Suppose your business has been following a strategy of unrelated diversification and uses a conglomerate (H-Form) design. Would this make it easier or harder to centralize? Easier, because the unrelated businesses have little in common Harder, because the differences in business will complicate centralized control and decision making Easier, because everything can be standardized Harder, because you will have to transfer managers from one business to another

Consider the local telephone company, a natural monopoly. the following graph shows the monthly demand curve for phone services and the company’s marginal revenue (mr), marginal cost (mc), and average total cost (atc) curves. 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 price (dollars per subscription) quantity (thousands of subscriptions) d mr mc atc 8, 60 suppose that the government has decided not to regulate this industry, and the firm is free to maximize profits, without constraints. complete the first row of the following table. pricing mechanism short run long-run decision quantity price profit (subscriptions) (dollars per subscription) profit maximization marginal-cost pricing average-cost pricing suppose that the government forces the monopolist to set the price equal to marginal cost. complete the second row of the previous table. suppose that the government forces the monopolist to set the price equal to average total cost. complete the third row of the previous table. under average-cost pricing, the government will raise the price of output whenever a firm’s costs increase, and lower the price whenever a firm’s costs decrease. over time, under the average-cost pricing policy, what will the local telephone company most likely do

Exercise 2-12 cost behavior; high-low method [lo2-3, lo2-4] speedy parcel service operates a fleet of delivery trucks in a large metropolitan area. a careful study by the company’s cost analyst has determined that if a truck is driven 120,000 miles during a year, the average operating cost is 11.6 cents per mile. if a truck is driven only 80,000 miles during a year, the average operating cost increases to 13.6 cents per mile. required: 1.& 2. using the high-low method, estimate the variable and fixed cost elements of the annual cost of truck operation. (round the "variable cost per mile" to 3 decimal places.)

When the united states buys more products than it sells from other countries what is created?