economics terms

Marginal Cost (MC)

The marginal cost of an additional unit of output is the cost of the additional inputs needed to produce that output.  More formally, the marginal cost is the derivative of total production costs with respect to the level of output.

Marginal cost and average cost can differ greatly.  For example, suppose it costs $1000 to produce 100 units and $1020 to produce 101 units.  The average cost per unit is $10, but the marginal cost of the 101st unit is $20

The EconModel applications Perfect Competition and Monopoly emphasize the roles of average cost and marginal cost curves.  The short movie Derive a Supply Curve (40 seconds) shows an excerpt from the Perfect Competition presentation that derives a supply curve from profit maximizing behavior and a marginal cost curve.   


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Economics Terms

Arbitrage Pricing
Arbitrage Profit
Average Cost
Balance of Payments
Budget Constraint
Call Option
Concave Function
Consumer Surplus
Consumption Function
Convex Function
Deadweight Loss
Demand Curve
Econometrics
Economic Agent
Economic Model
Economics
Economics Textbook
Elasticity
Endogenous
Endogenous Technical Change
Equilibrium
Exchange Rate
Exogenous
Expectations Hypothesis
Federal Funds (Fed Funds) Rate
Fixed Exchange Rate
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Frictional Unemployment
Gross Domestic Product (GDP)
Income Effect
Income Elasticity
Indifference Curve
Interest Rate
Intertemporal Substitution
Jensen's Inequality
Macroeconomics
Marginal Cost
Marginal Product
Marginal Utility
Microeconomics
Monopoly
Optimizing Behavior
Perfect Competition
Phillips Curve
Price Elasticity
Producer Surplus
Production Function
Production Possibility Frontier
Put Option
Recession
Reservation Wage Rate
Risk Aversion
Structural Unemployment
Substitution Effect
Supply Curve
Taylor Rule
Technological Growth
Term Structure
Theory of the Consumer
Theory of the Firm
Unemployment Rate
Utility Function
Velocity of Money
Widget
Yield Curve