attached assignment
Homework You should show detailed calculations/processes and explanations. Answer itself is NOT sufficient. 1. The demand curve for a product is given by where Pz = $300. a. What is the own price elasticity of demand when Px = $140? Is demand elastic or inelastic at this price? What would happen to the firm's revenue if it decided to charge a price below $140? b. What is the own price elasticity of demand when Px = $240? Is demand elastic or inelastic at this price? What would happen to the firm's revenue if it decided to charge a price above $240? c. What is the cross-price elasticity of demand between good X and good Z when Px = $140? Are goods X and Z substitutes or complements? 2. Suppose the cross-price elasticity of demand between goods X and Y is 4. How much would the price of good Y have to change in order to increase the consumption of good X by 20 percent? 3. You are the manager of a firm that sells a leading brand of alkaline batteries. A file named Q12.xls with data on the demand for your product is available online at www.mhhe.com/baye8e. Specifically, the file contains data on the natural logarithm of your quantity sold, price, and the average income of consumers in various regions around the world. Use this information to perform a log-linear regression, and then determine the likely impact of a 3 percent decline in global income on the overall demand for your product. 3. A consumer must divide $600 between the consumption of product X and product Y. The relevant market prices are Px = $10 and Py = $40. a. Write the equation for the consumer's budget line. b. Illustrate the consumer's opportunity set in a carefully labeled diagram. c. Show how the consumer's opportunity set changes when the price of good X increases to $20. How does this change alter the market rate of substitution between goods X and Y? 4. Provide an intuitive explanation for why a “buy one, get one free” deal is not the same as a “half-price” sale. 5. A consumer must spend all of her income on two goods (X and Y). In each of the following scenarios, indicate whether the equilibrium consumption of goods X and Y will increase or decrease. Assume good X is an normal good and good Y is a inferior good. a. Income doubles. b. Income quadruples and all prices double. c. Income and all prices quadruple. d. Income is halved and all prices double. 6. A firm's product sells for $4 per unit in a highly competitive market. The firm produces output using capital (which it rents at $25 per hour) and labor (which is paid a wage of $30 per hour under a contract for 20 hours of labor services). Complete the following table and use that information to answer these questions. a. Identify the fixed and variable inputs. b. What are the firm's fixed costs? c. What is the variable cost of producing 475 units of output? d. How many units of the variable input should be used to maximize profits? e. What are the maximum profits this firm can earn? f. Over what range of the variable input usage do increasing marginal returns exist? g. Over what range of the variable input usage do decreasing marginal returns exist? h. Over what range of input usage do negative marginal returns exist? 7. An economist estimated that the cost function of a single-product firm is Based on this information, determine: a. The fixed cost of producing 10 units of output. b. The variable cost of producing 10 units of output. c. The total cost of producing 10 units of output. d. The average fixed cost of producing 10 units of output. e. The average variable cost of producing 10 units of output. f. The average total cost of producing 10 units of output. g. The marginal cost when Q = 10. 8. A firm's fixed costs for 0 units of output and its average total cost of producing different output levels are summarized in the table below. Complete the table to find the fixed cost, variable cost, total cost, average fixed cost, average variable cost, and marginal cost at all relevant levels of output. 9. Discuss the optimal method for procuring inputs that have well-defined and measurable quality specifications and require highly specialized investments. What are the primary advantages and disadvantages of acquiring inputs through this means? Give an example not used in the textbook that uses this method of procurement. 10. Identify whether each of the following transactions involves spot exchange, contract, or vertical integration. a. Barnacle, Inc., has a legal obligation to purchase 2 tons of structural steel per week to manufacture conveyor frames. b. Exxon-Mobil uses the oil extracted from its wells to produce raw polypropylene, a type of plastic. c. Boat Lifts R Us purchases generic AC motors from a local distributor. d. Kaspar Construction—a home-building contractor—purchases 50 pounds of nails from the local Home Depot. 