Question

1. Suppose individuals A and B have the same money income and tastes and face the same set of prices of all goods except access to a free National Park. (They will be 2 points on the same demand curve; find the equation to the line and the X and Y intercepts.) Individual A lives farther away than individual B and has higher travel costs. Their annual use is summarized as:

Individual	Cost per Visit	Visits per Year
A	$15	10
B	$5	20

How much consumer surplus does each individual receive per year from the park usage? What are the total social benefits (as measured by the sum of the consumer surplus measures) from the park?

2. A worker, who is typical in all respects, works for a wage of $50,000 per year in a perfectly safe occupation. Another typical worker does a job requiring exactly the same skills as the first worker, but in a risky occupation with a known death probability of 1 in 10,000 per year, and receives a wage of $60,000 per year. What value of a human life for workers with these characteristics should a cost-benefit analyst use?  

3. Manufacturers in an urban environment are currently producing 25,000 widgets per year. Their gross revenue is $300 per widget with variable costs of $125 per widget. Air quality in the city has fallen to a level of 20 points measured on a 0-100 scale. Three proposals could improve the air quality. Option I involves annual direct costs of $100,000 which raises the air quality index to 32; option 2 costs $130,000 per year and raises the index to 42; option 3 costs $150,000 per year and raises the index to 50. Also producers are required to reduce their widget output by: 5% under option 1, 10% under option 2, and 15% under option 3.

a. Which option has the lowest total opportunity cost?

b. Which option has the lowest cost per unit of air quality improvement?

c. Why might neither of these be the most efficient?

Answer 1

Solution 1:

Solution 2:

Safe job wage = $50,000

Risky job wage = $60,000

Risk of death = 0.001

Risk of safe life = 1-0.001 = 0.999

Thus, expected value of life of worker in risky job = 0.001($0) + 0.999($60,000) = $59940

Thus, the expected human life should be assumed to be somewhere between $50,000 - $35964

Solution 3;