Answer Happy

Elasticity in the real world—sort of. The managers of a scholarly journal that I edit were thinking of raising the subscription prices. We used to charge individuals $32 for four issues per year and libraries $52 for the same. The managers proposed raising the prices to $45 and $75, respectively. My feeling was that these increases were too small, especially since the prices of substitutes (scholarly journals of a quality similar to ours) were much higher. I suggested that we charge $50 and $85, respectively. I believed that was more sensible, since the demand is quite inelastic over this price range, so with a larger price increase our total revenue would rise further. Apparently the managers agreed, and we raised our prices by the larger amount. Next year our revenue rose, suggesting that my guess about the elasticity of demand was correct.