The famous singer Jason Lumberpond likes to drive his solid-gold rocket car back and forth in front of his house. The loud noise from the rocket engines imposes a loss equal to $L on his neighbors. There are two possible ways to avoid that loss. Jason can install an expensive muffler, or the neighbors can install soundproofing on their houses. The muffler costs $C and the soundproofing costs $E. Suppose that L > E > C. What outcome maximizes total surplus?

Suppose that two firms produce differentiated products and compete in prices. as in class, the two firms are located at two ends of a line one mile apart. consumers are evenly distributed along the line. the firms have identical marginal cost, $60. firm b produces a product with value $110 to consumers. firm a (located at 0 on the unit line) produces a higher quality product with value $120 to consumers. the cost of travel are directly related to the distance a consumer travels to purchase a good. if a consumerhas to travel a mile to purchase a good, the incur a cost of $20. if they have to travel x fraction of a mile, they incur a cost of $20x. (a) write down the expressions for how much a consumer at location d would value the products sold by firms a and b, if they set prices p_{a} and p_{b} ? (b) based on your expressions in (a), how much will be demanded from each firm if prices p_{a} and p_{b} are set? (c) what are the nash equilibrium prices?