Discussion
Read the attached presentations and
Reflect on the assigned readings for Week 1 and then type a two page paper regarding what you thought was the most important concept(s), method(s), term(s), and/or any other thing that you felt was worthy of your understanding. Define and describe what you thought was worthy of your understanding in half a page, and then explain why you felt it was important, how you will use it, and/or how important it is in managerial economics. After submitting your two page paper as an initial post in the “Reflection and Discussion Forum,” then type at least two peer replies in response to your classmates posts (200 word minimum each).
Extent
(How Much)
Decisions
4
©
2
018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part, except for use as permitted in a license distributed with a certain product or service or otherwise on a password-protected website for classroom use. ©Kamira/Shutterstock Images
CHAPTER
Do not confuse average and marginal costs.
Average cost (AC) is total cost (fixed and variable) divided by total units produced.
Average cost is irrelevant to an extent decision.
Marginal cost (MC) is the additional cost incurred by producing and selling one more unit.
Marginal revenue (MR) is the additional revenue gained from selling one more unit.
Sell more if MR > MC; sell less if MR < MC. If MR = MC, you are selling the right amount (maximizing profit!).
2
©2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part, except for use as permitted in a license distributed with a certain product or service or otherwise on a password-protected website for classroom use. ©Kamira/Shutterstock Images
The relevant costs and benefits of an extent decision are marginal costs and marginal revenue. If the marginal revenue of an activity is larger than the marginal cost, then do more of it.
An incentive compensation scheme that increases marginal revenue or reduces marginal cost will increase effort. Fixed fees have no effects on effort.
A good incentive compensation scheme links pay to performance measures that reflect effort.
3
continued
©2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part, except for use as permitted in a license distributed with a certain product or service or otherwise on a password-protected website for classroom use. ©Kamira/Shutterstock Images
US Financial Crisis
The financial crisis began in the subprime housing market, where government policies encouraged lenders to extend credit to low-income borrowers (by lowering lending standards)
These high-risk loans, or mortgages, were being packaged into securities by lenders and sold to investors.
If the risk had been recognized investor demand would have been low, but rating agencies were too liberal with AAA ratings, increasing demand for loans.
The result? A credit “bubble”
How did this lending crisis arise?
4
©2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part, except for use as permitted in a license distributed with a certain product or service or otherwise on a password-protected website for classroom use. ©Kamira/Shutterstock Images
Average Cost Caution!
Memorial Hospital’s CEO conducted performance reviews of the hospital departments.
During this process, the chief of obstetrics proposed an increase in the number of babies being delivered in his department.
The CEO wondered why since the cost of delivering babies was higher than the revenues brought in.
The CEO’s mistake: He began with the costs instead of the decision.
He committed the fixed-cost fallacy by looking at average cost, which include costs that do not vary with the decision.
If he had ignored fixed costs, he would have seen that increasing the number of deliveries would increase profit.
5
©2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part, except for use as permitted in a license distributed with a certain product or service or otherwise on a password-protected website for classroom use. ©Kamira/Shutterstock Images
Background: Average Cost
Definition: Average cost (AC) is simply the total cost (TC) of production divided by the number of units produced (Q).
AC = TC/Q
Average costs often decrease as quantity increases due to presence of fixed costs (FC)
AC = (VC + FC)/Q
FC does not change as Q increases
Key note: Average costs are not relevant to extent decisions
6
©2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part, except for use as permitted in a license distributed with a certain product or service or otherwise on a password-protected website for classroom use. ©Kamira/Shutterstock Images
Background: Average Cost (cont.)
7
FIGURE 4.1 Average Cost Curve
©2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part, except for use as permitted in a license distributed with a certain product or service or otherwise on a password-protected website for classroom use. ©Kamira/Shutterstock Images
Memorial Hospital Revisited
Memorial made 500 deliveries originally
Fixed cost: $1,000,000
Variable cost: $3,000/delivery
Total cost: $1,000,000 + ($3,000 x 500)
Average cost: total costs/# of deliveries
Average costs fall as you increase output, but the variable costs remain constant
Marginal cost is only $3,000 at Memorial Hospital
8
©2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part, except for use as permitted in a license distributed with a certain product or service or otherwise on a password-protected website for classroom use. ©Kamira/Shutterstock Images
Marginal Cost & Marginal Revenue
Definition: Marginal cost is the additional cost to make and sell one additional unit of output (Q)
MC = TCQ+1 – TCQ
Marginal cost is often lower than average cost (due to fixed costs) but not always
Marginal costs are what matter in extent decisions
Definition: Marginal revenue (MR) is the additional revenue gained from producing and selling one more unit.
