Tighter Price Cap Regulation on Consumer Surplus and Utility
Kang, Weisman, and Zhang (2000) demonstrated that, under a tighter price cap, consumer welfare increases with the independence of demands. Conversely, the tighter price cap may negatively impact consumer welfare in situations involving interdependent demands. This paper identifies an overlooked property of Kang et al. (2000), namely, that the cross-price effects should be symmetrical without an income effect and demand functions of a Hicksian type. This paper reveals the invariant conclusion that consumers always benefit from a tighter price cap. Besides, it further derives the effects of the tighter price cap on consumer utility, and concludes that the net price elasticity of demand is the key to the effect of the average revenue constraint.
Tighter Average Revenue Regulation Can Reduce Consumer Welfare
A monopolist producing for two markets is subject to an average revenue constraint, a form of regulation which is relevant to some U.K. utilities. Where marginal costs of serving the two markets differ, tighter regulation may cause one of the prices to rise as shown by I. Bradley and C. Price (1988). A simple linear example demonstrates that total consumer surplus may fall as regulation becomes more stringent. Copyright 1995 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Fully Integrated Bidirectional CMOS-MEMS Flow Sensor With Low Power Pulse Operation
Leveraging More-than-Moore technology, we demonstrate an integrated CMOS MEMS flow sensor via a very compact system on chip (SoC) that can sense the bidirectional N2 gas flow. Our SoC features a very low-noise instrumentation amplifier that is implemented on a CMOS wafer and serves as a readout integrated circuit for a thermoresistive micro-calorimetric flow sensor which is fabricated on a MEMS wafer. A compact heterogeneous integration is achieved by combining the two wafers via the proprietary InvenSense AlN process. The measured sensitivity of our CMOS MEMS flow sensor is 98 mV/sccm which is three times better than the state-of-the-art counterpart. The flow range measured by our SoC is from −26 to 26 m/s (from −50 to 50 sccm). Moreover, the pulsed heater operation makes this proposed SoC flow sensor a very low power (<9 mW) and, thus, a promising candidate for the Internet-of-Things applications in smart home/green buildings.