Unit 2.3.1 Costs of Production: Team Presentation Activity

Learning Objectives:

• Distinguish between fixed and variable costs of production
• Understand how the law of diminishing returns affects the shape of a firm’s short-run total costs and short-run average costs.
• Understand the relationships between marginal cost and the average costs faced by a firm
• Distinguish between the short-run and the long-run and understand how economies of scale determines the shape of a firm’s long-run ATC curve.
• Evaluate the importance to a business firm of understanding its short-run and long-run costs of production.

Process: Work with a partner in the class to prepare a presentation on the theories behind and the relationships between a firm’s short-run and long-run costs of production. Pairs will create a shared Google Presentation (which should also be shared with Mr. Welker) and collaborate on creating a presentation demonstrating your understanding of the topics outlined below. The presentations that are created will be shared among group members, and edited in class and over the weekend.

The assignment: Each team is to make one Google Presentation on an assigned topic based on what they learn using the web-resources provided by Mr. Welker below. Presentations will be shared with Mr. Welker and presented during our first meeting next week.

Guidelines for presentation:

1. Presentations must be at least 10 slides long, but no more than 15.
   
2. Presentations must include definition, explanations, illustrations and examples (when possible) for the key concepts identified below
3. Presentations must include graphs from the resources provided to illustrate concepts where necessary
4. Presentation must use each group’s own words. Copying and pasting text from the resources provided is not permitted.

Shor-run – Key Concepts

• Short-run
• Total, average and marginal product
• Law of diminishing returns
• Short-run total costs
• Short-run marginal and average costs

Resources on Short-run Costs of Production:

• Course Companion pages 73-79
• Unit 2.3.1 Study Guide
• Wiki page – Economic Costs
• Calculating total costs – BizEd
• Wiki page – Short-run Production Relationships
• Wiki page – Short-run Production Costs
• WW Blog – Diminishing Returns and graphing short-run costs (Read and respond to the discussion questions as a table group)
• Biz-Ed PowerPoint on short-run costs (slides 1-28)

Long-run: Key Concepts

• Long-run
• Long-run Average Total Cost
• Economies of scale/Increasing returns to scale
• Minimum efficient scale
• Constant returns to scale
• Diseconomies of scale/Decreasing returns to scale

Resources on Long-run Costs of Production:

• Course Companion pages 79-83
• Unit 2.3.1 Study Guide
• Wiki page – Economic Costs
• Wiki page – Long-run Production Costs
• Biz-Ed PowerPoint on long-run costs (slides 29-57):
• WW Blog – Economies of scale and the long-run ATC (Read and respond to the discussion questions as a table group)
• Biz-Ed – Economies of scale in farming
• Biz-Ed – Economies of scale in fishing

Grading Presentation: Total – 40 marks

FT.com / Asia-Pacific – Renminbi at heart of trade imbalances.

“The Americans get the toys, the Chinese get the Treasuries and we get screwed.” Thus a European Union official once characterised the pattern of Beijing accumulating US assets by selling renminbis for dollars, while nothing stood in the way of a rapid and destabilising appreciation of the euro.

In a world of freely floating exchange rates trade imbalances between countries would ultimately be reduced and eliminated. At least, that’s the belief of those advocating a floating exchange rate between East Asian currencies and the United States.

Here’s how it is supposed to work:

• Cheap labor and cheap imports from China following China’s joining the world economy 30 years ago led to a rapid increase in demand for Chinese manufactured goods in the US, creating growth, jobs, and rising national income for China.
• A trade imbalance emerges between the US and China as US spending on imports increases more rapidly than America’s  sale of exports. If the Chinese currency were allowed to float freely on foreign exchange markets, however, this imbalance would be temporary, because…
• The US current account deficit means, literally, that Americans are supplying more of their dollars in the foreign exchange market, while demanding more Chinese RMB. The forces of supply and demand would naturally lead to an appreciation of the RMB and a depreciation of the dollar.
• The weaker dollar resulting from the trade deficit with China would eventually make Chinese goods less attractive to Americans. Despite their lower costs of production, the weak dollar makes imported Chinese goods more expensive and less appealing to the American consumer.
• The strong RMB, on the other hand, makes American produced goods and services cheaper to Chinese consumers, who begin to import more from the US at the same time that Americans demand fewer of China’s products.
• Through free-floating exchange rates, a current account imbalance is eventually reduced and eliminated as exchange rates adjust to the flows of goods and services between trading partners.

