The market for vodka is described as the following: Supply: P = 5 + QS 10 Demand: P = 20? QD 5

However, drinking vodka causes $3 worth of harm per bottle to the rest of society, through health care costs, reduced productivity, and drunken mistakes.

(a) Sketch a graph of this market. Calculate the private equilibrium price, quantity, producer surplus, consumer surplus, total external costs, and total surplus. (Be careful about fractions.) Label the area of deadweight loss on your graph.

(b) Now suppose the government puts in a Pigouvian tax of $3 per bottle onto suppliers to cancel out the harms, so the new supply curve is:

Supply: P = 8 + QS 10

Show this supply shift on your previous graph of the market. Calculate the new social equilibrium, CS and PS (using the new supply curve), external costs and tax revenue, and total surplus. How much did total surplus change?

(c) Tax revenue from Pigouvian tax in theory should be targeted at solving the problems that the externality creates. What can the government spend the tax revenue on to best balance the externality?

Answer rating: 100% (QA)

a To sketch the graph well plot the supply and demand curves and calculate the private equilibrium price quantity producer surplus consumer surplus total external costs and total surplus Supply P 5 QS ... View the full answer