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Suppose that a paving company produces paved parking spaces (q) using a fixed quantity of land (T) and variable quantities of cement (C) and labor (L). The firm is currently paving 1000 parking spaces. The firm鈥檚 cost of cement is \(4,000 per acre covered, and its cost of labor is \)12/hour. For the quantities of C and L that the firm has chosen, MPC = 50 and MPL = 4.

  1. Is this firm minimizing its cost of producing parking spaces? How do you know?

  2. If the firm is not cost-minimizing, how must it alter its choices of C and L in order to decrease cost?

Short Answer

Expert verified

a. The firm is not minimizing its cost of producing parking spaces because the marginal productivity per dollar for both inputs does not satisfy the cost-minimizing condition.

b. The firm can either increase labor such as the MPL = 0.15 or decrease cement with MPc = 1,333.6.

Step by step solution

01

Cost minimization at present levels of marginal productivities of labor and cement

The inputs used for parking spaces are labor and cement.The cost minimization rule says that the marginal productivity of the inputs per dollar should be equal. Thus,

MPLw=MPCc

For labor, the marginal productivity per dollar is:

MPLw=412=0.3334

For cement, the marginal productivity per dollar is:

MPcc=504000=0.0125

Since the marginal productivity of the two inputs per dollar does not match, the firm has not recently minimized the cost.

02

Changes in the levels of labor or cement for cost-minimization

To minimize the cost, the firm can increase the labor, which will lower its marginal productivity per dollar, equal to 0.0125.

MPLw=0.0125MPL12=0.0125MP=0.15

Thus, the firm can increase the labor till its marginal productivity becomes 0.15.

The firm can also choose to decrease the cement employed such that the marginal productivity per dollar equals 0.3334.

MPcc=0.3334MPc4000=0.3334MPc=1333.6

Thus, the firm can also choose to decrease the cement till its marginal productivity increases to 1,333.6.

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Most popular questions from this chapter

In a famous article (J. Viner, 鈥淐ost Curves and Supply Curves,鈥 Zeitschrift fur Nationalokonomie 3 (Sept. 1931): 23鈥46), Jacob Viner criticized his draftsman who could not draw a family of short-run ATC curves whose points of tangency with the U-shaped LAC curve were also the minimum points on each SAC curve. The draftsman protested that such a drawing was impossible to construct. Whom would you support in this debate, and why? Include a diagram in your answer.

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