Smiling Cow Dairy can sell all the milk it wants for $4 a gallon, and it can rent all the robots it wants to milk the cows at a capital rental price of $100 a day. It faces the following production schedule:
Number of Robots Total Product
0 0 gallons
1 50 gallons
2 95 gallons
3 115 gallons
4 140 gallons
5 150 gallons
6 155 gallons
a. In what kind of market structure does the firm sell its output? How can you tell?
b. In what kind of market structure does the firm rent robots? How can you tell?
c. Calculate the marginal product and the value of the marginal product for each additional robot.
d. How many robots should the firm rent?