9
©2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part, except for use as permitted in a license distributed with a certain product or service or otherwise on a password-protected website for classroom use. ©Kamira/Shutterstock Images
Extent Decisions
Examples of extent decisions:
Should you change the level of advertising?
Should you increase the quality of service?
Is your staff big enough, or too big?
How many parking spaces should you lease?
For extent decisions, we break the decision into small steps
If taking a step provides more benefit than cost, take a step forward
If not, step backward
10
©2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part, except for use as permitted in a license distributed with a certain product or service or otherwise on a password-protected website for classroom use. ©Kamira/Shutterstock Images
Extent (How Much?) Decisions
This analysis tells you direction of change but not the distance.
You can only measure MR and MC at the current level of output – make a change and re-measure
If the benefits of selling another unit (MR) are bigger than the costs (MC), then sell another unit.
Maxim:
Produce more when MR>MC
Produce less when MR
This explains why the CEO was wrong
12
©2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part, except for use as permitted in a license distributed with a certain product or service or otherwise on a password-protected website for classroom use. ©Kamira/Shutterstock Images
Advertising Extent Decision Example
Answering the “How much advertising?” question
A $50,000 increase in the TV ad budget brings in 1,000 new customers
Estimated MCTV is $50 (the cost to get one more customer)
$50,000 / 1,000 = $50
If the marginal revenue generated by this customer is greater than $50, do more advertising.
13
©2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part, except for use as permitted in a license distributed with a certain product or service or otherwise on a password-protected website for classroom use. ©Kamira/Shutterstock Images
Advertising Extent Decision Example (cont.)
You know the direction (do more), but you do
not know how far to go
You have to take a step and re-compute marginal cost and benefit to see if you should continue in the direction your analysis originally pointed
you in
Also, even if we do not know the marginal revenue, we can still use marginal analysis to make extent decisions
by comparing marginal effectiveness of different media
14
©2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part, except for use as permitted in a license distributed with a certain product or service or otherwise on a password-protected website for classroom use. ©Kamira/Shutterstock Images
Competing Strategies & Marginal Analysis
Example: Compare TV advertising to telephone solicitation
The opportunity cost of spending one more $ on TV advertising is the forgone opportunity to spend $ on telephone solicitation
Say you recently cut telephone (PH) budget by $10,000 and lost 100 customers
Estimated MCPH = $100= ($10,000 / 100)
So, to get one more customer costs $50 for TV and $100 for phone
MCPH > MCTV so shift ad dollars from phone to TV
Advice: make changes one-at-a-time to gather valuable information about marginal effectiveness of each medium
15
©2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part, except for use as permitted in a license distributed with a certain product or service or otherwise on a password-protected website for classroom use. ©Kamira/Shutterstock Images
Textile Production Example
A textile company with manufacturing plants in Latin America uses SAH=“Standard Absorbed Hours” a measure of textile factory output
Allows managers to compare factories making different items, e.g. t-shirt = 1 SAH while dress=3 SAH
Suppose Factory A has costs of $30 per SAH while Factory B has cost of $20 per SAH. How can you profitably use this information?
Should you move production to cheaper factory?
Make sure you are not including fixed costs in the analysis
Marginal costs matter, not average costs!
If the $20 and $30 rates are good MC proxies, shift some production from Factory A to Factory B
16
©2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part, except for use as permitted in a license distributed with a certain product or service or otherwise on a password-protected website for classroom use. ©Kamira/Shutterstock Images
Incentive Pay
Discussion: Royalty rates vs. fixed fee contracts
How hard to work is an extent decision so you can design incentives to encourage hard work by using marginal analysis
Example: You receive two bids to harvest 100 trees on your land
$150/tree or $15,000 for the right to harvest all the trees.
On your tract there are pines (worth $200) and fir (worth $100).
Which offer should you accept?
Hint: consider the effects of the two bids on the incentives of the logger.