11. The manager of your company's pension fund is compensated based entirely on fund performance; he earned over $1.2 million last year. As a result, the fund is contemplating a proposal to cap the compensation of fund managers at $100,000. Provide an argument against the proposal. 12. Ten firms compete in a market to sell product X. The total sales of all firms selling the product are $2 million. Ranking the firms' sales from highest to lowest, we find the top four firms' sales to be $260,000, $220,000, $150,000, and $130,000, respectively. Calculate the four-firm concentration ratio in the market for product X. 13. A firm has $1.5 million in sales, a Lerner index of 0.57, and a marginal cost of $50, and competes against 800 other firms in its relevant market. a. What price does this firm charge its customers? b. By what factor does this firm mark up its price over marginal cost? c. Do you think this firm enjoys much market power? Explain. 14. Many MBAs who ventured into the “dot-com” world of the late 1990s found themselves unemployed by 2001 as many firms in that industry ceased to exist. However, during their tenure with these companies, these managers gained valuable skills in how to operate within a highly competitive environment. Based on the numbers in Table 7-3 in this chapter, which industries represent the best match for these managers' expertise? Looking at the industries listed in Table 7-3, what factors give rise to the varying levels of market power? 15. The top graph on page 315 summarizes the demand and costs for a firm that operates in a perfectly competitive market. a. What level of output should this firm produce in the short run? b. What price should this firm charge in the short run? c. What is the firm's total cost at this level of output? d. What is the firm's total variable cost at this level of output? e. What is the firm's fixed cost at this level of output? f. What is the firm's profit if it produces this level of output? g. What is the firm's profit if it shuts down? h. In the long run, should this firm continue to operate or shut down/exit the market? Page 315 16. A firm sells its product in a perfectly competitive market where other firms charge a price of $90 per unit. The firm's total costs are C(Q) = 50 + 10Q + 2Q2. a. How much output should the firm produce in the short run? b. What price should the firm charge in the short run? c. What are the firm's short-run profits? d. What adjustments should be anticipated in the long run? 17. The accompanying diagram shows the demand, marginal revenue, and marginal cost of a monopolist. a. Determine the profit-maximizing output and price. b. What price and output would prevail if this firm's product were sold by price-taking firms in a perfectly competitive market? c. Calculate the deadweight loss of this monopoly. 18. The inverse market demand in a homogeneous-product Cournot duopoly is P = 200 − 3(Q1 + Q2) and costs are C1(Q1) = 26Q1 and C2(Q2) = 32Q2. a. Determine the reaction function for each firm. b. Calculate each firm's equilibrium output. c. Calculate the equilibrium market price. d. Calculate the profit each firm earns in equilibrium. 19. Two firms compete in a market to sell a homogeneous product with inverse demand function P = 600 − 3Q. Each firm produces at a constant marginal cost of $300 and has no fixed costs. Use this information to compare the output levels and profits in settings characterized by Cournot, Stackelberg, Bertrand, and collusive behavior. 20. Use the following normal-form game to answer the questions below. a. Identify the one-shot Nash equilibrium. b. Suppose the players know this game will be repeated exactly three times. Can they achieve payoffs that are better than the one-shot Nash equilibrium? Explain. c. Suppose this game is infinitely repeated and the interest rate is 6 percent. Can the players achieve payoffs that are better than the one-shot Nash equilibrium? Explain. d. Suppose the players do not know exactly how many times this game will be repeated, but they do know that the probability the game will end after a given play is θ. If θ is sufficiently low, can players earn more than they could in the one-shot Nash equilibrium? 21. Based on the following graph (which summarizes the demand, marginal revenue, and relevant costs for your product), determine your firm's optimal price, output, and the resulting profits for each of the following scenarios: a. You charge the same unit price to all consumers. b. You engage in first-degree price discrimination. c. You engage in two-part pricing. d. You engage in block pricing. 22. You are the manager of a monopoly. A typical consumer's inverse demand function for your firm's product is P = 250 − 40Q, and your cost function is C(Q) = 10Q. a. Determine the optimal two-part pricing strategy. b. How much additional profit do you earn using a two-part pricing strategy compared with charging this consumer a per-unit price? 23. Consider the two options in the following table, both of which have random outcomes: a