Marginal Social Cost - MSC

  

Categories: Marketing, Econ

The cool thing about economics is that it takes into account all social costs (and benefits for that matter)...not just the ones recorded on firms’ balance sheets. The marginal social cost (MSC) is marginal private cost (MPC) plus the marginal external cost (MEC).

The MPC is the marginal cost that a firm pays cash-money to make one more unit of a good or service (ergo the “marginal”). The MEC is the cost that producing that same unit of a good or service has that’s an externality (which can be positive or negative) on society. MSC is both MPC and MEC, showing the total marginal cost of society for the production of one more unit of a...something.

Take a ring pop factory, for example. They have their costs. Mostly white sugar and plastic to make their ring pops. But all the ring pops leave those plastic bits with a bit of sugar on them, which leads to wildlife deaths. Yep, that’s the (negative, in this case) MEC. Oof. The MSC would include both the firm’s production costs for one more ring pop, as well as the wildlife deaths from production of one more pop.

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Econ: What are Marginal Product and Dimi...8 Views

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And finance Allah shmoop what are marginal product and diminishing

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returns All right people when you're running a business you

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invest in your inputs everything from large fixed costs like

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that robot assembly unit there to labor with human beings

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and or dogs In return for your inputs you get

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output But how do you know if it's worth it

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or not Adm Or of a given input finding the

00:28

marginal product of an input can help you answer this

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excellent question Well the marginal product of an input whether

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it be physical inputs or labour is the increasing output

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as a result of one additional unit of that input

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Okay let's make sense of this to see what we

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mean Let's take a look at Black Beard who for

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having a very short pirating career is nonetheless known for

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being a decent manager of his crew At first Black

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Beard had a small crew because his crew was small

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Their rum booty was also pretty small They couldn't battle

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big ships that were holding the most gold and they

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could only carry so much of it even when they

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won in stolen well black Beard hired another pirate which

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increased their total booty from a thousand pieces of eight

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to thirteen hundred pieces of eight since the booty went

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from a thousand of thirteen hundred thanks to the additional

01:14

of that new employees will The marginal product of that

01:16

new hire was three hundred pieces of eight and if

01:20

he cost less than three hundred pieces of aid right

01:22

he was a bargain At least he was positive The

01:24

results of another mate in the crew were so great

01:26

that black beard decided to hire another pirate and then

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another and then another Well even though the marginal product

01:32

with each new input of labor was less than last

01:34

he kept hiring more pirates Since each new pirate was

01:37

still contributing positively to Ah hire total output well with

01:42

a bigger crew they were able to take on bigger

01:43

ships increasing their total output All other inputs like their

01:48

pirate ships stayed constant It was the same ship as

01:50

the crew's size increased Well so did the amount of

01:53

booty they were scoring and who doesn't like to score

01:55

booty But the law of diminishing returns has a way

01:58

of making it rain on everyone's parade The law of

02:01

diminishing returns pops up in many places in economics including

02:04

marginal product like right here while increasing a marginal product

02:08

like labor for instance will increase total output for awhile

02:12

Eventually additional units of that input will result in a

02:15

stagnant or decreased total output Well after Black Beard's most

02:19

recent pirate higher alluding went terribly wrong There were so

02:23

many pirates on his ship that they couldn't loot effectively

02:26

They were bumping into each other accidentally shooting each other

02:29

right in the head or worse and they were frustrated

02:32

because of it Well all of a sudden they're total

02:34

output Their booty dropped from three thousand pieces of eight

02:37

to only twenty five hundred pieces of eight Argh Yeah

02:41

that's what they said Well in Black Beard's case his

02:43

output was initially increasing as he grew his crew but

02:47

eventually decreased because of it The last pirate he hired

02:50

had a negative marginal product of five hundred pieces of

02:53

eight Since that last additional unit of labor input caused

02:57

total output to go from three thousand pieces of eight

03:00

to twenty five hundred piece of aid or something that

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was just making So what's a pyre to do Well

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he could get another ship and start a franchise or

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a fleet Or he could let that last pirate walk

03:11

the plank and just stick with one ship and his

03:14

given number of pirates A zit is well the more

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the merrier Up to a point Ask any pirate and

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