B
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Suppose that the consumer side of the market for good x can be modeled using a representative consumer with (initially - until part (d)) non-quasilinear preferences, and suppose the industry that produces x is perfectly competitive with identical firms. a. Illustrate a demand and supply graph with the market clearing price and quantity. b. Would a social planner who takes the distribution of income as given and seeks to maximize social surplus choose the same output quantity as the market clearing quantity in (a)?
c. Does your answer to (b) change if the social planner initially redistributes income in a lump-sum way and then maximizes social surplus? d. Next, suppose tastes are quasilinear in the good x and identical for all individuals. But there are two different types of consumers (represented in equal proportion in the population) - rich type 1 consumers and poor type 2 consumers. At their current income levels, type 2 consumers consume only the goodx (at quantity x? ) and no "other goods". For what type of lump-sum redistribution will we no longer be able to represent the consumer side as if it arose from choices by a representative consumer? e. Continuing with (d), suppose further that utility for an individual is given by the utility level associated with her consumption of xplus the dollar value of all other goods she consumes. Let type 2's utility level at her current consumption x? be given by u?. If she were to then also consume $10 worth of other goods, her utility would be (u? + 10). If a social planner could redistribute "$'s of other goods" from type 1 to type 2 in a lump-sum way, what shape would the utility possibility frontier have in the range where individuals get at least u?. f. Continuing with (e), draw the entire (first-best) utility possibility frontier (all the way to the horizontal and vertical axes) assuming that the utility possibility set has the feature you discovered in (e) and is convex. Indicate where on that utility possibility frontier we currently are in the absence of any redistribution. Which utility combination would be preferred to this by a Rawlsian social planner? Would a social planner who only cares about total utility object to the Rawlsian choice? g. Now suppose that every dollar that is redistributed entails a penny of deadweight loss. How would your answer to (f) change? What would have to be true for the Rawlsian social planner to let go of his desire for full equality? What will be an ideal response?
How does microeconomics differ from macroeconomics?
What will be an ideal response?
The labor supply curve facing a monopsonist is:
a. downward sloping. b. upward sloping. c. a horizontal line. d. backward bending. e. a vertical line.
If the absolute price elasticity of demand of a good is 1.8, then the total revenues will increase if its market price
A) increases. B) decreases. C) stays the same. D) changes, but we can't tell without more information if the price increases or decreases.