Week 7 · Readings & resources

Week 7 — Readings & Resources

Principles of Microeconomics Free sample edition

Your primary reading is Chapter 7 (in this module). Everything below is the optional, go-deeper layer — pick what helps, skip the rest.

How to use this page

This page has 11 items (5 readings and 6 videos). Allow 63–73 minutes for everything. Each group points back to the matching chapter section and class-session segment, so use the full menu when you want more, or take the quick path below.

Every video here has captions: turn them on with the CC button in the player. The chapter covers the same ideas in text.

Pick-one quick path (20–22 min total)

① Ceilings, floors, and the trades they block

Chapter 7, Section “Put a ceiling at 4 dollars: the shortage and the lost trades” · Session 1, Segment 2, “The ceiling at 4 dollars” · Remember: a ceiling binds only below the equilibrium price and makes a shortage; a floor binds only above it and makes a surplus.

Price Ceiling and Price Floor — Think Econ — a four-minute tour of both controls on one graph: a floor above the equilibrium price leaves excess supply, a ceiling below it leaves excess demand, and each one carves out a deadweight-loss triangle. It uses a floor on wheat and rent control as its examples. Listen for one spoken slip, where it says the floor must be lower while describing the ceiling. When it calls floors wasteful and says ceilings bring wasted resources and black markets, that is the video's own judgment, not a measurement; the chapter measures each control's deadweight loss and leaves the verdict to you. (video, 4 min) (captions: creator)
Allocative Efficiency — Economics Mafia — a two-minute animation that walks along a market one unit at a time: while the marginal cost of the next unit is below its marginal benefit, producing it adds surplus, and past the point where the two meet it only adds cost, so the market equilibrium gives the largest total surplus. This builds on Week 6's work on allocative efficiency; read it as the reason a binding ceiling or floor causes a deadweight loss, since every unit it blocks between the 10th and the 30th has a marginal benefit above its marginal cost. Its closing line, that efficiency means price equals marginal cost, is about the market's supply curve here; the firm's version of that rule arrives in Week 10. (video, 2 min) (captions: creator)
Price Ceiling: Consumer Surplus, Producer Surplus, & Deadweight loss — Economics in Many Lessons — starts from two equations for a battery market, solves the market, puts a binding ceiling on it, and computes the shortage, both surpluses, and the deadweight loss, using a triangle plus a rectangle for consumer surplus. This builds on Week 6's work measuring consumer and producer surplus as triangles. Its two extensions at the end drop the assumption that the units reach the buyers who value them most, the same assumption the chapter asks you to name. (video, 13 min) (captions: automatic)

② The minimum wage and rent control in practice

Chapter 7, Section “Weigh the minimum wage: a real floor and a live debate” · Session 1, Segment 5, “The minimum wage” · Remember: the model's prediction is plain, the size of the effect is debated with evidence, and whether a policy is worth it is a normative call.

Minimum Wage — U.S. Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division — the agency's own statement of the federal minimum wage and the year it took effect, with a note that many states set higher minimums and links to the wage's history and the law behind it. Keep it handy while completing the Week-7 module overview. (reading, 5–7 min)
Characteristics of Minimum Wage Workers, 2024 — U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — the agency's yearly profile of hourly workers paid at or below the federal minimum, broken down by age, hours worked, occupation, industry, and state, with notes on what the survey does and does not measure. Read the highlights to see who works near the price floor; the report describes workers and takes no side on raising the minimum. (reading, 6–8 min)
Learn About Rent Increases in San Francisco — San Francisco Rent Board — the city rent board's own guide to how much a landlord may raise the rent each year on a unit under rent control, tied to a share of local price growth, and its note that the first rent on an empty unit is not limited. Read it as a real price ceiling in practice in the city whose 1994 expansion the chapter's study examined. (reading, 5–7 min)

③ Who really pays a tax

Chapter 7, Section “Find who bears a tax: the check versus the burden” · Session 2, Segment 8, “Who really pays” · Remember: the side that responds less to price bears more of a tax, whichever side writes the check.

Taxes on PRODUCERS, Part 1: Tax Revenue and Deadweight Loss of Taxation — Think Econ — a three-minute graph with no numbers: a per-unit tax on sellers moves supply, the price consumers pay rises above the price firms keep, the gap times the new quantity is the revenue rectangle, and the lost units form the deadweight-loss triangle. It describes the shift as leftward; that is the same move as the chapter's upward shift by the tax. (video, 3 min) (captions: automatic)
Tax Incidence Using Price Elasticities of Demand and Supply — Economics in Many Lessons — five quick examples of a formula that splits a tax by how responsive each side is, from an even split to cases where one side bears all of it. Watch the first five examples and stop when the narrator starts the calculus proof, which this course does not need. (video, 10 min) (captions: automatic)
Tax Cut: Which Side of the Market Benefits Most? — Economics in Many Lessons — a four-minute graph problem that measures each side's burden the chapter's way, by comparing prices before and after the tax: a tax of 9 dollars per unit raises the buyer price from 10 to 13 dollars and lowers the price sellers keep from 10 to 4, so buyers bear 3 dollars, one third, and sellers bear 6, two thirds, because supply is the less responsive side. It then cuts the tax to 3 dollars and shows the cut splitting the same way, with sellers gaining two thirds of it. (video, 4 min) (captions: automatic)
Gasoline Explained: Factors Affecting Gasoline Prices — U.S. Energy Information Administration — the agency's breakdown of what goes into a gallon's price. Read the Gasoline taxes part, which describes the federal per-gallon excise tax and state taxes, a real per-unit tax. Then ask the chapter's question: drivers see it in the pump price, but who bears it depends on how strongly each side responds. (reading, 6–8 min)

Optional one-stop reference (free online reference)

Consolidated Minimum Wage Table — U.S. Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division — the agency's table of state and territory minimum wages, grouped into places above, at, and below the federal minimum. Use it to see that many minimums are set above the federal floor; skip the footnotes on exemptions. (reading, 5–7 min)

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