Price Floors: Airline Fares
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Not Synced♪ [music] ♪
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Not Synced- [Alex] In our final video
on price floors, -
Not Syncedwe'll look at the last two effects,
-
Not Syncedand we'll take a close look
at the example of airline regulation -
Not Syncedin the United States.
-
Not SyncedWe've shown using
the minimum wage -
Not Syncedhow price floors create surpluses
and also lost gains from trade. -
Not SyncedWe now want to look
at wasteful increases in quality -
Not Syncedand a misallocation of resources,
and for that we're going to turn -
Not Syncedto a different example: the regulation
by the Civil Aeronautics Board -
Not Syncedof airline fares.
-
Not SyncedFrom 1938 to 1978,
the Civil Aeronautics Board -
Not Syncedregulated airlines.
-
Not SyncedCAB regulations restricted entry,
-
Not Syncedthey prevented new competitors
from entering the industry, -
Not Syncedand they kept air fares
well above market levels. -
Not SyncedThere's some interesting evidence
-
Not Syncedby the way on how high the CAB kept fares
above market rates. Within-state air -
Not Syncedroutes were not controlled by the CAB;
they were unregulated by the CAB. -
Not SyncedTherefore, the price of flights between
cities within a state, such as between LA -
Not Syncedand San Francisco, was not regulated by the
CAB. Looking at the prices of these -
Not Syncedflights, economists found out that they
were half the price of equal-distance -
Not Syncedflights which were between two different
states and thus which were regulated by -
Not Syncedthe CAB. So it looked like the CAB was
keeping the prices of airline flights -
Not Syncedtwice as high as market rates. Now you
might wonder why they were doing this. In -
Not Syncedfact the CAB is a classic example of a
regulatory agency which many people argue -
Not Syncedwas captured by the industry that it was
meant to regulate. Instead of regulating -
Not Syncedairlines, it was regulated by the airlines.
It was controlled by the airlines. In any -
Not Syncedcase, the result of preventing competition
by price was that airlines competed for -
Not Syncedcustomers on the basis of quality rather
than of price. -
Not SyncedNow to see how this worked and why this
was actually a bad thing, why you can have -
Not Syncedtoo much quality, let's take a look at our
model. OK, here's our model: along the -
Not Syncedhorizontal axis we have the quality of
flights; along the vertical axis we have -
Not Syncedthe price, demand, supply and market
equilibrium. And here is the price floor, -
Not Syncedthe CAB-regulated fare. This was the price
below which it was illegal for the -
Not Syncedairline to sell its tickets. At this
price we could read the quantity demanded -
Not Syncedoff the demand curve which is given by
this amount here. This is the size of the -
Not Syncedindustry or the quantity of flights
demanded. It's also the quantity supplied. -
Not SyncedBecause the CAB regulated entry, they kept
entry just to that level which was -
Not Syncednecessary to satisfy the quantity demanded
at the regulated fare. Here's the key -
Not Syncedpoint: at the quantity demanded, the
sellers, the price at which they're -
Not Syncedwilling to sell, is much below the
regulated fare, the price which demanders -
Not Syncedare paying. This meant that being in the
airline industry was extremely profitable -
Not Syncedbecause they were selling a good when
their cost was down here and the price -
Not Syncedthat they were selling it at was up here.
So this entire rectangle here was profit, -
Not Synceda very profitable industry because the price
was kept well above the cost. But now each -
Not Syncedairline really wanted more customers and
this in fact was the genesis of the -
Not Syncedundoing of the plan because each airline
was trying to compete to get more of these -
Not Syncedprofitable customers but they couldn't
compete by lowering the price. So how do -
Not Syncedyou get more customers if you can't
compete by lowering the price? -
Not SyncedWell, by increasing quality.
