Economics Homework Six - Model

1. Fixed costs can be easily identified by seeing what the total costs are when output is _______. Separately, give an example of a variable cost.

2. The Lecture mentioned how a prior student in this course is paying her way through college by working as a waitress in a fancy Manhattan restaurant. Suppose her boss told her one day, "We were profitable last month. To increase our profits next month, I'm going to double our number of waitresses so that we can serve more people!" But our former economics student told him that his plan would fail because there is _____________ returns of scale in the restaurant, because more waitresses would result in more wasted time talking to each other and waitresses getting in the way of each other.

3. Give an example of a "short run" cost for a firm, and give an example of a "long run" cost. This can refer to any type of firm, from a grocery store to a baseball team to a homeschool.

4. Suppose you own a mechanics' shop that fixes cars, and you have 4 employees whom you pay $12 per hour. On average your 4th employee can fix 3 cars an hour. What is your marginal product (MP) and marginal cost (MC), and what is the minimum on average that you need to charge customers (your marginal revenue) for fixing cars? (Assume your only cost is labor, and the customer pays the cost of any parts.)

5. Earlier in this course we learned that someone who obtains a college degree earns, over the course of his life, about $500,000 more than someone who does not. How can you explain this fact in terms of the advantages of "long run" costs over "short run" costs?

6. Suppose you spent one million dollars to build your factory, and another million dollars for materials and labor and electricity to make 50 cars. What is your fixed cost, average variable cost, and average total cost? Now suppose it costs you $18,000 to make a 51st car. What is your marginal cost?

7. Suppose you own and drive a taxicab, and its annual license fee is $1000 per year. Suppose you learn that the license fee will increase to $1200 next year. Does this increase either increase, decrease, or have no effect on (a) marginal cost, (b) average variable cost, and (c) average total cost?

8. Suppose you could earn $8 an hour. Instead, you watch television for an hour. What is your accounting profit or loss, and what is your economic profit or loss, for that hour?

Honors

9. Suppose there is a sudden increase in the market price for a firm's widget. The firm will hire more employees to produce more output until the point where the value of its marginal product of labor equals its _____________. [Hint: the answer is NOT simply "marginal cost"].

10. Explain the following from the lecture: if inflation is 10% per year for three years, but one particular good keeps the same price during those three years, then its opportunity cost and real price actually decreased.

11. Are "long run" average costs lower than "short run" average costs and, if so, why?

12. (Difficult, but try): Your firm seeks to produce a certain level of output in the most efficient way (the lowest cost). It should use its resources in which of the following ways:

(a) use materials that generate the highest marginal product
(b) use materials that have increasing returns to scale
(c) use as much material as possible until there are diminishing returns
(d) use resources such that their marginal products per unit cost are equal

13. Charity, revisited: Sloan's charitable efforts (Sloan-Kettering) have lasted longer than his business efforts (General Motors). Is this just by chance, or are there reasons why charity lasts longer than business? Feel free to revisit the issue of the interplay between the free market and charity.

Extra Credit for Anyone

14. The most efficient "division of labor" in the world is ... traditional marriage between a man and woman.