What is consumer surplus, and how is it measured? ANSWER: Consumer surplus measures the benefit to buyers of participating in a market. It is measured as the amount a buyer is willing to pay for a good minus the amount a buyer actually pays for it. For an individual purchase, consumer surplus is the difference between the willingness to pay, as shown on the demand curve, and the market price. F...

We characterize equilibria of oligopolistic markets where identical firms with constant marginal cost compete à la Cournot. For given maximal willingness to pay and total demand, we first identify all combinations equilibrium consumer surplus industry profit that can arise from arbitrary demand functions. Then, as a further restriction, fix the average above (i.e., first‐best surplus) possible ...

We study surplus extraction in the general environment of McAfee and Reny (1992), provide two alternative proofs their main theorem. The first is an analogue classic argument Crémer McLean, 1985, 1988, using geometric features set agents' beliefs to construct a menu contracts extracting desired surplus. This argument, which requires finite state space, also leads counterexample showing that ful...

For investment or professional service partnerships (in general, for partnerships where measures of the partners’ contributions are available), we consider a family of partnership agreements commonly used in real life. They allocate a fixed fraction of the surplus equally and the remains, proportional to contributions; and they allow this fraction to depend on whether the surplus is positive or...

Through the passage of time (and the passing of an examination or two), resident physicians transform themselves into unrestricted practitioners. Whether you see this as a good thing or not depends on your perspective. To the residents themselves, this metamorphosis is no less beautiful than a chrysalis becoming a butterfly. Others, though, may deem it a variation of the kitten/cat problem arti...

Surplus labor force and migration trends in China are examined, with emphasis on the impact of underemployment in rural areas. "Government policy encourages surplus labourers to transfer out of crop farming into agricultural sidelines or non-agricultural work. Peasants are urged to stay where they are, shifting jobs without shifting location; however, many rural areas are poorly endowed for pr...