PROBLEM 1
You are a newspaper publisher. You are in the middle of a one-year rental contract for your factory that requires you to pay $500,000 per month, and you have contractual labor obligations of $1 million per month that you can't get out of. You also have a marginal printing cost of $0.25 per paper as well as a marginal delivery cost of $0.10 per paper. If sales fall by 20 percent from 1 million papers per month to 800,000 papers per month, what happens to the AFC per paper, the MC per paper, and the minimum amount that you must charge to break even on these costs?
PROBLEM 2
Assume that the cost data in the following table are for a purely competitive producer:
Total Average Average Average Marginal
Product Fixed Cost Variable Cost Total Cost
1 $60.00 $45.00 $105.00 $45
2 30.00 42.50 72.50 40
3 20.00 40.00 60.00 35
4 15.00 37.50 52.50 30
5 12.00 37.00 49.00 35
6 10.00 37.50 47.50 40
7 8.57 38.57 47.14 45
8 7.50 40.63 48.13 55
9 6.67 43.33 50.00 65
10 6.00 46.50 52.50 75
a. At a product price of $56, what quantity of production will maximize profit? Explain. What is the profit (or loss) per unit at that level of output?
b. Answer the questions of part a assuming product price is $41.
c. Answer the questions of part a assuming product price is $32.
PROBLEM 3
A firm in a purely competitive industry is currently producing 1,000 units per day at a total cost of $450. If the firm produced 800 units per day, its total cost would be $300, and if it produced 500 units per day, its total cost would be $275.
a. What are the firm's ATC per unit at each of these three levels of production?
b. If every firm in this industry has the same cost structure, is the industry in long-run competitive equilibrium?
c. From what you know about these firms cost structures, what is the highest possible price per unit that could exist as the market price in long-run equilibrium?
d. If that price ends up being the market price and if the normal rate of profit is 10 percent, then what will each firm's accounting profit per unit be?