17
©2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part, except for use as permitted in a license distributed with a certain product or service or otherwise on a password-protected website for classroom use. ©Kamira/Shutterstock Images
Tree Harvesting Answer
The bids have the same face value, but are very different in terms of logger’s incentives
Fixed fee: the logger will ignore the $15,000 because it doesn’t vary with the decision to cut down trees.
The logger will end up cutting down all trees that are profitable to
cut down, MR>MC
Royalty Rate: The logger will only cut down trees trees that generate profit of $150, MR>MC+150
Mix of $200- and $100-value trees – logger will harvest only the $200
The landowner receives less money since the logger only harvests one type of tree
Royalties deter some wealth-creating transactions as fir trees are not harvested
18
©2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part, except for use as permitted in a license distributed with a certain product or service or otherwise on a password-protected website for classroom use. ©Kamira/Shutterstock Images
Sales Commission Example
Motivating salespeople:
Expected sales level: 100 units @ $10,000/unit=$1M
Option 1: 10% commission
Option 2: 5% commission + $50,000 salary
Hint: consider incentives for salespeople
Use Option 1 because MR=$1000/sale > $500/sale, the MR under Option 2
The sales force responds to larger marginal benefits of selling with more effort
Lower sales effort under option 2 is called “shirking”
19
©2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part, except for use as permitted in a license distributed with a certain product or service or otherwise on a password-protected website for classroom use. ©Kamira/Shutterstock Images
Tie Pay to Performance
A consulting firm COO received a flat salary of $75,000
After learning about the benefits of incentive pay
in class, the CEO changed COO compensation to
$50K + (1/3)* (Profits-$150K)
Profits increased 74% to $1.2 M
Compensation increased $75Kg$177K
Discussion: What are the disadvantages to incentive pay?
20
©2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part, except for use as permitted in a license distributed with a certain product or service or otherwise on a password-protected website for classroom use. ©Kamira/Shutterstock Images
Title?
American Express offers a Platinum Card to affluent customers
In 2001, there were approximately 2,000 Platinum cardholders in the Japanese market. Numbers had been limited to ensure high quality customer service
With customer service technology advances, the company considered expanding number of card holders
How many more should be added?
As more members are acquired, average spending per card member decreases because the financial threshold for membership is lowered
Costs of customer service rise for each additional member added, and growing beyond a certain point would require building and operating an additional call center
After analyzing the costs and benefits, American Express realized that it should expand its offering to only 15,000 more Platinum Card members
We call this an “extent” decision, because the company needed to decide “how many” platinum cards to provide. In this chapter, we show you how to make profitable extent decisions.
21
©2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part, except for use as permitted in a license distributed with a certain product or service or otherwise on a password-protected website for classroom use. ©Kamira/Shutterstock Images
The One Lesson
of Business
2
©201
8
Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part, except for use as permitted in a license distributed with a certain product or service or otherwise on a password-protected website for classroom use. ©Kamira/Shutterstock Images
CHAPTER
Voluntary transactions create wealth by moving assets from lower- to higher-valued uses.
Anything that impedes the movement of assets to higher-valued uses, like taxes, subsidies, or price controls, destroys wealth.
Economic analysis is useful to business for identifying assets in lower-valued uses.
The art of business consists of identifying assets in low-valued uses and devising ways to profitably move them to higher-valued ones.
A company can be thought of as a series of transactions.
A well-designed organization rewards employees who identify and consummate profitable transactions or who stop unprofitable ones.
2
©2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part, except for use as permitted in a license distributed with a certain product or service or otherwise on a password-protected website for classroom use. ©Kamira/Shutterstock Images
Kidney Transplants
Two prominent hospitals recently refused patients for kidney transplants because the organs were from “directed donations.”
The kidneys were meant for specific people
Demand for organs is high – far exceeding supply – and many never receive them.
Despite high demand and low supply, buying and selling organs is illegal.
Why?
3
©2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part, except for use as permitted in a license distributed with a certain product or service or otherwise on a password-protected website for classroom use. ©Kamira/Shutterstock Images
Apartments
Suppose you want to move from Detroit to Nashville
First, you would try a two-way trade
Failing that, you’d try a three-way
connection with another city
Need to find correct trades with
correct timing = difficult!
