1st final exam Flashcards
(126 cards)
Externalities occur where…
the social costs and benefits differ from the private costs and benefits.
Negative externality:
Social cost greater than private cost (or social benefit less than private benefit).
Positive externality:
Positive externality: Social cost less than private cost (or social benefit greater than private benefit).
MR=
MSB
information asymmetry:
Where one party has information not available to another party
Pure public goods:
Non-excludable
Non-exhaustible
Non-excludable (not possible to exclude free-riders) public goods:
Implies no private market is possible
Non-exhaustible
implies that the ‘allocative efficiency’ price should be 0 (price=MC=0)
Mixed public goods
A broader category of products (goods and services) that have elements of the characteristics of public goods, while not full meeting the criteria for a pur public good
Merit goods=
goods and services which tend to create positive externalities
Regulations:
- Those protecting consumers from the consequences of ‘market failure’
- Those preventing ‘market failure’ from happening in the first place
Potential benefits of deregulation:
- Opening markets up to competition
- Removing obstacles to business efficiency
- Raising economic welfare
Effects of privatization:
- Greater efficiency
- Greater managerial freedom
- Wider share ownership
- More government revenue
Public choice theory:
- This sees politicians and civil servants as seeking to maximize their own interests rather than those of the consumers of the public sector (nationalized) industry
- Politicians seek votes, civil servants seek to ‘please’ their departments (headed by politicians)
Property rights theory:
- This sees the owners of public/ nationalized industries as being unable to exercise effective control over them
- The public is a broad set of people who cannot influence the policies of the public sector/ nationalized industries in the same way as shareholders who have voting rights and can directly influence companies
Privatization: x-inefficiency
This sees public sector/ nationalized industries as being under less pressure to maximize profit that their private sector counterparts.
As a result the public sector may be content to allow costs to be higher then they need to be
Arguments for privatization:
- Greater efficiency
- Wider share ownership
- More government revenue
- More managerial freedom
Arguments against privatization:
- Simply converts state monopoly to private monopoly
- Need bureaucracy to regulate private monopoly
- In practice concentration of share ownership tends to increase
- Loss of government revenue
- Natural monopoly
LRAC
Long-run averagee cost curve
Regulators try to limit:
the possible abuse of market power in the privatixed industries
Establishing a price gap:
this method is to set a maximum price
Encouraging new maket entry:
Another method is to reduce the barriers to entry facing new firms
Three conditions determine EU involvment:
- Companies to merge must have combined turnover >5bn Euros
- EU involved if at least two companies involved have an EU turnover of 250m Euro or more
- EU not involved if all parties to mergehave two-thirds of turnover in same member state
How much time EU has after notification of proposed merger to start proceedings?
One month