The condition for when a price control increases consumer welfare in perfect competition is tighter than often realised.  When demand is linear, a small restriction on price only increases consumer surplus if the eleasticity of demand exceeds the elasticity of supply; with log-linear or...

The condition for when a price control increases consumer welfare in perfect competition is tighter than often realised. When demand is linear, a small restriction on price only increases consumer surplus if the elasticity of demand exceeds the elasticity of supply; with log-linear or...

The condition for when a price control increases consumer welfare in perfect competition is tighter than often realised. When demand is linear, a small restriction on price only increases consumer surplus if the elasticity of demand exceeds the elasticity of supply; with log-linear or...

Price controls lead to misallocation of goods and encourage rent-seeking. The misallocation effect alone ensures that a price control always reduces consumer surplus in an otherwise-competitive market with convex demand if supply is more elastic than demand; or with log-convex demand (e.g.,...

Price controls lead to misallocation of goods and encourage rent-seeking. The misallocation effect alone is enough to ensure that consumer surplus is always reduced by a price control in an otherwise-competitive market with convex demand if supply is more elastic than demand; or when demand is...

Price controls lead to misallocation of goods and encourage rent-seeking. The misallocation effect alone is enough to ensure that consumer surplus is always reduced by a price control in an otherwise-competitive market with convex demand if supply is more elastic than demand; or when demand is...

The paper addresses the following question: How efficient is the market system in allocating resources if trade takes place at some prices p that are not necessarily competitive? Even though there are many partial answers to this question, an answer that stands comparison to the rigor by which...

We study the problem of how to allocate a set of indivisible objects like jobs or houses and an amount of money among a group of people as fairly and as efficiently as possible. A particular constraint for such an allocation is that every person should be assigned with the same number of objects...

We examine the relation between rent control and prices of owner occupied housing in the presence of different qualities of housing. While a rent ceiling and the price of condominiums are substitutes if housing is undifferentiated, it is shown that this is not necessarily the case when housing...