ECON 312 Week 3 Discussion

ECON 312 Week 3 Discussion | Devry University

Week 3: Market Structure and Profit Maximization

Initial Post (up to 10 points)

Suppliers such as your local water suppliers, railroad, restaurants, coffee shops, hairdressers, artists, gas stations, movie theaters, airlines, universities, and so forth, operate under different market structures. All businesses exist for one purpose, which is to make profits. Profits or losses occur as a result of interaction between cost of production and market price. Higher production could lead to higher revenue; however, higher prices reduce quantity demanded and might lead to higher cost of production. In sum, suppliers and producers will make profit only when average total cost of production is lower than market price.

For your initial post, answer one of the following questions.

1.   Provide an example of a firm or a small business from the real world that is surviving the dynamic nature of monopolistic competition, and discuss some approaches they have used (or are currently using) to compete and survive in the market.

2.   Provide an example or a scenario from your personal (or professional) experience, an observation, a story that you have read, or an idea or thought that you might have for practical, creative, and/or effective ways to minimize production costs in order to maximize profits.

Multimedia Post (up to 15 points)

Create a short 1- to 2-minute slide presentation with a voice narration or a video using any technology you are comfortable with to explain one of the economic concepts listed below. Suggestions: Adobe Spark Page (Links to an external site.) with a Spark Video, Kaltura video post, or a narrated PowerPoint.

Start the presentation by introducing yourself (name and your topic of choice), then give a brief explanation of at least one of the concepts listed below, including an example to support your presentation.

·         Fixed costs versus variable costs

·         Explicit costs versus implicit costs

·         Accounting profits versus economic profits

·         Marginal cost and marginal revenue

·         Production maximization output

·         Optimum level of output

·         Monopolistic competition

·         Perfect competition

·         Law of dimensioning return to labor

Peer Response Post (up to 10 points)

Respond to at least one of your peers' initial posts or multimedia posts.

Your response should add new facts, ideas, knowledge, and/or corrections to the initial post or the multimedia post. Also, provide examples to support your response post.