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In economics, a cost curve is a graph of the costs of production as a function of total quantity produced. In a free market economy, productively efficient firms optimize their production process by minimizing cost consistent with each possible level of production, and the result is a cost curve.
In economics, a cost function represents the minimum cost of producing a quantity of some good. The long-run cost curve is a cost function that models this minimum cost over time, meaning inputs are not fixed. Using the long-run cost curve, firms can scale their means of production to reduce the costs of producing the good. [1]
When the amount of one factor of production increases, the production of the good that uses that particular production factor intensively increases relative to the increase in the factor of production, as the H–O model assumes perfect competition where price is equal to the costs of factors of production. This theorem is useful in explaining ...
The cost can comprise any of the factors of production (including labor, capital, or land) and taxation. The theory makes the most sense under assumptions of constant returns to scale and the existence of just one non-produced factor of production. With these assumptions, minimal price theorem, a dual version of the so-called non-substitution ...
The more variable costs used to increase production (and hence more total costs since TC=FC+VC), the more output generated. Marginal costs are the cost of producing one more unit of output. It is an increasing function due to the law of diminishing returns , which explains that is it more costly (in terms of labour and equipment) to produce ...
The marginal cost can also be calculated by finding the derivative of total cost or variable cost. Either of these derivatives work because the total cost includes variable cost and fixed cost, but fixed cost is a constant with a derivative of 0. The total cost of producing a specific level of output is the cost of all the factors of production.
A typical average cost curve has a U-shape, because fixed costs are all incurred before any production takes place and marginal costs are typically increasing, because of diminishing marginal productivity. In this "typical" case, for low levels of production marginal costs are below average costs, so average costs are decreasing as quantity ...
The cost-minimization problem of the firm is to choose an input bundle (K,L) feasible for the output level y that costs as little as possible. A cost-minimizing input bundle is a point on the isoquant for the given y that is on the lowest possible isocost line. Put differently, a cost-minimizing input bundle must satisfy two conditions: