ECON111 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Average Cost, Diminishing Returns, Marginal Product

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30 May 2018

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Week 9 Production and Costs

Firms

- Firms aim is to maximise profit

- Pi is the symbol for profit

- Profit = revenue (P x Q) - costs (rent, wages, interest, profit)

Normal profit

- The minimal profit required by the entrepreneur to remain in business

- Equal to the opportunity cost of the entrepreneur

- Includes salary, interest paying, interest losing

- Known as an implicit cost

Economic profit

- Takes explicit cost as well as implicit costs into account

- Smaller amount of profit

- Known as super normal profit (above normal profit)

- The difference between profit and normal profit

- TR - TC

Explicit Costs

- is a cost paid in money

Implicit Cost

- is the cost incurred by a firm when it uses a factor of production for which it

does not make a direct money payment. (e.g. economic depreciation and

resource costs by the owner)

Short run

- A time frame where at least one resource is fixed

- The fixed resource is usually the capital (K)

- Labour (L) is variable

- Marginal product = extra output produced by the extra worker (change in

quantity divided by the change in labour (rate of increase)

- MP is the slope of TP

Marginal Product

- the change in total product that results from a one-unit increase in the

quantity of labour employed.

- Marginal product = Change in total product divided by Change in quantity of

labour

- MP = ∆TP / ∆ L

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Increasing Marginal Returns

- When the marginal product of an additional worker exceeds the marginal

product of the previous worker

Decreasing Marginal Returns

- When the marginal product of an additional worker is less than the marginal

product of the previous worker.

Total Product

Labour

Quantity

Marginal Product

4 (increasing at an increasing rate)

5 (increasing at an increasing rate)

3 (increasing at a decreasing rate)

1 (increasing at a decreasing rate)

0 (decreasing output from fixed capital)

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Document Summary

Profit = revenue (p x q) - costs (rent, wages, interest, profit) The minimal profit required by the entrepreneur to remain in business. Equal to the opportunity cost of the entrepreneur. Takes explicit cost as well as implicit costs into account. Known as super normal profit (above normal profit) The difference between profit and normal profit. Explicit costs is a cost paid in money. Implicit cost is the cost incurred by a firm when it uses a factor of production for which it does not make a direct money payment. (e. g. economic depreciation and resource costs by the owner) A time frame where at least one resource is fixed. The fixed resource is usually the capital (k) Marginal product = extra output produced by the extra worker (change in quantity divided by the change in labour (rate of increase) Marginal product the change in total product that results from a one-unit increase in the quantity of labour employed.

Related Questions

Question 3

We saw in class that the same good can fall in different categories (public/private/club/common resource) depending on circumstances. An example of such a good would be watching a movie at the theater. If a lot of people want to watch it, the movie is a _________. If very few people want to watch it (to the point where a room could not even be filled), the movie is likely to be a _______.

A. a common resource; a public good

B. a public good; a common resource

C. a private good; a club good

D. a club good; a private good

3 points

Question 4

Which of the following statements about the free-rider problem is not true?

A. Individuals have an incentive to free-ride when the good is not excludable.

B. The kinds of goods for which the free rider problem arises are common resources and public good.

C. Markets for goods for which there is a free-rider problem are inefficient because not enough of the good is produced.

D. Goods for which the free-rider problem exists tend to be over provided relative to what would be optimal.

4 points

Question 5

To achieve the efficient provision of public goods, the

A. market should be allowed to operate without government intervention.

B. government must limit the provision of those goods.

C. government must tax producers of those goods.

D. government must either provide those goods or subsidize their production.

3 points

Question 6

Which of the following statements about public goods is not true?

A. Because people cannot be excluded from their consumption and thus have no incentive to pay for them, public goods are underprovided by the market.

B. Efficiency requires that the government provide or fund (subsidize) the provision of all public goods.

C. Efficiency requires that the government provide or fund only the public goods that create more benefits than costs to society.

D. In reality, it is hard to provide public goods efficiently.

3 points

Question 7

Public goods must be provided by the government as the market on its own will fail to provide them. However, even with government provision it is very hard to achieve efficiency. Why?

A. In reality, it is very hard (if not impossible) to accurately estimate the benefits of providing a public good.

B. A. In reality, there can be overruns in the cost of providing the public good.

C. Government decisions about which public goods to provide can be influenced by lobbying by interest groups.

D. All of the above are true.

4 points

Question 8

Which of the following is not a common resource?

A. congested roads

B. clean water

C. wild life, which hunters want to hunt and others want to view.

D. a fireworks display.

3 points

Question 9

Many species of animals must be protected by law to keep them from extinction. Why are cows not one of these endangered species even though there is such a high demand for beef?

A. Cows reproduce at a high rate and have adapted well to their environment.

B. Public policies protect cows from predators and diseases.

C. Cows are privately owned (private goods), whereas many endangered species are owned by no one (common resources).

D.There is a natural ecological balance between the birth rate of cows and human consumption.

3 points

Question 10

Which of the following statements about common resources is not true?

A. Due to the free-rider problem, common resources tend to be overused.

B. Because there is rivalry in the consumption of common resources, whenever one person uses a common resource it is imposing a negative externality on others who might also want to use it.

C. There are no private solutions to the management of common resources.

D. One of the solutions that ensures that common resources are properly managed is their privatization.

3 points

Question 11

In our analysis of the firmâs behavior and goals, when we talk about cost, we include _________, and when we talk about profit, we mean ________.

