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4. Foster Foods, a large supermarket, has two types of checkout stands: those staffed with human workers (we will call these H), and those that are self-scanners (which we will call S). Human-operated checkout stands can check out 15 customers per hour, while self scanners check out 12 customers per hour.

a. Write the production function in terms of H and S, where q is the number of customers checked out per hour. How can we describe the inputs, H and S, given this functional form?

b. Suppose human checkout stands cost $30 per hour to operate (considering the human wage, plus operating costs for the equipment). Self scanners cost $20 per hour to operate. If our goal is to check out 400 customers per hour, what is the least expensive way to meet this goal? What is the total cost?

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Related questions

Q3. The assumption of rational self-interest implies that people will choose to enrich themselves even if doing so violates the rights or property of others.

a. true

b. false

Q4. If you can earn $10 an hour as a retail clerk, $12 an hour as an office assistant, $16 an hour as a house painter, and $20 an hour repairing bicycles, what is your opportunity cost of working to repair bicycles?

a. $12 an hour

b. $10 an hour

c. $20 an hour

d. $16 an hour

Q5. In the graph of a production possibilities curve, both the horizontal and vertical axes measure the annual quantities of goods produced.

a. true

b. false

Q6. Scarcity arises because

a. international companies are slow to explore for new resources.

b. resources are finite and unable to meet all human wants and needs.

c. many countries waste goods because of inefficient political systems.

d. import taxes retard production.

Q7. A production possibilities curve with clothing and food on the axes shows which of the following?

I. A society cannot have an unlimited amount of each good.

II. For an efficient society, an increase in clothing production will necessitate a decrease in food production.

III. A society will always produce the maximum amount of both clothing and food.

a. II only

b. I only

c. III only

d. both I and II

Q8. All points on the production possibilities curve are efficient.

a. true

b. false

Q9. Economic growth can be pictured in a production possibilities curve diagram by

a. shifting the production possibilities curve out.

b. moving from right to left along the curve.

c. moving from left to right along the curve.

d. shifting the production possibilities curve in.

Q10. Suppose the current unemployment rate is 15 percent. If it rises to 20 percent,

a. the production possibilities curve will shift inward.

b. the economy will move closer to the production possibilities curve.

c. the economy will operate further inside the production possibilities curve.

d. the economy will move up along the production possibilities curve.

Q11. Clean air is a scarce resource.

a. true

b. false

Q12. Which of the following statements is FALSE?

a. A good is anything that gives satisfaction or happiness to individuals.

b. Wants may include humanitarian and altruistic goals.

c. Wants are unlimited and include all material and nonmaterial desires.

d. Economic goods are available in desired quantities at a zero price.

Q13. The current size of the U.S. labor force is less than 100 million workers.

a. true

b. false

Q14. The factors of production are

a. never as useful as people expect them to be.

b. valuable only because they are owned by corporations seeking to make a profit from them.

c. scarce resources.

d. abundant without limit on the planet.

Q15. Why do firms seek to use the least-cost combination of inputs?

a. because they won't be able to stay in business if they don't

b. because that is the combination that their employees prefer

c. because managers and supervisors find their jobs are easiest when the least-cost combination is used

d. because they want to keep costs low in order to appear to the media as a well-run business

Q16. Which one of the following best describes how economists view prices?

a. Low prices are good; high prices are bad.

b. High prices are good; low prices are bad.

c. The best price is a fair price.

d. Prices are signals of relative scarcity.

Q17. The person who creates a product innovation and brings it to market is providing the resource of

a. labor.

b. land.

c. entrepreneurship.

d. capital.

Q18. Gifts of nature used in the production process are considered

a. entrepreneurship.

b. labor.

c. land.

d. capital.

Q19. In a free market economy,

a. government decides what is produced, and producers decide who gets to consume it.

b. as a good becomes relatively more scarce, its price declines.

c. firms choose only to produce the most fashionable goods, regardless of the cost of production.

d. goods and services are allocated by a price system.

