Ppx is a specialized packaging company that packages other manufacturers' products. other manufacturers ship their products to ppx in bulk. ppx then packages the products using high-speed, state-of-the-art packaging machines and ships the packaged products to wholesalers. a typical order involves packaging small toys in see-through plastic and cardboard containers. ppx uses a flexible budget to forecast annual plantwide overhead, which is then allocated to jobs based on machine hours. the annual flexible overhead budget is projected to be $6 million of fixed costs and $120 per machine hour. the budgeted number of machine hours for the year is 20,000. at the end of the year, 21,000 machine hours were used and actual overhead incurred was $9.14 million.

Consider the local telephone company, a natural monopoly. the following graph shows the monthly demand curve for phone services and the company’s marginal revenue (mr), marginal cost (mc), and average total cost (atc) curves. 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 price (dollars per subscription) quantity (thousands of subscriptions) d mr mc atc 8, 60 suppose that the government has decided not to regulate this industry, and the firm is free to maximize profits, without constraints. complete the first row of the following table. pricing mechanism short run long-run decision quantity price profit (subscriptions) (dollars per subscription) profit maximization marginal-cost pricing average-cost pricing suppose that the government forces the monopolist to set the price equal to marginal cost. complete the second row of the previous table. suppose that the government forces the monopolist to set the price equal to average total cost. complete the third row of the previous table. under average-cost pricing, the government will raise the price of output whenever a firm’s costs increase, and lower the price whenever a firm’s costs decrease. over time, under the average-cost pricing policy, what will the local telephone company most likely do

Consider an economy where government expenditures are 10 and total tax revenues are 10. the supply of labor is fixed at 125 and the supply of capital is fixed at 8. the economy is described by the following equations. y k to the power of 1 divided by 3 end exponent l to the power of 2 divided by 3 end exponent c 2.5 + 0.75 ( y - t ) i 10 - 0.5 r the level of private savings is

Lusk corporation produces and sells 14,300 units of product x each month. the selling price of product x is $25 per unit, and variable expenses are $19 per unit. a study has been made concerning whether product x should be discontinued. the study shows that $72,000 of the $102,000 in monthly fixed expenses charged to product x would not be avoidable even if the product was discontinued. if product x is discontinued, the annual financial advantage (disadvantage) for the company of eliminating this product should be: