The following transcript comes from the monumental 2008 case of Heller vs. District of Columbia. The result of this Supreme Court case determined the Second Amendment protects the right of an individual to keep and bear arms. Read the statement and then answer the question that follows:

Okay. I’d like to respond—certainly, Justice Scalia. I’d like to respond to the point about the—the District of Columbia’s position over the years with respect to the functional firearms ban. The Petitioners have had two opportunities to urge courts to adopt this so-called self-defense exception which they construed in the amendment. The first opportunity came in 1978 in McIntosh versus Washington, where the petitioners urged the Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia to uphold the law because it was irrational in their view to prohibit self-defense in the home with firearms. They deemed it to be too dangerous, and this was a legitimate policy choice of the City Council, and they actually prevailed in that view. The second opportunity that the Petitioners had to urge this sort of self-defense construction was actually in this case in the district court. 

In one paragraph of five to eight sentences, evaluate whether the statement is effective in terms of ethos. Use evidence from the statement to support your answer. Use proper spelling and grammar.

Chapter 9

#6. We frequently hear the following terms used by businesspersons. What does each mean in economic terminology?

 

A. spreading the overhead.

B. A break-even level of production

C. The efficiency of mass production.

 

#2. Dimex Fabrications Co., a small manufacturer of sheet-metal body parts for a major U.S. automaker, estimates its long-run production function to be

                       Q= -0.015625K³L³ + 10 K² L²

where Q is the number of body parts produced daily, K is the number of sheet-, metal presses in its manufacturing plant, and L is the number of labor-hours per day of sheet-metal workers employed by Dimex. Dimex is currently operating with eight sheet-metal presses.

a. What is the total product function for Dimex? The average product function? The marginal product function?

b. Managers at Dimex can expect the marginal product of additional workers to fall beyond what level of labor employment?

c. Dimex plan to employ 50 workers. Calculate total product, average product, and marginal product

 

#3. The chief economist for Argus Corporation, a large appliance manufacturer, estimated the firm’s short-run cost function for vacuum cleaners using an average variable cost function of the form

AVC = a + bQ + cQ2

where AVC dollars per vacuum cleaner and Q number of vacuum cleaners produced each month. Total fixed cost each month is $180,000. The following results were obtained:

DEPENDENT VARIABLE: AVC   R-SQUARE F-RATIO P-VALUE ON F

              OBSERVATIONS: 190   0.7360        39.428      0.001

VARIABLE                PARAMETER      STANDARD   T-RATIO   P-VALUE
                                  Estimate               Error

INTERCEPT                 194.93                  54.65             .512         0.0029
  Q                                -0.0305              0.00789          23.866         0.0014
Q2                                 0.0000024        0.00000098     2.449          0.0262

a. Are the parameter estimates a, b, and c statistically significant at the 2 percent level of significance?

b. Do the results indicate that the average variable cost curve is U-shaped? How do you know?

c. If Argus Corporation produces 8,000 vacuum cleaners per month, what is the estimated average variable cost? Marginal cost? Total variable cost? Total cost?

d. Answer part c, assuming that Argus produces 10,000 vacuum cleaners monthly.

e. At what level of output will average variable cost be at a minimum? What is minimum average variable cost?