Q20. Resources are also known as

a. stocks, bonds, and other financial instruments.

b. minerals.

c. factors of production.

d. factories.

Q21. The size of the U.S. labor force has declined over the past 20 years as many jobs have been outsourced from the United States to other countries.

a. true

b. false

Q22. Which one of the following is TRUE?

a. The growth of the U.S. population over the next several decades will come from immigration.

b. Population growth makes a country poorer, because there are more mouths to feed.

c. Real per capita GDP can increase only if there is inflation.

d. Real per capita GDP can increase only if there is no inflation.

Q23. Which one of the following is FALSE?

a. The U.S. labor force will continue to grow through immigration.

b. Inflation stops economic growth.

c. Increased availability of reliable communication channels at lower and lower costs have led to companies relocating their manufacturing operations offshore.

d. The size of the U.S. labor force continues to grow despite many jobs being moved off-shore.

Q24. What is the purpose of a market system?

a. to facilitate efficient exchange

b. to encourage consumers to buy goods on credit

c. to ensure an equal distribution of income

d. to ensure that everyone is treated fairly

Q25. The market system is also called the price system because

a. people pay money in markets.

b. everything has a price tag.

c. rising prices are the signal to producers to make more of a particular good.

d. inflation is a disturbing problem.

Q26. Production refers to

a. any activity that causes a material conversion of an object.

b. any activity that results in the conversion of resources into goods and services that can be consumed.

c. any activity carried on by a firm, whether a corporation, partnership, or sole proprietorship.

d. physically producing material goods only.

Q27. An increase in the price of coffee, holding other things constant, will

a. decrease the demand for coffee.

b. increase the demand for coffee.

c. decrease the quantity of coffee demanded.

d. decrease the supply of coffee.

Q28. The supply curve shifts when the firm experiences a change in its production technology.

a. true

b. false

Q29. A surplus results when the quantity supplied exceeds the quantity demanded.

a. true

b. false

Q30. Table 3.1

Price per Constant-Quality Unit Quantity Demanded of Constant-Quality Units per Year Quantity Supplied of Constant-Quality Units per Year

$1.00 1,000 200

2.00 800 400

3.00 600 600

4.00 400 800

5.00 200 1,000

What condition characterizes a surplus?

a. Quantity supplied exceeds quantity demanded.

b. Quantity demanded exceeds quantity supplied.

c. Consumers are unhappy with the price.

d. Producers are unhappy with the price.

Q31. An increase in quantity demanded is caused by

a. an increase in income.

b. a decrease in the price of a complement.

c. a change in expectations about price in the future.

d. a decrease in the price of the good.

Q32. The demand curve is downward sloping because

a. price and quantity have a direct relationship.

b. price is always constant.

c. demand is based on supply.

d. price and quantity have an inverse relationship.

Q33. An increase in the price of one good will decrease the demand for a substitute good.

a. true

b. false

Q34. The market demand curve is the vertical summation of the demand curves of all the individuals in the market.

a. true

b. false

Q35. The equilibrium price of a good is a price that everyone is happy with.

a. true

b. false

Q36. Which one of the following would cause a rightward shift of the supply curve?

a. A new tax is imposed on production of the good.

b. Some firms that have been producing the good go out of business.

c. Firms producing the good find ways of lowering their production costs.

d. There is an increase in demand for the good.

Q37. Which of the following is a determinant of demand?

a. cost of production

b. number of suppliers

c. technology of production

d. income

Q38. The market demand curve for a particular good

a. will not be affected by any of the determinants of individual demand.

b. is the horizontal sum of each individual demand curve for the good.

c. will show a direct relationship between price and quantity demanded.

d. may be less than an individual demand curve for the good.

Q39. Table 4.4

Quantity of CDs Purchased Total Utility Marginal Utility

1 75

2 135

3 185

4 35

5 25

6 15

According to Table 4.4, what is the total utility when six CDs are purchased?

a. 65

b. 260

c. 120

d. 220

Q40. A rational consumer will never purchase a product when its

a. marginal utility is decreasing.

b. total utility is decreasing.

c. marginal utility is slightly positive.

d. marginal utility is negative.

