Consider two cigarette companies, pm inc. and brown inc. if neither company advertises, the two companies split the market and earn $50 million each. if they both advertise, they again split the market, but profits are lower by $10 million since each company must bear the cost of advertising. yet if one company advertises while the other does not, the one that advertises attracts customers from the other. in this case, the company that advertises earns $60 million while the company that does not advertise earns only $30 million.
if these two companies collude and agree upon the best joint strategy,
a. neither company will advertise.
b. both companies will advertise.
c. pm inc. will advertise but brown inc. will not.
d. brown inc. will advertise but pm inc. will not.

technology is the application of knowledge and tools to solve problems and perform tasks more efficiently. t/f

Afactory owner wants his workers to produce as many widgets as they can so he pays his workers based on how many widgets they produce. however, in order to make sure that the workers do not rush and produce a large number of poorly made widgets, he checks the widgets at random at various stages of their manufacture. if a defect is found in a widget, the pay of the entire section of the factory responsible for that defect is docked. how is this factory owner seeking to solve the agency conflict problem in this case?

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