Productivity and Costs

Session Overview
Everything has a cost, and that is true for firms as well as consumers. When firms produce goods, they incur costs that vary depending on how much they are producing. In this lecture, we will analyze firms' cost functions. Building factory infrastructure is a producer cost. Image courtesy of AndreasPraefcke on Wikipedia. Keywords: Productivity; food production; costs; marginal costs; long run costs; short run costs.

Session Activities
Readings Before watching the lecture video, read the course textbook for an introduction to the material covered in this session:

[R&T] Chapter 8, "Production and Cost." [Perloff] Chapter 7, "Costs." (optional)

Lecture Videos View Full Video

Lecture 9: Production Theory (00:47:30) Transcript (PDF)

View by Chapter

Productivity (00:15:27) Introduction to Costs and Short Run Costs (00:08:45)

Long Run Costs (00:15:10) Long Run Expansion Path (00:08:03)

Resources

Graphs and Figures (PDF)

Further Study
These optional resources are provided for students that wish to explore this topic more fully. Textbook Study Materials See the [Perloff] companion website for an overview of the main topics covered in the chapter, as well as quizzes, applications, and other related resources.

Chapter 6