Like with kidney transplants, compatibility problems lead to inefficiency
4
Detroit Nashville
Detroit Nashville
Los Angeles
©2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part, except for use as permitted in a license distributed with a certain product or service or otherwise on a password-protected website for classroom use. ©Kamira/Shutterstock Images
Capitalism
10
1
To identify money-making opportunities,
you must first understand how wealth is created
(and sometimes destroyed).
Key note: Wealth is created when assets are moved from lower to higher-valued uses
Definition: Value = willingness to pay
Desire + Income = You want something + you can pay for it
Key note: Voluntary transactions, between individuals or firms, create wealth.
Meaning, people create wealth by pursuing self-interest.
5
©2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part, except for use as permitted in a license distributed with a certain product or service or otherwise on a password-protected website for classroom use. ©Kamira/Shutterstock Images
Housing Example
A house is for sale:
The buyer values the house at $
13
0,000
This is the buyer’s top dollar – willingness to pay
The seller values the house at $
12
0,000
This is the seller’s bottom line – won’t accept less
The buyer and seller must agree to a price that “splits” surplus between buyer and seller. Here, $128,000.
6
©2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part, except for use as permitted in a license distributed with a certain product or service or otherwise on a password-protected website for classroom use. ©Kamira/Shutterstock Images
Surplus
The buyer and seller both benefit from this transaction:
Buyer surplus = buyer’s value minus the price
$130,000 – $128,000 = $2,000 buyer surplus
Seller surplus = the price minus the seller’s value
$128,000 – $120,000 = $8,000 seller surplus
Total surplus = buyer + seller surplus = difference in values
$2,000 + $8,000 = $10,000 $130,000 – $120,000 = $10,000
$10,000 are the gains from trade
7
©2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part, except for use as permitted in a license distributed with a certain product or service or otherwise on a password-protected website for classroom use. ©Kamira/Shutterstock Images
Wealth-Creating Transactions
Which assets do these transactions move to higher-valued uses?
• Factory Owners • Corporate Raiders
• Real Estate Agents • Insurance Salesman
• Investment Bankers
Discussion: How does eBay create wealth?
Discussion: Which individual has created the most wealth during your lifetime?
Discussion: How do you create wealth?
8
©2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part, except for use as permitted in a license distributed with a certain product or service or otherwise on a password-protected website for classroom use. ©Kamira/Shutterstock Images
Do Mergers Create Wealth?
Do mergers follow the wealth-creating engine of capitalism? Do they move assets to a higher-valued use?
Our largest and most valuable assets are corporations.
Ex: Dell-Alienware merger:
In 2006, Dell purchased Alienware, a manufacturer of high-end gaming computers.
Dell left design, marketing, sales and support in Alienware’s hands.
Dell took over manufacturing though, using its expertise
to build Alienware’s computers at a much lower cost.
9
©2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part, except for use as permitted in a license distributed with a certain product or service or otherwise on a password-protected website for classroom use. ©Kamira/Shutterstock Images
Do Mergers Create Wealth?
However, many mergers and acquisitions do not create value
If they do, value creation is rarely so clear
To create value, the assets of the acquired firm must be more valuable to the buyer than to the seller
10
©2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part, except for use as permitted in a license distributed with a certain product or service or otherwise on a password-protected website for classroom use. ©Kamira/Shutterstock Images
Does Government Create Wealth?
Discussion: What’s the government’s role is wealth creation?
Enforcing property rights and contracts legal tools that facilitate wealth creating transactions
Ensures that buyers and sellers keep gains from trade
Discussion: Why are some countries so poor?
No property rights
No rule of law
Discussion: Much of the justification for government intervention comes from the assertion that markets have failed. One money manager scoffed at this idea. “The markets are working fine, but they’re giving people answers that they don’t like, so people cry market failure.”
11
©2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part, except for use as permitted in a license distributed with a certain product or service or otherwise on a password-protected website for classroom use. ©Kamira/Shutterstock Images
The One Lesson of Economics
Definition: An economy is efficient if all assets are employed in their highest-valued assets.
This is an unattainable, but useful benchmark
The One Lesson of Economics: The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.
Must look at the intended and unintended effects of policies to understand their efficiency
The economist’s solution to inefficient outcomes is to argue for a change in public policy.
