Can the economy of Luxland produce 15 bags of chips at the same time that they produce 25 bags
of pretzels? Why or why not?

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

In a fixed-term, level-payment reverse mortgage, sometimes called a reverse annuity mortgage, or ram, a lender agrees to pay the homeowner a monthly payment, or annuity, and expects to be repaid from the homeowner’s equity when he or she sells the home or obtains other financing to pay off the ram. consider a household that owns a $150,000 home free and clear of mortgage debt. the ram lender agrees to a $100,000 ram for 10 years at 6 percent. assume payments are made annually, at the beginning of each year to the homeowner. calculate the annual payment on the ram.

Imprudential, inc., has an unfunded pension liability of $572 million that must be paid in 25 years. to assess the value of the firm’s stock, financial analysts want to discount this liability back to the present. if the relevant discount rate is 6.5 percent, what is the present value of this liability? (do not round intermediate calculations and enter your answer in dollars, not millions, rounded to 2 decimal places, e.g., 1,234,567.89)