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5. Imagine yourself in a conference call this time last year. You are one of eight producers of toilet paper in the country, each of
5. Imagine yourself in a conference call this time last year. You are one of eight producers of toilet paper in the country, each of whom has identical costs specified as TC; = 49? + 64, where qi is the weekly production of toilet paper per producer. Prior to the pandemic, the price of toilet paper was at its long run equilibrium of $32 (you can confirm that this is each producer's ATCmin). Due to the pandemic, the (inverse) demand for toilet paper shot up to P= 72-.5Q. On your conference call with the other 7 producers, it is suggested that producers band together for the good of the country and expand output without increasing the price too much. It is proposed that each producer supply toilet paper along its ATC curve and only charge its ATC. Since they were not earning economic profits before the pandemic, they argue, it doesn't seem right that they earn them now. You, however, studied economics and thus argue that using the ATC curve as your supply curve would be inefficient. In fact, the inefficiency can be measured (economists call it dead-weight loss) as an amount of money. It would be much better, you argue, to jack up the price of toilet paper along each producer's MC curve and donate the profits to vaccine production, or something equally worthy. Using the information given, calculate exactly the dead-weight loss of their proposal and explain in words what it is that makes their proposal inefficient
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