Business person’s solution is to try to make money on the inefficiency
12
©2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part, except for use as permitted in a license distributed with a certain product or service or otherwise on a password-protected website for classroom use. ©Kamira/Shutterstock Images
The One Lesson of Business
Definition: Inefficiency implies the existence of unconsummated, wealth-creating transactions
The One Lesson of Business: The art of business consists of identifying assets in lower valued uses and devising ways to profitably moving them to higher valued uses.
In other words, make money by identifying unconsummated wealth-creating transactions and devise ways to profitably consummate them.
13
©2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part, except for use as permitted in a license distributed with a certain product or service or otherwise on a password-protected website for classroom use. ©Kamira/Shutterstock Images
Destroying Wealth
Anything that stops assets from moving to higher valued uses is destroying wealth.
Taxes Destroy Wealth:
By deterring wealth-creating transactions – when the tax is larger than the surplus for a transaction.
Subsidies Destroy Wealth:
Example: flood insurance encourages people to build in areas that they otherwise wouldn’t
Price Controls Destroy Wealth:
Example: rent control (price ceiling) in New York City deters transactions between owners and renters
Which assets end up in lower-valued uses?
14
©2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part, except for use as permitted in a license distributed with a certain product or service or otherwise on a password-protected website for classroom use. ©Kamira/Shutterstock Images
Profiting from Inefficiency
Taxes create a profit opportunity
Discussion: 1983 Sweden tax
Subsidies create opportunity
Discussion: health insurance
Price-controls create opportunity
Discussion: Regulation Q. & euro dollars
Discussion: What about ethics?
15
©2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part, except for use as permitted in a license distributed with a certain product or service or otherwise on a password-protected website for classroom use. ©Kamira/Shutterstock Images
Wealth Creation in Organizations
Companies = a collection of transactions
They buy raw materials (capital, labor, etc.) and create and sell higher-valued goods and services
Can equate market-level problems (taxes, subsidies and price controls) with organization-level goal alignment problems
Ex: The overbidding from the oil company = “subsidy” paid to management for acquiring oil reserves
Allows us to use the same analysis
16
©2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part, except for use as permitted in a license distributed with a certain product or service or otherwise on a password-protected website for classroom use. ©Kamira/Shutterstock Images
Benefits, Costs, and Decisions
3
©
2
01
8
Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part, except for use as permitted in a license distributed with a certain product or service or otherwise on a password-protected website for classroom use. ©Kamira/Shutterstock Images
CHAPTER
Costs are associated with decisions, not activities.
The opportunity cost of an alternative is the profit you give up to pursue it.
In computing costs and benefits, consider all costs and benefits that vary with the consequences of a decision and only those costs and benefits that vary with the consequences of the decision. These are the relevant costs and benefits of a decision.
Fixed costs do not vary with the amount of output. Variable costs change as output changes. Decisions that change output will change only variable costs.
2
©2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part, except for use as permitted in a license distributed with a certain product or service or otherwise on a password-protected website for classroom use. ©Kamira/Shutterstock Images
Accounting profit does not necessarily correspond to real or economic profit.
The fixed-cost fallacy or sunk-cost fallacy means that you consider irrelevant costs. A common fixed-cost fallacy is to let overhead or depreciation costs influence short-run decisions.
The hidden-cost fallacy occurs when you ignore relevant costs. A common hidden-cost fallacy is to ignore the opportunity cost of capital when making investment or shutdown decisions.
3
continued
©2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part, except for use as permitted in a license distributed with a certain product or service or otherwise on a password-protected website for classroom use. ©Kamira/Shutterstock Images
EVA® is a measure of financial performance that makes visible the hidden cost of capital.
Rewarding managers for increasing economic profit increases profitability, but evidence suggests that economic performance plans work no better than traditional incentive compensation schemes based on accounting measures.
4
continued
©2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part, except for use as permitted in a license distributed with a certain product or service or otherwise on a password-protected website for classroom use. ©Kamira/Shutterstock Images
Big Coal Power Company
Big Coal Power Co. switched to a 8400 coal when the price fell
5
% below the price of 8800 coal
8400 coal generates 5% less power than 8800
The manager was compensated based on the average cost of electricity, and expected this move to save money
Instead – company profit reduced
Why? What happened?
