ECOS2903 Tutorial 4: Quasi-concavity and Integration

12 March 2022

Please try your best to solve these questions before coming to the tutorial.
For the questions marked with ∗, you will be invited to share your thoughts (even if you could
not solve them entirely), and we will discuss them in detail. For the other questions, we may invite
you to share your answers with your classmates and we may not go over them in detail in class if
we run out of time.
2
Q1* Prove that g : R → R s.t. g(x) = e4−x is quasi-concave but not concave.

Q2* Prove the following proposition:

Proposition. Let g and f be real-valued functions defined on the domain X ⊆ Rn . Suppose

that g(x) = H( f (x)) and H is an increasing function.
If f is a quasi-concave function then g is quasi-concave.
If f is a quasi-convex function then g is quasi-convex.

Quiz Given the assumptions in Q2, if we want to prove “if f is a quasi-concave function then g is
quasi-concave”, which of the following claims is correct and useful as a middle step in the
proof?
∀x1 , x2 , let xα = αx1 + (1 − α)x2 for any α ∈ (0, 1), then:

1. H ( f (xα )) ≥ max {H ( f (x1 )) , H ( f (x2 ))}.

2. max {H ( f (x1 )) , H ( f (x2 ))} ≥ H ( f (xα ))
3. H ( f (xα )) ≥ min {H ( f (x1 )) , H ( f (x2 ))}.
4. If H ( f (x1 )) = H ( f (x2 )) = c then H ( f (xα )) ≥ c.

Q3 Evaluate the following: Z √

x 1 + xdx

Q4* Evaluate the following:

Z 41
1
√ √ dx
8.5 2x − 1 − 4 2x − 1

1
Q5 An oil company is planning to extract oil from one of its fields, starting today at t = 0, where t
is time measured in years. It has a choice between two extraction profiles f and g given the
rates of flow of oil, measured in barrels per year. Both extraction profiles last for 10 years,
with f (t) = 10t 2 − t 3 and g(t) = t 3 − 20t 2 + 100t in [0, 10].
(a) Sketch the two profiles in the same coordinate system.
(b) Show that Z t Z t
g(τ)dτ ≥ f (τ)dτ
0 0
for all t ∈ [0, 10].
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(c) The company sells its oil at a price per unit given by p(t) = 1 + t+1 . Total revenues from
R 10 R 10
the two profiles are then given by 0 p(t) f (t)dt and 0 p(t)g(t)dt respectively. Compute
these integrals. Which of the two extraction profiles earns the higher revenue?