Q41. The price elasticity of demand becomes relatively greater as more substitutes are easily available.

a. true

b. false

Q42. Which of the following statements is true with respect to total utility and marginal utility?

a. Marginal utility is always equal to total utility.

b. Total utility will always be negative when marginal utility is positive.

c. Total utility is minimized when marginal utility is zero.

d. Marginal utility can decline as total utility rises.

Q43. Table 4.3

Quantityof Soda Marginal Utility of Soda Quantityof Pizza Marginal Utility of Pizza

1 50 1 100

2 25 2 80

3 0 3 60

4 -25 4 40

After consuming what quantity of soda does the consumer in Table 4.3 experience diminishing marginal utility?

a. 2

b. 3

c. 1

d. 4

Q44. If the price elasticity of demand is 0.5, a 10 percent increase in the price will cause

a. the quantity demanded to decrease by 20 percent.

b. the quantity demanded to decrease by 50 percent.

c. the quantity demanded to increase by 50 percent.

d. the quantity demanded to decrease by 5 percent.

Q45. Which one of the following would make the demand for satellite subscription TV relatively less elastic?

a. The cost of administering the satellite service is lowered.

b. Cable TV service becomes less widely available.

c. Other networks of wireless entertainment become more widely available.

d. The cost of transmitting satellite signals is lowered.

Q46. A price increase will cause a relatively large drop in quantity demanded when

a. demand is perfectly inelastic.

b. the price elasticity of demand is 0.

c. there is very little time allowed for consumers to react.

d. the consumer has easy access to a number of substitute goods.

Q47. Table 4.6

Price Quantity Demanded

$20 90

$16 110

$12 130

$ 8 150

According to the data in Table 4.6, what is the elasticity of demand between a price of $20 and a price of $16?

a. 0.60

b. 0.75

c. 0.90

d. 1.25

Q48. Price elasticity of demand is the responsiveness

a. of the quantity demanded to changes in supply.

b. of the quantity demanded to changes in income.

c. of the quantity demanded to changes in price.

d. of the quantity demanded to changes in quantity.

Q49. Everyone who views the latest adventure movie in theaters will derive the same utility from seeing it.

a. true

b. false

Q50. The law of diminishing marginal utility asserts that total utility becomes negative when marginal utility begins to diminish.

a. true

b. false

1) Assume that two firms (Firm A and Firm B) operate in the U.S. steel industry. The owner of Firm A writes the following letter to the owner of Firm B:

Dear Owner of Firm B,

I have concluded that if we both restrict output such that we each produce only 3 million tons of steel per year, we can both charge a price that will allow us to effectively monopolize the steel market and to maximize our joint profits. If you would like to enter into this agreement with me, please draft a contract that specifies this agreement and I will be more than willing to meet with you and sign it.

Sincerely,

Owner of Firm A

If this letter were sent in the year 1944, the:

a) Owners of both Firm A and Firm B would not be guilty of violating antitrust laws because antitrust laws in 1944 contained exceptions for certain nationally important industries like the steel industry.

b) Owners of both Firm A and Firm B would not be guilty of anything because there were no antitrust laws in existence in 1944.

c) Owner of Firm A would be guilty of violating antitrust laws only if she met with the owner of Firm B and signed the contract, but she would not be guilty if the attempt to monopolize the market failed because the owner of Firm B never responded to the letter.

d) Owner of Firm A would be guilty of violating antitrust laws because she merely attempted to monopolize the steel industry.

e) Owners of both Firm A and Firm B would not be guilty of violating antitrust laws because antitrust laws in 1944 applied only to industries made up of three or more firms.

2) Entry of new firms will continue in a monopolistically competitive industry until:

a) Marginal cost = 0 (zero).

b) Economic profit is negative.

c) Marginal revenue = marginal cost.

d) Economic profit equals zero.

e) Marginal Revenue = 0 (zero).