A graphical version of this story is told here:

This, of course, is precisely what has NOT happened, thanks to China’s strict management of the value of the RMB. In order to keep its currency weak, Beijing directly intervenes in foreign exchange markets, “by selling renmenbi for dollars” to accumulate American assets. As seen in the next graph, such interference has the effect of keeping the dollar strong against the RMB.

As any IB student knows, the Balance  of Payments between two countries includes not only the trade in goods and services, but also the flow of real and financial assets, such as government securities, stocks, real estate, factories, and so on, between the countries. China has actively promoted a policy of acquiring such American assets, which keeps demand for dollars strong in China, and supply of RMB high in America, without creating any jobs in manufacturing or services for Americans. China has financed America’s current account deficit by assuring it maintains a capital account surplus!

Put more simply, China has exported goods and services to America, while America has exported ownership of its real and financial assets to China. This is a major area of concern for US policy makers, who would like to see a more balanced current account between the two countries, since it is the export of goods and services that creates jobs for American workers, not the sale of bonds, stocks and real estate.

Discussion Questions:

1. Why does Europe care about China’s fixed exchange rate with the US dollar?
2. Do you believe that American demand for Chinese goods would actually decline if the RMB were allowed to appreciate against the dollar? Why or why not?
3. Besides American workers and firms, who else suffers from a weak Chinese currency? How could China actually benefit from allowing the RMB to strengthen against the dollar?
4. How does China maintain the RMB’s peg against the dollar without buying large quantities of US exports?

Look closely at the two cost curves below:

The curve on the left is a firm’s short-run average total cost curve. The one on the right represents a firm’s long-run average total cost curve. See the difference?

I didn’t think so. The shape of a typical firm’s short-run and long-run ATC curves may in fact be identical. But there are some very important differences to understand about the short-run costs and long-run costs faced by firms.

The Short-Run: In microeconomics, we define the short-run as the period of time over which a firm’s plant size is fixed. The only variable resource is labor and raw materials, meaning that when demand increases for a firm’s product, the firm is able to increase employee work hours, hire more workers and use existing capital more intensively, but it does not have the time to acquire new capital or expand factory size. Likewise, when demand falls for a firm’s products, it can cut back on work hours, fire workers, but cannot downsize its plants or factories.

The Long-Run: The long-run is defined as the variable-plant period. A firm can adjust the number of all its inputs: land, labor and capital. One way of thinking about the difference between the short-run and the long-run is imagining the long-run as several different short-runs spread out over a larger range of output. The graph below will illustrate this concept for you.

When we examine the long-run ATC more closely, it becomes apparent that there are in fact lots of little short-run ATC curves along the length of the long-run curve. Each of the gray lines in the graph above represent a short-run period in which this firm opened a new factories. There are three distinct phases of this firm’s long-run ATC:

• Economies of scale: As this firm first begins to grow and open new factories, it becomes better and better at what it is producing, is able to get more output per unit of input, and thus experiences lower and lower average total costs as it grows larger. “Scale” is a synonym for size. The bigger the firm’s size, the lower its costs of production: this is called “economies of scale”. My favorite illustration of the concept of economies of scale is to think about two shoe companies: Nike and Luigi’s Fine Italian Shoes. Nike makes shoes in giant factories in Indonesia, ships them in giant containers to all corners of the world in shipments containing 100,000 shoes each. Luigi makes shoes in his basement in Milan, has two employees, and ships shoes one at a time to customers around Europe. Who will have a lower average total cost of producing shoes? Luigi or Nike? Clearly, Nike has economies of scale, Luigi does not. If Luigi were to grow his business, chances are his average total costs would decline.
• Constant Returns to Scale: For the firm above, economies of scale assure that the larger it becomes, the lower its average total costs get. Efficiency in production improves whether through the lower price of inputs achieved through bulk-ordering, its ability to attract and hire skilled managers, the lower per unit cost of shipping larger quantities of products, or other such benefits of being big. At a certain point, however, the benefits of getting larger begin to diminish. This firm’s tenth factory is its minimum efficient scale: The level of total output this firm must achieve to minimize its long-run average total cost. Beyond this level of production, as this firm continues to grow, it will see no further cost benefits; in other words, it will achieve constant returns to scale (size).
• Diseconomies of scale: Why did the Mongol, the British and the Soviet empires collapse? Some historians argue it was because they became too big for their own good. When an organization (whether it’s a country or a firm) becomes TOO big, it begins to experience inefficiencies. When a firm grows so large that it has factories in all corners of the world, a dozen levels of management, and countless opportunities for corruption and miscommunication, its efficiency decreases and its average total costs begin to increase. In the 1980’s General Motor Company began to lose lots of business to smaller Japanese rivals. The outcome was the gigantic corporation broke up into smaller divisions, which then began to operate as different firms. For a while, GM remained competitive, partially because as a smaller firm, it was more efficient and able to compete on cost with its foreign rivals.

Diminishing Returns versus Economies of Scale: A common area of confusion for economics students is the difference between these two seemingly similar concepts. The difference lies in the two curves above, the short-run ATC and the long-run ATC.

• The shape of short run costs (MC, ATC and AVC) are determined by the law of diminishing returns. Since short-run costs are determined by the productivity of the variable resource in the short-run (labor), diminishing returns assures that at first, since a firm can expect to get MORE output for additional units of labor (as fixed capital is used more efficiently) ATC declines as output increases. But beyond a certain point, diminishing returns sets in and the additional output attributable to more units of the variable resource declines. Inevitably, a firm will experience higher and higher average costs as its output continues to grow, since it’s only able to vary the amount of labor used, not capital.
• The shape of long run ATC is determined by economies of scale (and diseconomies of scale). All resources are variable in the long-run, but lower costs cannot be guaranteed the larger a firm gets. At first, efficiency is improved as the firm grows, but at some point it becomes “too big for its own good” and costs start to rise as productivity of resources (land, labor and capital) is inhibited due to the firm’s massive size.

Discussion Questions:

1. What does it mean that a firm can become “too big for its own good”? Can you think of any other organizations (economic or otherwise) that have gotten so big that they’ve failed?
2. Why does your hometown have only one electricity company? Why aren’t utility industries such as water, natural gas, and garbage collection more competitive? How does the concept of economies of scale lead to certain industries being “natural monopolies”?
3. Why don’t more companies make jumbo jets?

The law of diminishing returns is a basic microeconomic concept that explains how a firm’s costs of production change in the short-run as it varies the amount of labor employed. As workers are added to a fixed amount of capital, the productivity of additional workers decreases beyond a certain point due to the lack of available capital.

To test the law of diminishing returns, it is possible to create a factory floor right in your own classroom. Follow the instructions below to determine whether the law applies to your own imaginary firm.

Introduction: Your classroom is about to turn into a factory that manufactures paper chains (to hold paper anchors for paper boats, of course!). A paper chain is made by taking two long, narrow strips of paper, folding one into a ring and stapling the ends together, then folding the other into a ring and connecting it to the first ring to make a chain. Two loops of paper stapled together make a chain. The longer your chain, the more productive your factory and its workers are. The goal of your paper chain factory, of course, is to make the longest chain possible in a fixed amount of time using a fixed amount of land and capital, with labor as your only variable resource. This is therefore an experiment to test the short-run law of diminishing marginal returns.

