What do you understand by the own-price elasticity of demand for a good

What do you understand by the own-price elasticity of demand for a good? 1. (a) What do you understand by the own-price elasticity of demand for a good? (b) Will a linear (straight line) demand curve have a constant own-price elasticity of demand? Explain your answer. (c) Following the terrorists attacks in the USA on 11 September, there was a marked fall in business travel. In respomse, many hotels cut their prices to business travellers; for example the Hyatt Hotel group offered discounts of up to 50 per cent off regular room rates. Under what circumstances would this lead to increased revenue for these hotels? Before we define the meaning of the own-price elasticity for a good we must understand elasticity and its concept in general. Elasticity is basically a comparison between the sizes of change in the quantity demanded, in the case of the own-price elasticity, of a certain good and in the variable that caused this change. According to Mankiwelasticity is a measure of the responsiveness of quantity demanded or quantity supplied to one of its determinants. The law of demand implies that an increase in a price of a good will subsequently lead to a fall in the quantity demanded for that good. The formulae which calculates this amount is the division of the percentage of change in quantity demanded by the percentage of change in price. The sign of price elasticity of demand, and elasticity as well, is always going to be negative due to the fact that quantity and price demanded are usually in opposite directions. Elasticity is going to be negative as well since neither the percentage change in price nor the the percentage change in quantity ar... ...sequent repurcusion this had in economy as a whole brought a downfall in business travelling. The hotels in order to manage this crisis effectively reduced their prices and offered discounts in order to increase the quantity of customers visiting them. If we consider the law of demand in this case, hotel reservations should increase in this period as well as the total revenue of the business but this would happen when the price elasticity of demand is elastic. This happens when the percentage change in quantity is larger than the percentage change in price. Concluding, we would easily say that it is assume that the hotels would increase their total revenue with discounts and better prices but this is not always the case. There are other factors influencing customer behaviour after these terrorist attacks that would not be easily predicted or affluenced.