Demand And Consumer Surplus

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Consumer surplus An economic measure of consumer satisfaction, which is calculated by analyzing the difference between what consumers are willing to pay for a good or service relative to its market price. A consumer surplus occurs when the consumer is willing to pay more for a given product than the current market price. Total benefit from the consumption of a product, less the total cost of purchasing it. Consumers always like to feel like they are getting a good deal on the goods and services they buy and consumer surplus is simply an economic measure of this satisfaction. For example, assume a consumer goes out shopping for a CD player and he or she is willing to spend $250. When this individual finds that the player is on sale for $150, economists would say that this person has a consumer surplus of $100. Price Elasticity of Demand A measure of the responsiveness of the quantity demanded of a good to a change in its price. It is calculated as: % change in Qty demanded/ % change in price. If a small change in price is accompanied by a large change in quantity demanded, the product is said to be elastic (or responsive to price changes). The opposite also applies, a product is inelastic if a large change in price is accompanied by a small amount of change in demand. A good economist is not just interested in calculating numbers. The number is a means to an end; in the case of price elasticity of demand it is used to see how sensitive the demand for a good is to a price change. The higher the price elasticity, the more sensitive consumers are to price changes. A very high price elasticity suggests that when the price of a good goes up, consumers will buy a great deal less of it and when the price of that good goes down, consumers will buy a great deal more. A very low price elasticity implies just the opposite, that changes in price have little influence
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