Deadweight Loss

In economics, deadweight loss is the loss of societal economic welfare due to production/consumption of a good at a quantity where marginal benefit does not equal marginal cost. In other words, there are either goods being produced despite the cost of doing so being larger than the benefit, or additional goods are not being produced despite the fact that the benefits of their production would be larger than the costs. The deadweight loss is the net benefit that is missed out on. While losses to one entity often lead to gains for another, deadweight loss represents the loss that is not regained by anyone else. This loss is therefore attributed to both producers and consumers.