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A recent issue of Business Week reported the following: During the recent auto sales slump, GM, Ford, and Chrysler decided it was cheaper to sell cars to rental companies at a loss than to lay off workers. That鈥檚 because closing and reopening plants is expensive, partly because the auto makers鈥 current union contracts obligate them to pay many workers even if they鈥檙e not working. When the article discusses selling cars 鈥渁t a loss,鈥 is it referring to accounting profit or economic profit? How will the two differ in this case? Explain briefly.

Short Answer

Expert verified

The article refers to the accounting profit by selling cars 鈥渁t a loss鈥. The accounting profit for the firms will be lower than the economic profit because of sunk cost.

Step by step solution

01

Comparison of economic and accounting profit and meaning of sunk cost

Accounting profit is the profit after the accounting cost, including the sunk costs in the explicit costs. Economic profit is the extra revenue after explicit and implicit or opportunity cost.

The sunk costs are the ones that have already been invested and cannot be recovered.The sunk costs cannot be recovered because they have no alternative and zero opportunity cost.

Since the sunk costs cannot be recovered, these costs do not affect the economic decisions and are part of the direct costs.

02

Profit of the firms by selling cars at a loss and comparing firm’s economic and accounting profit

Since the firms are obligated to pay the workers even if they are not working, the wages are sunk because there is no alternative way to use the labor or amount invested in the labor.

The firms鈥 profit will be the price received less the explicit or sunk costs.

Thus, selling the cars at a loss is the accounting profit where sunk costs (wages) are part of the accounting cost.

Since the sunk costs are part of the accounting cost, the accounting cost will be higher than the economic cost with no opportunity cost, and the rest of the explicit costs included in both are the same. Therefore, the accounting profit will be lower than the economic profit.

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Most popular questions from this chapter

Suppose a firm must pay an annual tax, which is a fixed sum, independent of whether it produces any output.

  1. How does this tax affect the firm鈥檚 fixed, marginal, and average costs?

  2. Now suppose the firm is charged a tax that is proportional to the number of items it produces. Again, how does this tax affect the firm鈥檚 fixed, marginal, and average costs?

Suppose that a firm鈥檚 production function is q = 10L1/2K1/2. The cost of a unit of labor is \(20 and the cost of a unit of capital is \)80.

  1. The firm is currently producing 100 units of output and has determined that the cost-minimizing quantities of labor and capital are 20 and 5, respectively. Graphically illustrate this using isoquants and isocost lines.

  2. The firm now wants to increase output to 140 units. If capital is fixed in the short run, how much labor will the firm require? Illustrate this graphically and find the firm鈥檚 new total cost.

  3. Graphically identify the cost-minimizing level of capital and labor in the long run if the firm wants to produce 140 units.

  4. If the marginal rate of technical substitution is K/L, find the optimal level of capital and labor required to produce the 140 units of output.

A computer company produces hardware and software using the same plant and labor. The total cost of producing computer processing units H and software programs S is given by TC = aH + bS - cHS where a, b, and c are positive. Is this total cost function consistent with the presence of economies or diseconomies of scale? With economies or diseconomies of scope?

a. Fill in the blanks in the table below.

Units of Output
Fixed Cost
Variable Cost
Total Cost
Marginal Cost
Average Fixed Cost
Average Variable Cost
Average Total Cost
0

100



1

125



2

145



3

157



4

177



5

202



6

236



7

270



8

326



9

398



10

490



b. Draw a graph that shows marginal cost, average variable cost, and average total cost, with cost on the vertical axis and quantity on the horizontal axis.

Joe quits his computer programming job, where he was earning a salary of \(50,000 per year, to start his own computer software business in a building that he owns and was previously renting out for \)24,000 per year. In his first year of business he has the following expenses: salary paid to himself, \(40,000; rent, \)0; other expenses, $25,000. Find the accounting cost and the economic cost associated with Joe鈥檚 computer software business.

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