Final answer:
A price ceiling of $60 for a cellphone will lead to deadweight loss, which is the loss of social surplus due to blocked transactions. The exact amount of deadweight loss can't be determined without a market diagram but it's conceptually the area where consumer and producer surpluses are lost due to the price limit.
Step-by-step explanation:
When the government passes a law making it illegal to charge more than $60 for a cellphone, this creates a price ceiling. A price ceiling can lead to deadweight loss (DWL), which is the loss in social surplus that happens when the market produces at an inefficient quantity due to price control. This inefficiency results from suppliers and demanders being blocked from making transactions they would otherwise engage in at equilibrium market prices.
The extent of the deadweight loss depends on the shape of the supply and demand curves, but we can generalize that the deadweight loss will be represented by the area between the supply and demand curves over the quantity gap created by the price ceiling. Without a specific market diagram (Figure 3.24 (a) or similar), we cannot determine the exact numerical value for the DWL. Still, conceptually, the DWL will be the area labeled U + W where part of the consumer and producer surpluses are lost due to the price restriction.