3) A monopolistically competitive firm usually charges less than a monopoly firm because:

a) It is part of a group of firms that have formally agreed to control the price and the output of a product.

b) Its primary goal is to reap monopoly profits by replacing competition with cooperation.

c) It has a monopoly, but potential entrants exist in the form of contestable markets.

d) It faces some degree of competition due to low barriers to entry.

e) Producing homogenous output is more expensive than producing differentiated output.

4) An example of price discrimination is when:

a) A single box of Froot Loops costs $3.50, but when purchased in a case of six, it costs only $3.00 per box.

b) You can purchase a new PC for half the price of a new Mac, even though they are both computers.

c) Procter & Gamble charges $9 for a bottle of Tide laundry detergent, while the store brand costs the consumer significantly less, despite being somewhat similar products.

d) Out-of-state students pay more for the same education as in-state students.

e)Movie theaters do not allow children into R-rated movies without a parent or guardian.

5) The Varsity, located in downtown Atlanta, is the world's largest drive-in restaurant. Located near the Georgia Tech campus, the drive-in attracts two distinct types of customers: college students and visitors to Atlanta. The owners are considering offering a student discount of $1 off their combo meal, which is regularly priced at $9. There are 5,000 students interested in purchasing a combo meal, with a maximum willingness to pay of $8. There are 5,000 visiting customers interested in purchasing the combo meal, with a maximum willingness to pay of $9. Assume that each customer, at most, will purchase a single meal and the marginal cost is $5. What will be the amount of total revenue for the Varsity if the owners offer a single price of $8 per combo meal?

a) $65,000

b) $85,000

c) $40,000

d) $80,000

e) $90,000

6) A competitive firm would have:

a) More elastic demand than a monopolistically competitive firm.

b) More inelastic demand than a monopolistically competitive firm.

c) A horizontal demand curve.

d) Bowed-in or bowed-out demand.

e) An upward-sloping demand curve.

7) It is unrealistic to regulate a natural monopoly at marginal cost pricing because:

a) The government is not allowed to regulate markets.

b) With this type of regulation, the firm will want to shut down, and that outcome is not desirable for society.

c) Firms do not need to follow regulations from the government.

d) Regulating a market causes more deadweight loss.

e) Marginal cost pricing ends up having the natural monopoly firm earn zero economic profits.

8) Price discrimination allows businesses to make additional profits and allows markets to work more:

a) Efficiently

b) Unfairly

c) Realistically

d) Equitably

e) Independently

9) Antitrust laws are designed to:

a) Increase prices.

b) Promote monopoly practices.

c) Promote awareness of government programs.

d) Promote competition.

e) Decrease output.

10) Barriers to entry:

a) Do not exist for monopolies.

b) Exist for perfectly competitive firms.

c) Restrict the entry of new firms into the market.

d) Always lead to profits.

e) Measure the ability of firms to set the price for a good.

ultramarinemule185

What do you believe is the ultimate impact of technology on job creation? Should there be curbs to the pace of modernization?

(Answer in a paragraph(around 200 words))

What Econ 101 Can Teach Us About Artificial Intelligence

Here's why advancing technology often leads to more jobs for humans, not fewer

A Tesla Model X 75D semi-autonomous electric vehicle is parked at the Governor's Mansion in Olympia, Wash., this year. Goldman Sachs predicts that 25 years from now, driver employment will be growing by 300,000 less per year because of autonomous vehicles.

By Greg Ip

Aug 9, 2017

The first chart you draw in Economics 101 is the downward-sloping demand curve. It shows that when the price of something drops, people consume more of it.

This elementary rule of economics is remarkably helpful in discussing the effects of technological change. As I wrote last week, when technology makes something cheaper, we consume more of it, often by finding new uses. This lesson repeats through history: When coal-fueled steam power became more efficient in the 1800s, demand for steam power and coal spread. When automated teller machines made it cheaper to operate bank branches in the 1980s, banks opened more branches.