-
Not SyncedIndeed at this time it was wonderful if
you could afford it to be on an airplane -
Not Syncedbecause the seats were wide, the
stewardesses were nice and kind, and you got -
Not Synceda lot of free food. You got good quality
food, sometimes served on bone china. You -
Not Syncedgot to fly direct. Even some airplanes -
believe it or not - had piano bars on them -
Not Syncedin order to attract more customers. But
all of this competition in terms of -
Not Syncedquality was raising the cost to the
airline. In addition, these profits -
Not Syncedattracted the unions. The unions said
"well we want a chunk of this," so wages -
Not Syncedwould start to go up. So what happened is
that the airlines gave up this profit or -
Not Syncedproducer surplus by competing in terms of
better meals, more frequent service and so -
Not Syncedforth. You might say "well what's wrong
with quality?" But what's wrong is the -
Not Syncedairlines were producing quality even when
the cost of that quality was higher than -
Not Syncedthe value to the customers. This was a
form of quality waste. It was too much -
Not Syncedquality: it was quality for which the cost
was greater than the value to the -
Not Syncedcustomers. We can also show the deadweight
loss which you've seen before, so -
Not Syncedyou have the quality waste and the dead
weight loss. In the 1970's there was -
Not Syncedderegulation of the airlines, and the Civil
Aeronautics Board in fact was eliminated, -
Not Syncedhighly unusual for bureaucracy to be
eliminated. The result was that fares went -
Not Synceddown dramatically, the quantity of air
flights went up, quality waste -
Not Synceddisappeared. This meant of course that
rich people found that it wasn't so -
Not Syncedpleasant to travel on the airlines as it
used to be, but fares were a lot lower and -
Not Syncedoverall customers appreciated lower fares
more than they were upset -
Not Syncedby the reduced quality.
-
Not SyncedRemember, an airline can always offer
quality if the customers want to pay for -
Not Syncedit. But, the customers decided they would
rather have the lower fares. That's -
Not Syncedanother way of seeing that there was
quality waste: the fact that after -
Not Syncedderegulation fares went down and quality
went down indicated that the quality -
Not Syncedreally wasn't worth what people had been
paying for it. This also is the genesis of -
Not Synceda lot of problems in the airline industry
as the older airlines had trouble funding -
Not Syncedunion benefits. They promised all of their
employees these big benefits when profits -
Not Syncedwere high because of regulation and
restrictions of competition, and they had -
Not Syncedtrouble supplying these benefits once
regulation ended. Price floors and -
Not Syncedregulations such as that provided by the
Civil Aeronautics Board created -
Not Syncedmisallocation of resources. In particular
it prevented competition. In 1938 - believe -
Not Syncedit or not - there were 16 major airlines. In
1974 just before deregulation there were -
Not Synced10 airlines, fewer than in 1938, despite
many requests to enter the industry. -
Not SyncedIndeed, restrictions of entry and misallocated
resources meant that low-cost airlines -
Not Syncedsuch as Southwest, now one of the world's
largest airlines, were kept out of the -
Not Syncedindustry, raising cost overall. OK, that's
it for price floor: price floors create -
Not Syncedsurpluses, lost gains in trade, wasteful
increases in quality, and misallocation of -
Not Syncedresources. We'll have one more lecture on
price ceilings and price floors, talk a -
Not Syncedlittle bit about the politics and then
we'll be moving on. We'll have covered -
Not Syncedthis chapter. This is a tough chapter,
lots and lots of material but -
Not Syncedlots of depth to it, lots of meat to this
chapter. Pay attention. Okay, thanks. -
Not SyncedIf you want to test yourself click
Practice Questions or if you're ready to -
Not Syncedmove on just click Next Video.
- Title:
- Price Floors: Airline Fares
- Description:
-
In this video, we cover how price floors lead to wasteful increases in quality and a misallocation of resources. Using the real-world example of airline regulations from 1938-1978, we show how price floors can be used to restrict entry and reduce competition within an industry. When the Civil Aeronautics Board regulated airline fares, airlines couldn’t compete on price so they instead had to compete by increasing quality. This may sound like a good thing, but we’ll show how this actually created quality waste since the cost of that quality was higher than the value to the customers. Price floors also lead to the misallocation of resources by preventing competition and responsiveness to consumer demand. In this video, we’ll show you how consumers are negatively affected by price floors.
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- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- Marginal Revolution University
- Project:
- Micro
- Duration:
- 08:17
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