A. Explicit costs only; economic profit

B. Implicit costs only; economic profit

C. Implicit costs only; accounting profit

D. Explicit + implicit costs; economic profit

E. Explicit + implicit costs; accounting profit

3 points

Question 12

One of the differences between explicit and implicit costs is that

A. explicit costs must be greater than implicit costs.

B. explicit costs do not require a direct monetary outlay, whereas implicit costs do.

C. implicit costs do not require a direct monetary outlay, whereas explicit costs do.

D. implicit costs must be greater than explicit costs.

3 points

Question 13

Which of the following is FALSE:

A. If accounting profit is zero, then economic profit is negative

B. Economic profit takes cost the opportunity cost of time and capital into account

C. Economic Profit = Accounting Profit + Implicit Cost

D. Economic Profit = Accounting Profit â Implicit Cost

3 points

Question 14

Which of the following is an example of an implicit cost?

(i) the owner of a firm forgoing an opportunity to earn a large salary working in Wall Street

(ii) interest paid on the firm's debt

(iii) rent paid by the firm to lease office space

A. (ii) and (iii) only

B. (i) and (iii) only

C. (i) only

D. (iii) only

3 points

sapphirekangaroo316

26. To the economist total cost includes

A. explicit and implicit costs.

B neither implicit nor explicit costs.

C. implicit, but not explicit, costs.

D. explicit, but not implicit, costs.

27. Accounting profits are typically

A. greater than economic profits because the former do not take explicit costs into account

B. equal to economic profits because accounting costs include all opportunity costs.

C. smaller than economic profits because the former do not take implicit costs into account.

D. greater than economic profits because the former do not take implicit costs into account.

28. Suppose that a business incurred implicit costs of $200,000 and explicit costs of $1 million in a specific year. If the firm sold 4,000 units of its output at $300 per unit, its accounting profits were

A. $100,000 and its economic profits were $0.

B. $200,000 and its economic profits were $0.

C. $100,000 and its economic profits were $100,000.

D. $0 and its economic loss was $200,000.

29. The basic difference between the short run and the long run is that

A. all costs are fixed in the short run, but all costs are variable in the long run.

B. the law of diminishing returns applies in the long run but not in the short run.

C. at least one resource is fixed in the short run, while all resources are variable in the long run.

D. economies of scale may be present in the short run but not in the long run.

30. The law of diminishing returns indicates that

A. as extra units of a variable resource are added to a fixed resource, marginal product will decline beyond some point.

B. because of economies and diseconomies of scale, a competitive firm's long-run average total cost curve will be U-shaped.

C. the demand for goods produced by purely competitive industries is downsloping.

D. beyond some point, the extra utility derived from additional units of a product will yield the consumer smaller and smaller extra amounts of satisfaction.

sapphirecrow883

Managers of a monopoly under rate of return regulation have an incentive to

a. underestimate the firm's costs.

b. exaggerate the firm's costs.

c. minimize the monopoly's deadweight loss.

d. exaggerate the firm's profit.

e. earn zero economic profit.

Which of the following is correct?
i. All linear demand curves have a constant slope and a constant price elasticity of demand.
ii. The price elasticity of demand changes while moving along a downward-sloping linear demand curve.
iii. The magnitude of the slope of all linear demand curves is equal to the price elasticity of demand.

a. iii only.

b. ii only.

c. i, ii, and iii.

d. i only.

e. i and ii.

________ natural monopolies is a commonly used, potential solution to the problems presented by natural monopolies.

a. Giving incentives to firms to become

b. Regulating

c. Breaking up firms that are

d. Outlawing price discrimination by

e. Refusing to grant patents to

In the short run, a perfectly competitive firm

a. must suffer an economic loss.

b. must earn an economic profit.

c. might make an economic profit, incur an economic loss, or make a normal profit.

d. must make either an economic profit or a normal profit.

e. must earn a normal profit.

To determine if a market is an oligopoly, we need to determine if

a. cartels are legal in their market.

b. the firms are so few that they recognize their mutual interdependencies.

c. the firms make identical or differentiated products.

d. there are many firms in the market.

e. the market's HHI is less than 900.

Increasing marginal returns to labor

a. occur only when there are increasing marginal returns to capital.

b. are the result of specialization and division of labor in the production process.

c. describe the portion of a total product curve where the marginal product is negative.

d. mean that two workers produce less than twice the output of one worker.

e. occur when a particularly efficient worker is employed.

The return to entrepreneurship, which is what the firm's owner could earn running another business, is known as

a. entrepreneur's profit.

b. economic profit.

c. excessive profit.

d. accounting profit.

normal profit.

Both price supports and a price floor can

a. decrease the price below the equilibrium price.

b. increase consumer surplus.

c. create a deadweight loss.

d. decrease output below the equilibrium quantity.

e. have no effect on producer surplus.

In economics, cost is ________, and benefit is ________.

a. the amount of money that you pay for something; the amount of money that someone else is willing to pay you
b. what you must give up to get something; what you are willing to give up to get it
c. the amount of money that you pay on the margin; the amount of money that you receive on the margin
d. what you are willing to give up to get it; what you must give up to get something
e. what you are willing to pay on the margin; what the government pays you when you are unemployed or retired

If a substitute good is easy to find, then demand for a good is

a. unit elastic.

b. perfectly inelastic.

c. elastic.

d. inelastic.

e. Substitutes don't have any effect on elasticity.

ECON111 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Average Cost, Diminishing Returns, Marginal Product

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