Production Possibilities

Suppose an economy uses two resources (labor and capital) to produce two goods (wheat and cloth). Capital is relatively more useful in producing cloth, and labor is relatively more useful in producing wheat. If the supply of capital falls by 10 percent and the supply of labor increases by 10 percent, how will the PPF for wheat and cloth change?

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Production Possibilities

CleanAuto Inc. has four workers: Julie, Ian, Devon, and Thomas. CleanAuto Inc. provides two services: interior vacuuming and exterior wash. Julie can perform each of these tasks in one hour. Ian can do two interior vacuums or one exterior wash in one hour. Thomas can do two exterior washes or one interior vacuum in one hour. Devon only does exterior washes, and he can do an exterior wash in half an hour.

  • Calculate the number of interior vacuums and exterior washes done in each of the following staffing scenarios in an eight-hour workday.
    • Julie, Ian, and Thomas do only interior vacuuming, and Devon does only exterior washes.
    • All four do only exterior washes.
    • Julie, Ian, and Thomas each spend half their workday on each task, and Devon spends his entire day doing exterior washes.
    • Julie spends half of her time on each task, while Ian only does interior vacuums and Thomas and Devon only do exterior washes.
  • Create one graph for each of the production possibilities frontier (PPF) for this company using the answers from the calculations you completed for the above scenarios. Label each of the scenarios listed above as they appear on the PPF. When creating your graphs, you should put vacuum on one axis and exterior wash on the other axis. You should plot one coordinate for the total number of washes and the total number of vacuums in each scenario.
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