Construction of Budget Constraint
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OK, now what happens if we shock the budget constraint? So we talked about constructing them. What about shocking the budget constraint?
We're going to do a lot in this class of what we call comparative statics, which is, essentially, making changes in one thing or another and seeing what it does to the system. So let's talk about shocking the budget constraint. Let's start first with a change in prices.
Suppose the price of pizza goes from $12 up to $18. This is a really good slice of pizza, OK? Well, what happens to the budget constraint?
Let's look at figure 3-2.
Figure 3-2 shows what happens. You have your original budget constraint BC1. The equation of that line is 12P plus 6C equals 72, OK? The price of pizza and the number of slices of pizza plus the price of cookies times the number of cookies equals 72. Now the price of pizza has gone up.
What that's done is that has pivoted inward your budget constraint to BC2. It has flattened the budget constraint because the slope, remember, is the ratio of the price of cookies to the price of pizza, right? That's a ratio. Well, that ratio has just fallen. It used to be a 1/2. Now it's a 1/3. Negative 1/2-- well, it used to be a half. Now it's a 1/3. So the slope has fallen from negative 1/2 to negative 1/3. So what's happened is you can still have as many cookies as you had before. The y-intercept has not changed, but you can have fewer slices of pizza. That's why it's a pivot because one price has not changed, only the other price. So it's a pivot inward. The other thing here, you'll notice we have all these funny dots and stuff, OK? That represents what has happened to what we call your opportunity set, your opportunity set, which is an important concept, OK?
Your opportunity set is the set of choices available to you given your income and market prices.
Yang terjadi adalah Anda masih bisa memiliki jumlah kue yang sama seperti sebelumnya. Titik potong sumbu y tidak berubah, tetapi Anda bisa memiliki lebih sedikit potongan pizza. Itulah sebabnya ini disebut pivot (putaran), karena satu harga tidak berubah, sementara harga lainnya berubah. Jadi, ini adalah perubahan yang berfokus ke dalam. Hal lain yang perlu diperhatikan, Anda akan melihat ada banyak titik-titik aneh dan sebagainya, oke? Itu mewakili apa yang terjadi pada apa yang kita sebut sebagai opportunity set Anda, yaitu himpunan peluang Anda, yang merupakan konsep penting, oke?
Opportunity set Anda adalah kumpulan pilihan yang tersedia bagimu berdasarkan pendapatan dan harga pasar.
So your opportunity set initially was the black dots plus the red dots. Now your opportunity set has shrunk. Your opportunity set is now just the black dots. Given your income, you can now get less stuff, same amount of cookies, but less pizza. And you are worse off. Your opportunity set has shrunk. Your opportunity set -- even though your parents are still sending you the same check, you are worse off because you can now buy less pizza with it, OK? So that's what happens to the opportunity set when a price changes. And, likewise, you should show to yourself the same thing will happen when the price of cookies change. In that case, you'll get an increase in the steepness of the budget constraint, OK? But your opportunity set will still shrink.
AUDIENCE: Don't we not care about all the dots below the line, though, because we're assuming we're spending all the money?
JONATHAN GRUBER: Well, that's a good point, and we're going to come back to that. We haven't -- we assume they're spending all their money, but it's just a way of representing. You could think of the line being lower as the same thing. We care about -- we just care about the area because it represents the set, but you're right. You could just focus on the line and say the line is everywhere lower. So they're worse off. That's another way to look at it. But we like to think about as a set. It comes in handy later for various reasons, OK? But that's a good question.
Pada awalnya, opportunity set Anda terdiri dari titik-titik hitam ditambah titik-titik merah. Sekarang opportunity set Anda telah menyusut. Sekarang opportunity set Anda hanya terdiri dari titik-titik hitam. Dengan pendapatan yang sama, Anda sekarang bisa mendapatkan lebih sedikit barang—jumlah kue tetap sama, tetapi pizza lebih sedikit. Anda menjadi lebih buruk. Opportunity set Anda telah menyusut.
Meskipun orang tua Anda masih mengirimkan cek dengan jumlah yang sama, Anda tetap lebih buruk karena sekarang Anda dapat membeli lebih sedikit pizza dengan uang tersebut, oke?
Jadi, itulah yang terjadi pada opportunity set ketika harga berubah. Demikian pula, Anda harus menunjukkan kepada diri sendiri bahwa hal yang sama akan terjadi ketika harga kue berubah. Dalam kasus tersebut, kemiringan batas anggaran (budget constraint) akan meningkat, oke? Namun, opportunity set Anda tetap akan menyusut, oke?
AUDIENCE: Tapi bukankah kita tidak perlu peduli dengan semua titik di bawah garis, karena kita berasumsi bahwa seluruh uangnya telah dibelanjakan?
JONATHAN GRUBER: Itu poin yang bagus, dan kita akan kembali membahasnya nanti. Memang, kita berasumsi bahwa mereka menghabiskan seluruh uangnya, tetapi ini hanyalah cara untuk merepresentasikannya. Anda bisa menganggap garis yang lebih rendah sebagai hal yang sama. Yang kita perhatikan sebenarnya adalah area tersebut, karena itu merepresentasikan opportunity set. Tapi Anda benar—Anda juga bisa hanya fokus pada garisnya dan mengatakan bahwa garis itu sekarang lebih rendah di semua titik. Itu berarti mereka menjadi lebih buruk. Itu adalah cara lain untuk melihatnya. Namun, kami lebih suka memikirkannya sebagai satu himpunan, karena pendekatan ini akan berguna nanti dalam berbagai konteks. Oke? Tapi itu pertanyaan yang bagus.
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