Elasticity Importance for Managerial Decision Making

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Managerial economics as defined by Edwin Mansfield is "concerned with application of economic concepts and economic analysis to the problems of formulating rational managerial decision.Elasticity is a measure of the responsiveness of one economic variable to another. For example, advertising elasticity is the relationship between a change in a firm's advertising budget and the resulting change in product sales. Economists are often interested in the price elasticity of demand, which measures the response of the quantity of an item purchased to a change in the item's price. A good or service is considered to be highly elastic if a slight change in price leads to a sharp change in demand for the product or service. Products and services that are highly elastic are usually more discretionary in nature—readily available in the market and something that a consumer may not necessarily need in his or her daily life. On the other hand, an inelastic good or service is one for which changes in price result in only modest changes to demand. These goods and services tend to be necessities. Elasticity is usually expressed as a positive number when the sign is already clear from context. Elasticity measures are reported as a proportional or percent change in the variable being studied. The general formula for elasticity, represented by the letter "E" in the equation below, is: E = percent change in x / percent change in y. Elasticity can be zero, one, greater than one, less than one, or infinite. When elasticity is equal to one there is unit elasticity. This means the proportional change in one variable is equal to the proportional change in another variable, or in other words, the two variables are directly related and move together. When elasticity is greater than one, the proportional change in x is greater than the proportional change in y and the situation is said to be

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