ECON 102 Lecture Notes - Lecture 14: Marginal Product, W. M. Keck Observatory, Real Wages

6 views2 pages

champagnegiraffe277

2 Apr 2020

School

Department

Course

Professor

For unlimited access to Class Notes, a Class+ subscription is required.

Document Summary

Firm"s demand for factors: we now know that our business must employ workers and rent capital in the optimizing quantities of income. But what are those quantities which optimize the profit. We first consider the quantity of labor and then the quantity of capital, to answer this question: the labor marginal product, the more workers the company hires, the greater the production it generates. The marginal product of labor (mpl) is the extra amount of output the enterprise receives from an extra unit of labour, holding the amount of capital fixed. Start making bread in a bakery once again. When a bakery hires more workers, it produces more bread. When an additional unit of workers is employed, the mpl is the amount of extra bread produced. Nevertheless, if more labor is applied to a set sum of money, the mpl rises. Less additional loaves are made, because when the kitchen is more crowded, staff are less efficient.

Related Questions

You are an efficiency expert hired by a firm in the clothing industry that uses machines (K) and workers (L) as inputs. The firm has estimated that the marginal product of labor is MPL = 120 - 4 L, while the marginal product of capital is MPK = 50 - 5 K. The firm is currently using 25 units of L and 7 units of K. If w = $20, r = $15 then

a. the firm is minimizing the cost of producing the given quantity of output.

b. the firm should use less L and more K to minimize the cost of producing the given quantity of output

c. the firm should use less K and more L to minimize the cost of producing the given quantity of output

d. the firm is profit maximizing but not cost minimizing

amberhornet175

1. In a perfectly competitive industry, an individual firm faces:

a. a perfectly elastic labour supply curve

b. a perfectly inelastic labour supply curve

c.a perfectly vertical labour supply curve

d.none of the above

2. A firm purchases more capital equipment. We would expect to observe:

a. an increase in the supply of labour for this firm

b. a decrease in the supply curve of labour for this firm

c.an increase in the wage rate paid for labour by this firm

d.an increase in the demand for labour by this firm

3. Which of the following would be h most likely outcome if all perfectly competitive firms in a product market join together to form a monopoly?

a. the rate of output in the market will increase but the quantity of labour input will decrease

b.both the rate of output and the quantity of labour input employed will increase

c.the rate of output in the market will decrease but the quantity of labour input will increase

d.both the rate of output and the quantity of labour input employed will decrease

4. what does the marginal revenue product equal when 28 workers are hired in one week?

Labor input (workers per week)__Marginal physical product (output per week)__marginal revenue

25_______________________150_________________________________9.00

26_______________________140_________________________________8.50

27_______________________130_________________________________8.00

28_______________________120_________________________________7.50

29_______________________110________________________________7.00

a. $210

b.$7.50

c.$900

d.$1040

5. The profit-maximizing firm will hire additional workers until:

a. the extra revenue by the last workers hired equals zero

b.the extra cost associated with hiring the last worker equals the price of goods produced

c.the additional cost associated with hiring the last worker equals the average wage rate of workers

d.the additional cost associated with hiring the last worker equals the additional revenue generated by that worker.

rosehyena631

3. A firm has a long-run production function:

(a) In the short run, K = 81 is fixed. Find the short-run production function. What is the marginal product of labor in the short-run?

(b) If w = 10 and r = 15.24, find the short-run cost function. To do this, first, figure out how many workers are needed to produce Q units of output, and then add up the (fixed) SR cost of capital and the cost of labor as a function of Q. How many workers are needed to produce Q = 10?

(c) Write down equations for an average total cost (ATC) and average variable cost (AVC) as a function of Q. What is ATC when Q = 10? What as AVC when Q = 10?

(d) Write down the equation for the marginal cost (MC) as a function of Q. What is the marginal cost of producing Q = 10 in the short run?

(e) Verify that MC = w*MPL, evaluating the marginal product of labor from part (3a) at the number of workers needed to produce 10 units of output.

(f) In the long run, both capital and labor are variable. Find the marginal product of labor and the marginal product of capital. Find the marginal rate of technical substitution. On a properly-labeled graph, draw an isoquant for Q = 10.

(g) Does the production function exhibit increasing, decreasing, or constant returns to scale?

(h) Find the lowest cost method of producing Q = 10 (two unknowns: K and L). To do this, equate the MRTS with the input price ratio w r (one equation) and use the isoquant for Q = 10 as the second equation.

(i) Use the fact that the cost, in the long run, is wL + rK to find the LR cost of producing Q = 10. What is the long-run average cost (LRAC) at Q = 10?

(j) (Hard) More generally, use the MRTS and the production function to find the cost of producing any quantity Q. To do this, repeat the above exercise but keep Q as an (unknown) variable, and solve for K and L as functions of Q.

(k) On a properly labeled graph, depict ATC from part (3b) and LRAC from part (3j). Why is LRAC everywhere below ATC?

(l) What is the production level at which SRAC is minimized?

salmonhyena380

ECON 102 Lecture Notes - Lecture 14: Marginal Product, W. M. Keck Observatory, Real Wages

Document Summary

Get access

Related Documents

ECON 102 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Factors Of Production, Production Function

ECON 102 Lecture Notes - Lecture 15: Real Wages, Marginal Product

ECON 102 Lecture Notes - Lecture 25: Gdp Deflator, Money Supply

Related Questions