Research Catalog

Title

Consumer surplus, demand functions, and policy analysis / Frank Camm.

Author

Camm, Frank A., 1949-

Publication

Santa Monica, CA : Rand Corp., 1983.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

Rand Corporation.

Description

xv, 98 p. : ill.; 28 cm.

Summary

This report explains how demand functions can be used properly to measure policy-induced changes in consumer surplus. For the most part, it brings together existing results from the economics literature and presents them in a common, systematic framework. Its goal is to provide the practicing policy analyst with a rigorous and intuitive understanding of the most common measures of consumer surplus used today. Section II develops the concept of consumer surplus at the level of the individual and contrasts the concepts associated with Hicks, Marshall, and Harberger. Section III explains how these concepts are related to different kinds of demand curves and to areas to the left of policy-induced consumption loci. Section IV discusses how to aggregate measures of consumer surplus across individuals and integrates the notion of consumer surplus with more general concerns about how policies affect social welfare. Section V closes the report with some notes on how to choose a measure of consumer surplus for a particular policy problem.

Subject

• Consumers' surplus
• Demand functions (Economic theory)

Note

• "September 1983."
• "R-3048-RC."

Bibliography (note)

• Bibliography: p. 97-98.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

ISBN

0833005162

LCCN

^^^83017614^

OCLC

• 9829156
• SCSB-10398197

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library