Talk:Consumer surplus

Untitled
The rule of one half is a bit pathetic.


 * Then you should edit it to make it less "pathetic". This is wikipedia. dml 01:10, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

I have added a bit of information relating to how consumer surplus can be found with calculus. Does anyone know how to make the TeX formulas look nicer?

CS versus EV and CV
One criticism of consumer's surplus is that it includes the increase in welfare due to the change in price of the good and change in utility from reallocating income. (CS is the integral of price along the Marshallian demand curve.) Compensating variation and equivalent variation only include the change in welfare due to the price change by holding utility constant. (CV and EV are integrals of price along the Hicksian (compensated) demand curve either at the old utility level or the new one.) All three can be plotted on the same graph, which is fairly enlightening. However, I wonder if I should make a section comparing CS to EV/CV for fear of muddling the article. Articles already exist for these topics. Coleca 02:01, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

--- I have written Wikipedia the following: After re-reading the Wikipedia article again, I found that this was not only unclear, well ... it’s wrong! It says: "Consumer surplus or Consumer's surplus (or in the plural Consumers' surplus) is the difference between the number of products and the amount of consumers willing to buy it, it can be positive or negative."

No! Note: the red line on the graph represents the price that people are willing to pay at a given quanity - someone will pay the top price, others will not buy the item below the competitive market price (where you placed the world equilibrium). The consumer surplus (if you look at the graph) is the difference between the purchase price (what consumers pays) and the price they were willing to pay (like if every item was auctioned off) – so the difference is the surplus! In aggregate (like the math tells us), it the sum of all the individual surpluses. And it can not be negative - it can be zero but not negative – you cannot pay more than you are willing to pay … because if it is more than you willing to pay then you will not pay for it.

econadvice.blogspot.com

Merge with Economic Surplus?
I think this article is redundant. It should be merged with Economic surplus. What parts from this article ought to be carried over to the other? Neither the example of the decomposition of gains from an expansion in supply, nor the Rule of one half seem all that useful.

David McArthur 15:44, 13 March 2007 (UTC)


 * disagree entirely, CS is an important concept that can stand on its owm. dml 17:37, 13 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Given that producer surplus (which in importance is similar to consumers' surplus) redirects to economic surplus, I think that the merge is a good idea. Qblik 21:11, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

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I am an economics student at a university, and I found this article very useful as I needed the formula to find consumer surplus. Thanks Wikipedia! -Rebecca from Houston, TX