Question

Pretend you are advising a member of Congress on vaccination policy. He or she asks you to provide input on whether the government should make vaccinations mandatory. Make sure you address the concept of externalities and are clear in your economic reasoning. Are there other ways to achieve the same result?

Suppose you manage a baseball stadium. To pay the salary for a star player, you would like to increase the total revenue from ticket sales. Should you increase or decrease the price of a ticket to increase revenue? Explain.

Answer 1

the government should make the vaccination free or at low cost as vaccination imparts the positive externality.

Other ways: people getting vaccination are healthier, they have fewer chances of getting infected and thus transmit fewer diseases among other, Moreover a healthy population in the country are like a useful resource for any country which would help any country to increase their output and productivity.

A health campaign spreading awareness about vaccination.

with positive externality, the net social benefit is higher than the private marginal benefit .thus a benevolent social planner should advise a policy that creates the efficient use of resources so that private marginal benefit must be equal to social benefit.

The answers depend on the competitiveness of the star players. If the player is very competitive the demand will be inelastic and to increase the total revenue from ticket sales, we can afford to increase the price of the ticket but if the demand is elastic, we should decrease the ticket's price to increase the revenue.