Sydsaeter Instructor Manual
Sydsaeter Instructor Manual
Knut Sydster
Arne Strm
Peter Hammond
Contact addresses:
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
Version 1.0
21072008 1394
(a) A person buys x1 , x2 , and x3 units of three goods whose prices per unit are p1 , p2 , and p3 respectively.
What is the total expenditure?
(b) A rental car costs F dollars per day in xed charges and b dollars per mile. How much must a customer
pay to drive x miles in 1 day?
(c) A company has xed costs of F dollars per year and variable costs of c dollars per unit produced. Find
an expression for the total cost per unit (total average cost) incurred by the company if it produces x units
in one year.
(d) A person has an annual salary of $L and then receives a raise of p% followed by a further increase of
q%. What is the persons new yearly salary?
Section 5.1 which examines how changes in a function relate to shifts in its graph, with application to
shifting demand and supply curves is useful for economic students. Section 5.3 on inverse functions might
be postponed till Section 7.3 on differentiating the inverse.
Our treatment of the single variable calculus begins in Chapter 6 and is rather standard. As already
indicated, one should emphasis economic interpretations of the derivative.
Limits were used to dene derivatives informally in Section 6.2. The more careful discussion that is really
needed is the topic of Section 6.5, though even this remains rather informal.
In fact, Chapter 6 almost completes the inventory of functions of a single variable used in this book, and
in most mathematical work in undergraduate economics. The major omission is the family of trigonometric
functions discussed in FMEA. In economics, they are used almost exclusively to solve second- and higher-
order difference and differential equations, which are topics in FMEA.
Figure 2-1 below shows the graphs of a quadratic function f and a linear function g. Use the graphs to nd
for which x the following hold: (i) f (x) g(x) (ii) f (x) 0 (iii) g(x) 0.
y
6
5
4
3 y = g(x)
2
1
3 2 1 1 2 3 4 x
1
2
3
y = f (x)
4
Figure 2-1
The price P per unit obtained by a rm in producing and selling Q units of a commodity is P = 52 4Q,
and the cost of producing and selling Q units is C = Q + 41 Q2 .
(a) What is the prot function (Q)?
(b) Find the value of Q that maximizes prots.
(a) Consider the demand and supply curves D = 200 41 P , S = 20 + 2P . Find the equilibrium price P ,
and the corresponding quantity Q .
(b) Suppose a tax of $0.25 per unit is imposed on the producer. How will this inuence the equilibrium price?
Compute the total revenue obtained by the producer before the tax is imposed (R ) and after (R).
x x
ax + b
y = f (x) = y = g(x) = px 2 + qx + r
x+c
Figure 2-5
Specify (if possible) which of the constants a, b, c, p, q, and r are > 0, = 0 or < 0.
y
3
2 f (x)
1
x
1 1 2 3
Figure 2-10
NvKv
F () = a (a, b, v, N , and K are positive constants)
(N + bK )v/
where f (t0 ) is the quantity of carbon at the moment of death t0 , and f (t) is the quantity that is left at time t.
f (t)
(a) Show that t0 is given by t0 = t + 8000 ln . (This formula is the basis for radiocarbon dating, for
f (t0 )
which the American W. F. Libby received the Nobel prize in chemistry in 1960.)
(b) Helge and Anne Stine Ingstad found several Viking tools on old settlements in Newfoundland. The
charcoal from the replaces was analysed in 1972, and the percentage of carbon 14 in the charcoal
(compared with the content of carbon 14 in fresh wood) was 88.6%. Use the result from (a) to determine
when the Viking settlers lived in Newfoundland.
A B x
(0, 0) (60, 0)
Figure 2-21
where pk (x) denotes some polynomial whose degree is 2k 2. Hence, show that f (k) (0) = 0 for all positive
integers k. (For this function, all Taylor polynomials at the origin are identically equal to 0, but the function
itself is 0 only at the origin. This example shows that the polynomial approximation to a function may be very
inaccurate. For this reason it is very important to estimate the size of the remainder.)