1. In this chapter we looked at three models of the short-run aggregate supply curve. All three models attempt to explain why, in the short run, output might deviate from its long-run “natural rate”—the level of output that is consistent with the full employment of labor and capital. All three models result in an aggregate supply function in which output deviates from its natural rate Y when th...

We analyze the welfare consequences of a monopolist having additional information about consumers’tastes, beyond the prior distribution; the additional information can be used to charge different prices to different segments of the market, i.e., carry out "third degree price discrimination". We show that the segmentation and pricing induced by the additional information can achieve every combin...

Japan's rice sector is supported by high prices paid by consumers that allow many farm households to maintain small rice farms. Japan's government controls trade within a tariff-rate quota and imposes a prohibitively high tariff on imports outside the quota. Within Japan, diversion programs pay farmers to substitute other crops for rice since, without government-mandated diversion, supply would...

Analysis of the welfare effect of advertising depends critically upon the effect of advertising on market prices. In many circumstances, advertising that leads to higher (lower) market prices is overproduced (underproduced) from society s perspective. This paper demonstrates that these predictions may not hold when consumer search costs are important. A model is developed to show how advertisin...

Electricity industries worldwide have been restructured in order to introduce competition.As a result, decisionmakers are exposed to volatile electricity prices, which are positively correlated with those of natural gas in markets with price-setting gas-fired power plants. Consequently, gas-fired plants are said to enjoy a “natural hedge.” We explore the properties of such a built-in hedge for ...

the study investigates consumers’ preference for cowpea reflected in the nigerian markets through price discounts and premiums that consumers pay for different cowpea characteristics. the price data used for this study were obtained through a market survey. a common data collection protocol was employed. every month, between october 2009 to december 2010, five cowpea samples per seller were bou...

In this paper, we empirically examine the effect of inflation targeting on the exchange rate pass-through to prices in emerging countries. We use a panel VAR that allows us to use the larger data set on twenty-seven emerging countries (fifteen inflation targeters and twelve inflation nontargeters). Our evidence suggests that inflation targeting in emerging countries has helped to reduce the pas...