Discussion: Diagnose the problem.
Discussion: Come up with a proposal to fix it.
5
©2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part, except for use as permitted in a license distributed with a certain product or service or otherwise on a password-protected website for classroom use. ©Kamira/Shutterstock Images
Big Coal Solution
Use our three questions for analysis
Who is making the bad decision?
The plant manager made the switch to the lower-priced
8400 coal.
Did he have enough information to make a good decision?
Yes, presumably he knew that this would reduce his output.
Did he have the incentive to make a good decision?
No, because he was evaluated based on the average cost of electricity produced at his plant.
6
©2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part, except for use as permitted in a license distributed with a certain product or service or otherwise on a password-protected website for classroom use. ©Kamira/Shutterstock Images
Lesson From Coal Problem
The plant manager should have considered all the costs of switching to the lower Btu coal
Namely, the lost electricity
Average costs can be a poor measure of plant performance
Need to align incentives of a business unit with the goals of the parent company
7
©2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part, except for use as permitted in a license distributed with a certain product or service or otherwise on a password-protected website for classroom use. ©Kamira/Shutterstock Images
Background: Types of Costs
Definition: Fixed costs do not vary with the amount of output.
Definition: Variable costs change as output changes.
8
FIGURE 3.1 Cost Curves
©2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part, except for use as permitted in a license distributed with a certain product or service or otherwise on a password-protected website for classroom use. ©Kamira/Shutterstock Images
Example: A Candy Factory
The cost of the factory is fixed.
Employee pay and cost of ingredients are variable costs.
9
TABLE 3.1 Candy Factory Costs
©2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part, except for use as permitted in a license distributed with a certain product or service or otherwise on a password-protected website for classroom use. ©Kamira/Shutterstock Images
Your Turn
Are these costs fixed or variable?
Payments to your accountants to prepare your
tax returns.
Electricity to run the candy making machines.
Fees to design the packaging of your candy bar.
Costs of material for packaging.
10
©2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part, except for use as permitted in a license distributed with a certain product or service or otherwise on a password-protected website for classroom use. ©Kamira/Shutterstock Images
Real Example: Cadbury (Bombay)
Beginning in 1978, Cadbury offered managers free housing in company owned flats to offset the high cost of living.
In 1991, Cadbury added low-interest housing loans to its benefits package. Managers moved out of the company housing and purchased houses. The empty company flats remained on Cadbury’s balance sheet for 6 years.
In 1997, Cadbury adopted Economic Value Added (EVA)®
Charges each division within a firm for the amount of capital it uses
Provides an incentive for management to reduce capital expenditures if they do not cover costs
Senior managers then decided to sell the unused apartments after seeing the implicit cost of capital.
11
©2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part, except for use as permitted in a license distributed with a certain product or service or otherwise on a password-protected website for classroom use. ©Kamira/Shutterstock Images
Accounting Costs for Cadbury
12
TABLE 3.2 Cadbury Income Statement
©2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part, except for use as permitted in a license distributed with a certain product or service or otherwise on a password-protected website for classroom use. ©Kamira/Shutterstock Images
Cadbury Accounting Profit
Accounting profit recognizes only explicit costs
Typical income statements include explicit costs:
Costs paid to its suppliers for product inputs
General operating expenses, like salaries to factory managers and marketing expenses
Depreciation expenses related to investments in buildings and equipment
Interest payments on borrowed funds
13
©2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part, except for use as permitted in a license distributed with a certain product or service or otherwise on a password-protected website for classroom use. ©Kamira/Shutterstock Images
Cadbury Accounting Profit vs. Economic Profit
What’s missing from Cadbury’s statements are implicit costs:
Payments to other capital suppliers (stockholders)
Stockholders expect a certain return on their money (they could have invested elsewhere)
“Profit” should recognize whether firm is generating a return beyond shareholders expected return
Economic profit recognizes these implicit costs; accounting profit recognizes only explicit costs
14
©2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part, except for use as permitted in a license distributed with a certain product or service or otherwise on a password-protected website for classroom use. ©Kamira/Shutterstock Images
Opportunity Costs & Decisions
Definition: the opportunity cost of an action is what you give up (forgone profit) to pursue it.