Resource:

• Land resources: You will need one table or a couple of desks pushed together. This is your factory floor. Additionally, you will need a box of paper, preferably recycled or used paper. These are your land resources.
• Capital resources: Every factory needs tools. The tools you’ll have for this activity are two pairs of scissors and two staplers. Since this is a short-run simulation, the amount of land and capital cannot be varied, therefore you may NOT use more scissors and staplers as more workers join the production process.
• Labor resources: These will consist of the members of your class. The simulation will start with just one worker, and in each successive round one additonal worker will be added until at least eight members of your class have joined the factory floor.

TIME: The time for each round of production is limited to one minute. Your teacher or a member of your class should be designated as time keeper.

Data Collection: Each student in the class should recored the following down in a data table. If you have access to laptops, the data can be collected in Microsoft Excel or in Google Spreadsheets. This way you can create graphs of the data to assist with your analysis later on. Each student should record the following data during the simulation.

# of Workers (QL) Total Product (TP): Marginal Product (=change in TP): Average Product (TP/QL)

Conducting the simulation: When your land and capital resources are ready and your recorder and time keeper have been designated, you may begin the simulation.

Mr. Welker’s students hard at work in the paper chain factory

1. In round one, only one student should come to the table. The timekeeper must start the clock and give the worker one minute to cut and staple as many links into one paper chain as he or she can. At the end of the minute the recorder must count the number of links in the chain, record it in the production table, and then take the chain and any links that were cut but not stapled aside in preparation for the next round.
2. In round two, a second worker should join the first and the two may work together for one minute to make as long a chain as they can. Again, the recorder will count the number of links in the chain at the end of one minute, record this under “total product”, then remove the chain and any unstapled links from the table.
3. In rounds three through eight, an additional worker is added in each round and the new production team is given exactly one minute to make as long a chain as they can. At the end of each round, the recorder must count the number of links and record this under “total product”.
4. At the end of the eighth round the factory must close its doors and the simulation is over. Now the class as a whole should look at the total product data and together help the recorder calculate the marginal product and average product for each of the eight rounds.

Data analysis: With your productivity data tables complete, you may now plot your data for total, marginal and average product on a graph similar to those earlier in this chapter, with the quantity of labor on the x-axis and the firm’s output on the y-axis. Using Microsoft Excel or Google Spreadsheets you can create a graph that should look something like the following (created using real data from Mr. Welker’s class recorded in a Google Spreadsheet):

• As a class, analyze the relationships between total and marginal product.
• Determine whether your paper chain factory ever experienced increasing returns and whether it ever experienced diminishing returns.
• Discuss the reasons for the changes in total product during each round of production.

• The graph above illustrates just marginal and average products. Discuss the meanings of marginal product and average product and determine how they changed as workers were added to your factory floor.
• What is the relationship between marginal product and average product?
• Decide whether the law of diminishing marginal returns applied to your factory. If so, why? If not, why not?

YouTube – Econ Concepts in 60 Seconds: The Law of Diminishing Marginal Returns

Mr. Clifford, an AP Economics teacher from San Diego, demonstrates the law of diminishing returns by deriving a total product and marginal product curve using production data from a student’s lawn mowing business.

Econ Concepts in 60 Seconds: The Law of Diminishing Marginal Returns The video above is most useful to Econ students because it enforces the Law of Diminishing Returns. The more important application of this basic economic concept, however, is the short-run per-unit cost curve, Marginal Cost, Average Variable Cost and Average Total Cost. Mr. Clifford offers his quick explanation of the relationships between a firm’s short-run costs in the following video.

Econ Concepts in 60 Seconds: Per Unit Costs Curves

Discussion Questions:

1. Mr. Clifford derives a Marginal Product Curve in the first video and a Marginal Cost Curve in the second video. What is the relationship between the marginal product of a firm’s variable resource and the firm’s marginal cost of production? How are the shapes of both these curves determined by the law of diminishing marginal returns?
2. Why does a firm care about its costs of production? Which of the four per-unit cost curves in the second video would a firm be most concerned with when determining whether or not it is earning profits or losses?
3. What can cause a firm’s cost curves to shift up or down? How would a shift of the cost curves affect a firm’s profits?
4. What is the primary economic goal of firms, and how can understanding their short-run costs of production help them achieve this goal?