A January 2026 arXiv paper, "The Economics of Digital Intelligence Capital," estimates the price elasticity of demand for AI tokens at 1.42, meaning a 1% price decline leads to a 1.42% volume increase. This elasticity, greater than one, implies that falling memory prices could increase total industry revenue and reduce profit declines during downturns, with a 30% price drop potentially leading to only a 15% profit reduction compared to 52.8% in 2019.