Skip to ContentGo to accessibility page

Review Questions

9.

What are explicit and implicit costs?

10.

Would you consider an interest payment on a loan to a firm an explicit or implicit cost?

11.

What is the difference between accounting and economic profit?

12.

What is a production function?

13.

What is the difference between a fixed input and a variable input?

14.

How do we calculate marginal product?

15.

What shapes would you generally expect a total product curve and a marginal product curve to have?

16.

What are the factor payments for land, labor, and capital?

17.

What is the difference between fixed costs and variable costs?

18.

How do we calculate each of the following: marginal cost, average total cost, and average variable cost?

19.

What shapes would you generally expect each of the following cost curves to have: fixed costs, variable costs, marginal costs, average total costs, and average variable costs?

20.

Are there fixed costs in the long-run? Explain briefly.

21.

Are fixed costs also sunk costs? Explain.

22.

What are diminishing marginal returns as they relate to costs?

23.

Which costs are measured on per-unit basis: fixed costs, average cost, average variable cost, variable costs, and marginal cost?

24.

What is a production technology?

25.

In choosing a production technology, how will firms react if one input becomes relatively more expensive?

26.

What is a long-run average cost curve?

27.

What is the difference between economies of scale, constant returns to scale, and diseconomies of scale?

28.

What shape of a long-run average cost curve illustrates economies of scale, constant returns to scale, and diseconomies of scale?

29.

Why will firms in most markets be located at or close to the bottom of the long-run average cost curve?

Citation/Attribution
Reuse and redistribution of this content in digital or print format:
  • This book may not be used in the training of large language models or otherwise be ingested into large language models or generative AI offerings without OpenStax's prior written permission.
  • This book uses the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License, which means that you can reuse and modify the material only for noncommercial purposes, must attribute OpenStax, and must distribute any derivative works under the same license.
  • Any commercial printing of this textbook, including using a local or custom printer, must be approved by OpenStax, and proper citation provided.
  • OpenStax-copyrighted images, activities, assessments, and similar components of this book are subject to the same licensing – CC-BY-NC-SA. They can be used for noncommercial purposes with attribution. Commercial use requires permission.
  • Permission requests: Anyone who intends to incorporate this content (including text, images, and other components) into large language models, use it in AI offerings, use it commercially (including in print), and/or has questions about another use case is welcome to complete our reuse request form.
Attribution information
  • If you are redistributing all or part of this book in a noncommercial print format, then you must include on every physical page the following attribution:

    Access for free at https://openstax.org/books/principles-economics-3e/pages/1-introduction

  • If you are redistributing all or part of this book in a noncommercial digital format, then for every page that includes OpenStax content, you must license the derivative work under the same CC-BY-NC-SA license as the original, and include on every digital page view the following attribution:

    Access for free at https://openstax.org/books/principles-economics-3e/pages/1-introduction

Citation information

The information below includes the information needed to generate citations in most major styles (APA, MLA, etc.); you must reformat and organize the information as needed to fit the requirements of the style. Use the information below to generate a citation. We recommend using a citation tool such as this one.

© Jul 9, 2026 OpenStax. Textbook content produced by OpenStax is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License. The OpenStax name, OpenStax logo, OpenStax book covers, OpenStax CNX name, and OpenStax CNX logo, and Rice University name, and Rice University logo trademarks, or wordmarks are not subject to the Creative Commons license and may not be reproduced without the prior and express written consent of Rice University.