Regulated Prices, Rent Seeking, and Consumer Surplus

S-Tier
Journal: Journal of Political Economy
Year: 2012
Volume: 120
Issue: 1
Pages: 160 - 186

Authors (2)

Jeremy Bulow (not in RePEc) Paul Klemperer (Oxford University)

Score contribution per author:

4.022 = (α=2.01 / 2 authors) × 4.0x S-tier

α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count

Abstract

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., constant elasticity) even if supply is inelastic. The same results apply whether rationed goods are allocated by costless lottery or whether costly rent seeking and/or partial decontrol mitigates the inefficiency. Our analysis exploits the observation that in any market, consumer surplus equals the area between the demand curve and the industry marginal revenue curve.

Technical Details

RePEc Handle
repec:ucp:jpolec:doi:10.1086/665416
Journal Field
General
Author Count
2
Added to Database
2026-01-25