My column cites spreadsheet programs like Lotus 1-2-3, whose arrival in the early 1980s made repetitive recalculation vastly simpler and faster. This reduced demand for bookkeepers but created more demand for people who could run numbers in new and interesting ways, such as accountants and management consultants.

In a recent article for the Harvard Business Review, Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans and Avi Goldfarb, economists at the University of Toronto who study artificial intelligence, say that in the 1990s, economists didnât buy into the hype that the internet and the World Wide Web would upend everything:

âIt wasnât that we didnât recognize that something changed. It was that we recognized that the old economics lens remained useful for looking at the changes taking place. The economics of the âNew Economyâ could be described at a high level: Digital technology would cause a reduction in the cost of search and communication. This would lead to more search, more communication, and more activities that go together with search and communication. Thatâs essentially what happened.â

They apply that lesson to artificial intelligence and more specifically to machine learning, the use of powerful algorithms to make predictions from patterns in large quantities of data. Machine learning, they say, means many problems will be reframed as prediction problems. Autonomous driving no longer involves programming the car to respond in a certain way to a variety of controlled scenarios, but instead, to watch what humans actually do and then respond the same way.

How does this affect jobs? The authors says it depends on whether the technology competes with or complements what you do. Spreadsheets competed with what bookkeepers do (record keeping and calculation) and thus made them less valuable, but complemented what accountants and consultants do (analysis), and made them more valuable.

Mssrs. Agrawal, Gans and Goldfarb say that AI reduces the value of those who predict things for a living, such as whether a mark on an X-ray is a tumor, but it raises the value of those who use predictions to make judgments:

âWhen prediction is cheap, diagnosis will be more frequent and convenient, and thus weâll detect many more early-stage, treatable conditions. This will mean more decisions will be made about

medical treatment, which means greater demand for the application of ethics, and for emotional support, which are provided by humans.â

So AI will create winners and losers within and among industries and occupations. But what will the net effect be? More jobs or less, and for whom? This isnât knowable, but history suggests that while a specific occupation or industry may suffer losses, the aggregate effects will be positive. The growth in accounting and analytical jobs since the early 1980s is much larger than the loss of bookkeeping jobs.

Nor did all those bookkeepers necessarily lose jobs; many probably became accountants or analysts. As Mr. Gans told me, bookkeepers may have been best placed to exploit the capabilities of spreadsheets: âIf you were doing calculations all day as a bookkeeper, chances are you thought a bit about why you are doing that. When you got a spreadsheet, rather than doing one calculation per day you could do 10 to 50, so you had a better sense of what the [calculations] might say.â

Some readers said AI is a much bigger threat than spreadsheets because it has so many more potential applicationsâand they displace uniquely human abilities. I agree with the first part, less so with the second. I suspect workers in previous eras, whether they drove a horse and plow, handled a stock trade or connected a phone call, thought there was something about their job that a machine could never replace.

Will the disruptions this time around be greater? Maybe, but not necessarily. Goldman Sachs predicts that 25 years from now, driver employment will be growing by 300,000 less per year because of autonomous vehicles. Thatâs 25,000 jobs per month to make up, compared with the 5,000 per month that the decline in bookkeeping since 1985 represents. But itâs hardly insurmountable in a labor market where five million jobs are created and destroyed each month.

Others said I was ignoring the potential for rogue algorithms and robots to turn on us or strip us of our freedom.

The experts, of which I am not one, tell me AI is nowhere near that capability. (Before the robots can kill us they must first stop killing themselves.) And donât assume spreadsheets have been all benign. Excel may not have slain anyone Terminator-style, but it did help wound J.P. Morgan through its role in the âLondon Whaleâ trading disaster.

Which brings me to the final point. We should not confuse what technology enables us to do with how much better off it makes us. Spreadsheets enabled analysts to construct much more intricate forecasts of stock prices and the economy, but didnât make those forecasts any more accurate. AI may enable companies to better manage the risks of their products and actions, but those products and actions may not be more profitable. Many a CEO has wondered whether the money they spend on spreadsheet-wielding consultants yields any real value. Some day they may wonder the same thing about their AI-wielding consultants.

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