Phantom PC
A legally set maximum price on a good or service set below the equilibrium price to make goods affordable.
price ceiling
A legally set minimum price on a good or service set above equilibrium to support producer incomes.
What is a Price Floor?
Taxes imposed on spending for specific goods such as petrol, cigarettes, or alcohol.
What are Excise Taxes?
Financial assistance granted by the government to firms to lower costs and boost production.
subsidy
A hard lollipop on a stick with chocolate chewy candy hidden right in the center.
What is a Tootsie Pop?
The market disequilibrium created when the quantity demanded of vampire blood soda exceeds quantity supplied at a capped price
shortage
The market outcome created when quantity supplied exceeds quantity demanded due to a binding minimum price on giant pumpkins.
What is a Surplus (or Excess Supply)?
The reason these levies are classified as "indirect" taxes rather than direct taxes.
What is because they are paid to the government by producers, even though paid partly by consumers through higher prices?
The direction in which a per-unit subsidy shifts the market supply curve.
What is downward and to the right?
The Pumpkin King who accidentally steals Christmas in The Nightmare Before Christmas.
Jack skellington
Two non-price rationing techniques that landlords use to allocate apartments when rent control limits supply.
What are waiting lists, queues, favoritism, or key money/bribes?
The primary price floor policy set in labor markets to protect low-skilled workers.
The primary price floor policy set in labor markets to protect low-skilled workers.
The specific graphical shift of the supply curve when a per-unit excise tax is imposed on producers.
What is an upward (leftward) vertical shift by the exact amount of the tax?
The two primary private market stakeholders who directly benefit from lower prices and higher output under a subsidy.
Who are Consumers and Producers?
This Massachusetts town became world-famous for its infamous witch trials in 1692 and remains a top Halloween destination today.
Salem
Unrecorded, illegal transactions where sellers buy restricted goods at a ceiling price and resell them at higher prices in the dark
What is an Underground Market (or Black Market)?
Two methods governments use to dispose of excess agricultural crops purchased under price floor programs.
What are storing surpluses, exporting surpluses overseas (often with subsidies), or burning/destroying them?
The effect of an indirect tax on employment within the taxed industry.
What is a decrease in employment / worker lay-offs due to lower output produced?
The reason a subsidy creates deadweight loss in an already efficient free market.
What is overallocation of resources / overproduction beyond optimal equilibrium where marginal cost exceeds benefit?
According to urban legend, looking into a mirror in a dark room and repeating this spooky name three times summons this ghost
bloody mary
If equilibrium rent is $1,000, but the city imposes a rent ceiling at $600 where Qd = 500 and Qs = 200, this is the exact size of the housing shortage
300
A pumpkin price floor of $15 creates a supply of 800 and demand of 300. If the government buys the entire surplus, this is the total burden on the government budget.
What is $7,500
A $4 tax per bottle is placed on flying potion. If 100 bottles are sold at a new price of $14 paid by consumers, this is the total revenue collected by the government.
What is $400
The government grants a $5 per-unit subsidy on solar brooms. New output sold is 200 units, consumers pay $12, and producers receive $17. This is the total cost to the government budget.
What is $1,000
This 1962 novelty song by Bobby "Boris" Pickett hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts right before Halloween.
Monster mash