《曼昆经济学原理英文版文案加习题答案13章》由会员分享，可在线阅读，更多相关《曼昆经济学原理英文版文案加习题答案13章（20页珍藏版）》请在金锄头文库上搜索。
1、221 2012 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.WHATS NEW IN THE SEVENTH EDITION:There are no major changes to this chapter.LEARNING OBJECTIVES:By the end of this chapter, students should unders
2、tand: what items are included in a firms costs of production. the link between a firms production process and its total costs. the meaning of average total cost and marginal cost and how they are related. the shape of a typical firms cost curves. the relationship between short-run and long-run costs
3、.CONTEXT AND PURPOSE:Chapter 13 is the first chapter in a five-chapter sequence dealing with firm behavior and the organization of industry. It is important that students become comfortable with the material in Chapter 13 because Chapters 14 through 17 are based on the concepts developed in Chapter
4、13. To be more specific, Chapter 13 develops the cost curves on which firm behavior is based. The remaining chapters in this section (Chapters 14-17) utilize these cost curves to develop the behavior of firms in a variety of different market structurescompetitive, monopolistic, monopolistically comp
5、etitive, and oligopolistic. The purpose of Chapter 13 is to address the costs of production and develop the firms cost curves. These cost curves underlie the firms supply curve. In previous chapters, we summarized the firms production decisions by starting with the supply curve. While this is suitab
6、le for answering many questions, it is now necessary to address the costs that underlie the supply curve in order to address the part of economics known as industrial organizationthe study of how firms decisions about prices and quantities depend on the market conditions they face.KEY POINTS: The go
7、al of firms is to maximize profit, which equals total revenue minus total cost.THE COSTS OF PRODUCTION13222 Chapter 13/The Costs of Production 2012 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. When a
8、nalyzing a firms behavior, it is important to include all the opportunity costs of production. Some of the opportunity costs, such as the wages a firm pays its workers, are explicit. Other opportunity costs, such as the wages the firm owner gives up by working at the firm rather than taking another
9、job, are implicit. Economic profit takes both explicit and implicit costs into account, whereas accounting profits consider only explicit costs. A firms costs reflect its production process. A typical firms production function gets flatter as the quantity of an input increases, displaying the proper
10、ty of diminishing marginal product. As a result, a firms total-cost curve gets steeper as the quantity produced rises. A firms total costs can be divided between fixed costs and variable costs. Fixed costs are costs that do not change when the firm alters the quantity of output produced. Variable co
11、sts are costs that change when the firm alters the quantity of output produced. From a firms total cost, two related measures of cost are derived. Average total cost is total cost divided by the quantity of output. Marginal cost is the amount by which total cost rises if output increases by one unit
12、. When analyzing firm behavior, it is often useful to graph average total cost and marginal cost. For a typical firm, marginal cost rises with the quantity of output. Average total cost first falls as output increases and then rises as output increases further. The marginal-cost curve always crosses
13、 the average-total-cost curve at the minimum of average total cost. A firms costs often depend on the time horizon considered. In particular, many costs are fixed in the short run but variable in the long run. As a result, when the firm changes its level of production, average total cost may rise mo
14、re in the short run than in the long run.CHAPTER OUTLINE:I. What Are Costs?A. Total Revenue, Total Cost, and Profit1. The goal of a firm is to maximize profit.This is an extremely important chapter, and it is critical that students have an understanding of the important principles developed here in
15、order to follow the material presented in the next several chapters. Do not be surprised at the number of students who are unfamiliar with such seemingly simple concepts as revenue, costs, and profits.Point out to students that it is possible for firm owners to have different goals, but the one moti
16、ve that makes the most accurate prediction about how firm managers behave is the assumption of profit maximization. To help illustrate this sometimes-controversial assumption, use the analogy of an automobile driver. Ask students to name an assumption about the goal of most drivers. Most would agree that drivers behave as if their goal is to get from one place to another in the least amount of time. This may not explain the behavior of every driver (i.e.,