Costs imply decision-making rules and vice-versa
The goal is to make decisions that increase profit
If the profit of an action is greater than the alternative, pursue it.
15
©2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part, except for use as permitted in a license distributed with a certain product or service or otherwise on a password-protected website for classroom use. ©Kamira/Shutterstock Images
Identifying Costs
Whenever you get confused by costs, step back and ask, “What decision am I trying to make?”
If you start with costs, you will always get confused
If you start with a decision, you will never get confused
Apply it to Cadbury:
The cost of the company of holding onto the apartments was the forgone opportunity to invest capital in the company’s organization to earn a higher return.
16
©2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part, except for use as permitted in a license distributed with a certain product or service or otherwise on a password-protected website for classroom use. ©Kamira/Shutterstock Images
Cadbury’s Costs
Holding on to the flats cost the company £600,000 each year.
Unless the benefits to the company of holding onto the apartments were at least £600,000, the capital was not employed in its highest-valued use.
The cost of the company of holding onto the apartments was the forgone opportunity to invest capital in the company’s organization to earn a higher return.
By selling the flats, the company moved the capital to a higher-valued use.
17
©2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part, except for use as permitted in a license distributed with a certain product or service or otherwise on a password-protected website for classroom use. ©Kamira/Shutterstock Images
Relevant Costs and Benefits
When making decisions, you should consider all costs and benefits that vary with the consequence of a decision and only costs and benefits that vary with the decision.
These are the relevant costs and relevant benefits of a decision.
You can make only two mistakes
You can consider irrelevant costs
You can ignore relevant ones
Definition: The fixed-cost/sunk-cost fallacy means you make decisions using irrelevant costs and benefits
18
©2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part, except for use as permitted in a license distributed with a certain product or service or otherwise on a password-protected website for classroom use. ©Kamira/Shutterstock Images
Fixed-Cost/Sunk-Cost Fallacy Examples
Football game:
You pay $20 for a ticket. At halftime, you’re team is losing by 56 points.
You say you’ll stay to get your money’s worth, but you can’t get your money’s worth!
The ticket price does not vary whether you stay or leave – it’s a sunk cost and irrelevant.
Launching a new product:
You are in a new products division and will be able to distribute a new product through your existing sales force
You will be forced to pay for a portion of the sales force
If you believe this “overhead” is big enough to deter an otherwise profitable product launch, then you’ve committed the sunk-cost fallacy
19
©2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part, except for use as permitted in a license distributed with a certain product or service or otherwise on a password-protected website for classroom use. ©Kamira/Shutterstock Images
Hidden-Cost Fallacy
Definition: ignoring relevant costs (costs that vary with the consequences of your decision) when making a decision
Example: Football game (again)
You buy a ticket for $20
Scalpers are selling tickets for $50 because your team is playing cross-state rivals
You go to the game, saying, “These tickets cost me only $20.” WRONG
The tickets really cost you $50 because you give up the opportunity to scalp them by going
Unless you value them at $50, you are sitting on an unconsummated wealth-creating transaction
20
©2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part, except for use as permitted in a license distributed with a certain product or service or otherwise on a password-protected website for classroom use. ©Kamira/Shutterstock Images
Example: Should You Fire an Employee?
The revenue he provides to the company is $2,500 per month
His wages are $1,900 per month
His office could be rented out $800 per month
YES, you are only making $600 a month from this employee but could make $800 a month from renting his office
21
©2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part, except for use as permitted in a license distributed with a certain product or service or otherwise on a password-protected website for classroom use. ©Kamira/Shutterstock Images
Subprime Mortgages
The subprime mortgage crisis of 2008 is a good example
of the hidden-cost fallacy.
Credit-rating agencies failed to recognize the higher costs
of loans made by dubious lenders.
Example: Long Beach Financial
Gave loans out to homeowners with bad credit, asked for no proof of income, deferred interest payments as long as possible.
Credit ratings didnt reflect the hidden costs of risky loans
As a result, many Wall Street investors purchased packaged risky loans and eventually went bankrupt when the debtors defaulted.
22
©2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part, except for use as permitted in a license distributed with a certain product or service or otherwise on a password-protected website for classroom use. ©Kamira/Shutterstock Images
Hidden cost of capital
Recall that accounting profit does not necessarily correspond to economic profit.
