Price ceiling and Price Floor

When a price ceiling is in place keeping the price below the market price, what’s larger: quantity demanded or quantity supplied?

• Quantity demanded

• Quantity supplied.

• Indeterminate with the given information.

• Neither

Suppose that the market for coats is described as follows: What is the equilibrium price of coats?

• 120

• 100

• 80

• 60

Suppose the government sets a price ceiling of $80. How large will the shortage be?

• 5 million coats

• 4 million coats

• 3 million coats

• 2 million coats

Suppose again that the government sets a price ceiling of $80 and that people line up to get this good. For how long will people wait in line to obtain a coat if they value their time at $10 an hour?

• 2 hours

• 3 hours

• 4 hours

• neither

Between 2000 and 2008, the price of oil increased from $30 per barrel to $140 per barrel, and the price of gasoline in the United States rose from about $1.50 per gallon to over $4.00 per gallon. Unlike in the 1970s when oil prices spiked, there were no long lines outside gas stations. Why?

• Government intervened to prevent lines

• Government intervened to enact gasoline rations

• There was no price control on gasoline at the time

Price controls distribute resources in many unintended ways. In the following cases below, who will probably spend more time waiting in line to get scarce, price-controlled goods? Choose one from each pair:

• Working people

• Retired people

Which job exists in part because time-sensitive wealthy individuals want to pay someone else to wait in line for them?

• Fast food employees

• Ticket scalpers

• Construction workers

• Truck drivers

During a crisis such as Hurricane Katrina, governments often make it illegal to raise the price of emergency items like flashlights and bottled water. In practice, this means that these items get sold on a first-come, first-served basis. If a person has a flashlight that she values at $5, but its price on the black market is $40, what gains from trade are lost if the government shuts down the black market?

• $45

• $30

• $35

• $25

When will entrepreneurs be more likely to fill up their pickup trucks with flashlights and drive into a disaster area: when they can sell their flashlights for $5 each or when they can sell them for $40 each?

• $45

• $40

• $35

• £40

In the late 1990s, the city of Santa Monica, California, made it illegal for banks to charge people ATM fees. As you probably know, it’s almost always free to use your own bank’s ATMs, but there’s usually a fee charged when you use another bank’s ATM. (Source: The War on ATM Fees, Time, November 29, 1999). As soon as Santa Monica passed this law, Bank of America stopped allowing customers from other banks to use their ATMs: In bank jargon, B of A banned “out-of-network” ATM usage. In fact, this ban only lasted for a few days, after which a judge allowed banks to continue to charge fees while awaiting a full court hearing on the issue. Eventually, the court declared the fee ban illegal under federal law. But let’s imagine the effect of a full ban on out-of-network fees. Calculate the exact amount of producer and consumer surplus in the out-of-network ATM market in Santa Monica after the ban. How large is consumer surplus?

• 10

• 0

• 15

• 5