-The Hobbits of the Shire Are Trying to Decide How

question 155

Essay

-The Hobbits of the Shire are trying to decide how much bread and how much wine to produce. They ask you to be their economic consultant and give you the information in the first table above about different combinations of wine and bread that they can produce if they are fully employed and doing their best. The Hobbits also give you the information in the second table above about their willingness to pay for wine depending on how much wine they already have. To help the Hobbits solve their problem:
a) Draw the Shire's production possibilities frontier. Put wine on the horizontal axis.
b) What is the opportunity cost of the first two thousand bottles of wine? What is the marginal cost of the 3000th bottle of wine? What is the marginal cost of the 3,000th loaf of bread?
c) Draw the marginal cost of wine curve. What happens to the marginal cost if production of wine increases? Why?
d) Draw the marginal benefit from wine curve on the same figure on which you put the marginal cost curve. Describe the relationship between the quantity of wine produced and the marginal benefit from wine.
e) What combination of bread and wine will you recommend the Hobbits to produce? Why? Explain to the Hobbits why they would be worse off by producing a different combination of bread and wine.

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Definitions:

Little Albert

A landmark experiment in psychology conducted by John B. Watson which demonstrated that emotional reactions could be classically conditioned in humans.

Vicarious Conditioning

Learning that occurs by observing the reactions of others to an environment, rather than through direct experience or participation.

Emotional Responses

The reactions, both physiological and psychological, of an individual to external or internal stimuli.

Stimulus Generalization

The tendency to respond to stimuli that are similar, but not identical, to a conditioned stimulus in the process of learning.