Discussion: Economic Value Added
EVA®= net operating profit after taxes minus the cost of capital times the amount of capital utilized
Makes visible the hidden cost of capital
The major benefit of EVA is identifying costs.
If you cannot measure something, you cannot control it.
Those who control costs should be responsible for them.
23
©2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part, except for use as permitted in a license distributed with a certain product or service or otherwise on a password-protected website for classroom use. ©Kamira/Shutterstock Images
Incentives and EVA®
Goal alignment: “By taking all capital costs into account, including the cost of equity, EVA shows the dollar amount of wealth a business has created or destroyed in each reporting period.
… EVA is profit the way shareholders define it.”
Discussion: can you make mistakes using EVA?
Does it help avoid the hidden cost fallacy?
Does it help avoid the fixed cost fallacy?
24
©2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part, except for use as permitted in a license distributed with a certain product or service or otherwise on a password-protected website for classroom use. ©Kamira/Shutterstock Images
Does EVA® work?
Adopting companies of EPP’s (+ four years)
ROA from 3.5 to 4.7%
operating income/assets from 15.8 to 16.7%
Indistinguishable from non-adopters
Bonuses increase 39.1% for EVA® firms
But 37.4% for control group
Interpretations
Selection bias?
NO, cheaper to use existing plans
Goal alignment, YES.
EVA® is no better or worse
Rival EPP’s
Bonus plans
Discussion: WHY?
25
©2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part, except for use as permitted in a license distributed with a certain product or service or otherwise on a password-protected website for classroom use. ©Kamira/Shutterstock Images
Psychological Biases
Not enough information or bad incentives are not the only causes for business mistakes. Often psychological biases get in the way of rational decision making.
Definition: the endowment effect means that taking ownership of item causes owner to increase value she places on the item.
Definition: loss aversion – individuals would pay more to avoid loss than to realize gains.
Definition: confirmation bias – a tendency to gather information that confirms your prior beliefs, and to ignore information that contradicts them.
Definition: anchoring bias – relates the effects of how information is presented or “framed”
Definition: overconfidence bias – the tendency to place too much confidence in the accuracy of your analysis
26
©2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part, except for use as permitted in a license distributed with a certain product or service or otherwise on a password-protected website for classroom use. ©Kamira/Shutterstock Images
In class problem (1)
You won a free ticket to see an Eric Clapton concert (which has no resale value). Bob Dylan is performing on the same night and is your next-best alternative activity. Tickets to see Dylan cost $40. On any given day, you would be willing to pay up to $50 to see Dylan. Assume there are no other costs of seeing either performer. Based on this information, what is the opportunity cost of seeing Eric Clapton?
A. $0 B. $10 C. $40 D. $50
27
©2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part, except for use as permitted in a license distributed with a certain product or service or otherwise on a password-protected website for classroom use. ©Kamira/Shutterstock Images
In class problem (2)
You won a free ticket to see an Eric Clapton concert (which has no resale value). Bob Dylan is performing on the same night and is your next-best alternative activity. Tickets to see Dylan cost $40. On any given day, you would be willing to pay up to $50 to see Dylan. Assume there are no other costs of seeing either performer. Based on this information, what is the minimum amount (in dollars) you would have to value seeing Eric Clapton for you to choose his concert?
A. $0 B. $10 C. $40 D. $50
28
©2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part, except for use as permitted in a license distributed with a certain product or service or otherwise on a password-protected website for classroom use. ©Kamira/Shutterstock Images
Alternate intro anecdote
Coca-Cola in the 1980s had very little debt, preferring to raise equity capital from its stockholders
The company had a diversified product line, including products like aquaculture and wine. These other businesses generated positive profits, earning a ten percent return on capital invested.
The company, however, decided to sell off these “under-performing businesses”
Why?
At the time, soft drink division was earning 16 percent return on capital
The “opportunity cost” of investing in aquaculture and wine is the foregone profit that could have been earned by investing in soft drinks
A dollar invested in aquaculture and wine is a dollar that was not invested in soft drinks
Divisions sold off and proceeds invested in core soft drink business
29
©2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part, except for use as permitted in a license distributed with a certain product or service or otherwise on a password-protected website for classroom use. ©Kamira/Shutterstock Images