The Estimation of Consumer Surplus Benefits from a City Owned Multipurpose Coliseum Complex

Coliseums can create consumer surplus benefits by providing types of entertainment to local residents that would otherwise not be available to them. This paper estimates consumer surplus for a major City owned entertainment/convention facility, the Greensboro Coliseum Complex (GCC). A novel aspect of this paper is that it estimates the distribution of consumer surplus across households of different income levels as well as aggregate consumer surplus. It is estimated that aggregate consumer surplus from the GCC in 1999 exceeded the public subsidy for this complex, but a disproportionate amount of the consumer surplus benefits go to higher income households.

Public gains from entrepreneurial research: Inferences about the economic value of public support of the Small Business Innovation Research program.

This article presents a systematic analysis of the net economic benefits associated with the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. We offer a derivation of producer and consumer surplus to estimate economic benefits. Fundamental to the implementation of these models is a specific value of the elasticity of demand, but in its absence we estimate what its value would be when the benefit-to-cost ratio associated with public support of the SBIR program equals unity. We infer from these calculations, and from general knowledge about the ability of SBIR-funded firms to exploit their monopoly position, that the SBIR program likely generates positive net economic benefits to society

To Admit or Not to Admit: The Question of Research Park Size.

A theoretical model is used to explore the determinants of the optimum size of a private research park and the effect of university affiliation on that optimum size. Parks are assumed to operate as cooperatives where costs are equally shared among the member firms, and optimality occurs when the firms' average net benefits are maximized. To achieve this, existing members of a park will limit the park's size, denying entry to firms who wish to join and are willing to share the costs. University affiliation may either increase or decrease the optimum size of a park

Felony Murder and Capital Punishment: an Examination of the Deterrence Question

A proper test of the deterrent effect of the death penalty must consider capital homicides. However, the criterion variable in most investigations has been total homicides—most of which bear no legal or theoretical relationship to capital punishment. To address this fundamental data problem, this investigation used Federal Bureau of Investigation data for 1976–1987 to examine the relationship between capital punishment and felony murder, the most common type of capital homicide. We conducted time series analyses of monthly felony murder rates, the frequency of executions, and the amount and type of television coverage of executions over the period. The analyses revealed occasional departures (for vehicle theft and narcotics killings) from the null hypotheses. However, on balance, and in line with the vast majority of capital punishment studies, this investigation found no consistent evidence that executions and the television coverage they receive are associated significantly with rates for total, index, or different types of felony murder

Market Opening under Third-Degree Price Discrimination.

There are frequently regulatory and antitrust pressures for firms to cease price discrimination and practice uniform pricing. Such pressures, however, generally have negative welfare consequences when they lead to weaker markets not being served. This paper derives conditions that determine when price discrimination will induce service to a market (market opening) that would not be served under a regime of price uniformity. The factors that favor market opening under price discrimination are a large market share for the strong market, profit margins in the two markets that are far apart, and concave rather than convex demand curves. Copyright 1994 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.