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What is Economic Profit?
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The difference between total revenue and total cost
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What is Accounting Profit?
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The difference between total revenue and explicit cost incurred.
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Economists assume that the goal of firms is to:
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maximize economic profit
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What are the conditions for perfect competition?
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Firms sell a standardized product, firms are price takers, free entry and exit, firms and consumers have perfect information
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What does it mean when firms sell a standardized product?
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It means that the product sold by one firm is assumed to be a perfect substitute for the product sold by any other firm.
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What does it mean when firms are price takers?
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It means that the individual firm treats the market price of the product as given.
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What does it mean when there is free entry and exit?
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It means there is perfectly mobile factors of production in the long run.
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How does a firm maximize profit in the short run condition?
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The firm will choose the level of output where the difference between total revenue and total cost is largest.
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What is marginal revenue?
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The change in total revenue when sales change by 1 unit.
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In terms of marginal revenue, how does a firm maximize its profit in the short run condition?
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The firm should produce a level of output that sets marginal revenue equal to the marginal cost on the rising part of the MC curve.
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Marginal cost will typically [blank] before it [blank].
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decrease, increases
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On a graph, profit maximizing quantity occurs when:
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P=MR=MC
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If price fails to cover AVC, the firm should do what?
answer
Shut down
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What is the Shutdown condition?
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The firm should shut down in the short run if price falls below the minimum of average variable cost.
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How do you get the short run competitive industry supply curve?
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Add up the output of each firm in an industry.
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How do you get average total cost?
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Take the total cost and divide it by quantity.
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Where is the Breakeven Point?
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The point where price is equal to the minimum of average total cost.
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What does the Breakeven Point tell us?
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The lowest price at which the firm will not suffer negative profits in the short run.
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What is allocative efficiency?
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a condition in which all possible gains from exchange are realized.
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When is a competitive market efficient?
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When it maximizes the net benefits to its participants.
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What is producer surplus?
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The amount of money a firm gets from producing a profit-maximizing level of output.
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What happens in the long run if there is a positive economic profit?
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It creates an incentive for others to join the industry.
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What happens to the supply curve when other firms join an industry?
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The supply curve shifts to the right.
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With more firms joining an industry, at what point will the supply curve stop shifting to the right?
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When price reaches the minimum point on the LAC curve or when all firms move to the capital stock size.
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What makes competitive markets attractive to society as a whole?
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Price is equal to marginal cost, price is equal to the minimum point on the long run average cost curve, all producers earn only a normal rate of profit.
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What is attractive about price being equal to marginal cost?
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The last unit of output consumed is worth the same to the buyer as the resources required to produce it.
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What is attractive about price being equal to the minimum point of the long run average cost curve?
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There is no less costly way of producing the product.
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What is attractive about all producers earning only a normal rate of profit?
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The public doesn't pay any more than what it cost the firms to serve them.
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What is the long run supply curve for Constant Cost Industries?
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a horizontal line at the minimum value of the LAC curve.
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What is the long run supply curve Increasing Cost Industries?
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Upward sloping
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What is the long run supply curve for Decreasing Cost Industries?
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downward sloping
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What is Pecuniary Diseconomy?
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the rise in production cost when an expansion of industry outputs causes a rise in the prices input
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What is the curve for Pecuniary Diseconomy?
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An upward sloping long run industry supply curve
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What is Pecuniary Economy?
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the prices of inputs fall with expanding industry output.
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What is the curve for Pecuniary Economy?
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A downward sloping long run industry supply curve