This article details how the large company Proctor & Gamble is attempting to cut variable costs by eliminating jobs, which leads to lower labour costs. This action results in a lower cost for their products, leading to more productive efficiency. This competitive behaviour is also partially reflective of perfect competition, where companies must decrease costs in order to increase profits; however the article also focuses a lot on the advertising done by Proctor & Gamble, which is not fitting with the assumptions of the perfect competition model.

This article describes the recent growth in a number of firms producing Greek Yogurt in the United States. As a result of this growth, the firms are experiencing economies of scale and they are all expanding their factories to increase their output. As the article states: "The Chobani plant today bustles with 14 production lines mechanically squirting yogurt into plastic cups that zip down conveyor belts." - this shows a technological improvement that is an economy of scale: due to the increase in size in the firm, it can employ more efficient, lower cost methods of production.

This article describes the cell phone costs that one small business owner is experiencing. These cell phone costs could be both fixed and variable costs - she still has to pay her basic cell phone bill no matter how many clients she has, so that cost is fixed regardless of output, in that sense, because at a certain rate the costs are constant. However, if she has a larger number of customers, and needs to call to deal with more of these customers, therefore going over her monthly plan limits, than the cost will begin to vary, so in that sense it is a variable cost. Overall, she needs to attempt to reduce this production cost in order to gain a better profit for her business.

Street lights are an example of a public good - one person using a street light will not prevent others from using it, and it is impossible to stop other people from using a street light once one person is able to use it. Because they are public goods, they are provided by the government, but in this case it is costing the government too much to leave the street lights on all night, so they are considering shutting them off for a portion of the night to save money.

This article discusses the environmental and human health costs of power plants. These type of costs would be considered negative externalities of production, because they are harmful effects that do not effect the firm producing the power, but rather a third party, society as a whole. When producers are making the power, they value the cost as the private costs to their firms, but as outlined by this article, there are many social costs which they do not consider, and this leads to over-production, which means the market is failing, as the resources are not being allocated efficiently. An interesting aspect is that they are able to put a true "cost" on environmental and health effects, which can be quite hard to determine.

A government sponsored agency currently controls the prices for dairy products in Canada. This was implemented because the government wanted to regulate the prices paid to dairy farmers and the amount of milk they could produce, in order to protect the farmers. However, problems have begun to arise because of these price controls, mostly due to the fact that the market price is much higher than it should be (which hurts consumers) and it is costing billions of dollars each year.

This article describes the vast amounts of subsidies that are available to companies providing renewable energy sources in the United States. The government decided to provide subsidies for these projects because it felt that they were necessary for the environmental health of the country, however some people believe that the government provided too much unnecessary money in this situation.

In India, silver is in high demand during the festive season of Diwali. This article discusses how in the case, the demand for silver is relatively inelastic, because the demand has stayed relatively the same while the price has increased around 30%. Since silver in sweets is a tradition, most people will continue to purchase edible silver leafs for Diwali even when the price increases, and so the demand for silver leafs is inelastic at this time of year, but when the festival is over, the demand will once again go down and become more elastic.

Due to the increase in different nationalities in the population of the US, there has been a huge increase in demand for translation services, especially in the medical field. Because of this non-price determinant of demand changing, the demand curve for translating services shifted to the right. As the curve shifted to the right, this means that the equilibrium price and quantity both increased. Since a market always moves toward equilibrium, in this case it meant supply had to increase as well. It is for these reasons that the company discussed in this article is looking to expand its services and acquire new companies - so the market will be back at equilibrium and the demand for translating services is met by the same supply.

This article demonstrates how price is used to allocate resources in a free market, in the area of education. Since there aren't enough teachers and universities for every student across the world who wishes to go to university to go, this education must be allocated to people via price. Because of this, only people who can afford the education can go to school. The amount of people who can go to university is also regulated by admissions and marks, but it is an example of where price can affect who gets to make use of the resources.

Not only is there an opportunity cost for the designer, but the people spending this money on the jewelry have the opportunity cost for other large items - such as a vacation or new computer!

I commented on this article, and now on my screen above it says shared by Monique T... just to clarify, Lola posted the article, not me.

This article demonstrates the scarcity facing the food supply of people in North Korea. Although we would normally expect food scarcity because of, for example, a natural disaster, the food scarcity experienced by the people in North Korea is not only because of a lack of food being made... It is scarce because the government is preventing the supply of food from getting to the people, creating a greater demand than supply. Food is a limited resource, but the problem of scarcity in this part of the world is because of political reasons in addition to natural.