Skip to main content

Sample Problem: Economic Profits

Kirsten is earning $40,000 per year as a stylist in Sally’s Salon. She has worked hard to save $60,000 and is currently earning 5% annual interest on her savings account. She decides to quit her job at Sally’s Salon and uses her savings to open her own hair salon. In the first year of ownership, her salon earns revenues of $200,000 and has explicit costs of $157,000. What is Kirsten’s profit (or loss) in the first year?

Economic profit is the total revenues minus total opportunity costs of all inputs used, or the total of all implicit and explicit costs.

For this example we know the following for the first year:

Revenue = $200,000

Explicit costs = $157,000

The implicit costs include Kirsten’s foregone salary from giving up her previous job of $40,000 for the year and lost interest from invested savings ($60,000 saved * 5% annual interest so the interest forgone for the year is $3,000)

Economic profit = Revenues – explicit costs – implicit costs

Economic profit = $200,000 – 157,000 – 40,000 – 3,000 = $0

Kirsten’s economic profit is $0. Note that earning an economic profit of $0 means:

1. The owner made an accounting profit. This is because an accounting profit is greater than the economic profit because the same explicit costs are subtracted from revenue, but accounting cost does not also subtract the implicit costs.

2. The owner could not have made a greater profit in some other line of work. If they could the implicit cost of the forgone salary in another line of work would cause the economic profit to be negative.

3. The owner did not lose money; the economic profit would have to be negative in order for the owner to lose money.

4. An economic profit of $0 is the normal rate of profit for firms in this industry.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

ECO-201 Milestone One Tips and Examples

Part I: Critical Element “Purpose” In order to receive a score of proficient (100%) on Milestone One you’ll need to outline the purpose of your paper and state how it will inform the conclusion. The best way to do this is to view the Final Project Guidelines and Rubric , paying particular attention to the Prompt and Critical Elements that will be addressed in your paper. When you turn in your final paper, in order to earn a score of exemplary (100%) you’ll also need to use industry-specific language to establish expertise. I recommend trying to write Milestone One as if it were your final paper, so that you can benefit from the feedback before your final paper is due. Below is an example of an introduction that would receive an exemplary score for The Hershey Company. Please keep in mind the following points as you work on your introduction: -The text in italics indicates where the purpose of the paper is outlined. -The underlined text indicates how the conclusion will be informed....
Post a Comment
Read more

Tips on ECO-201 Milestones Two and Three: Help With Using Financial Statements

Target (Example) • For finding Revenue you should find the Income Statement for your firm. The Income Statement (example below) is where you will find Revenues (needed for Milestone Two), Costs (needed for Milestone Three), and Net Earnings (or “Profit”). The first line will show you the revenue (or sales) and the line immediately below the total sales will show you the Costs of Goods Sold (COGS). Sometimes this is also called Cost of Revenue or Cost of Sales. These are the VARIABLE COSTS that your firms face, which is important in Milestone 3! Right beneath your variable costs you should see Selling General and Administrative expenses (SG&A), which are your FIXED COSTS. There is another post that explains why fixed and variable costs differ, but for now I want to focus on where you will see these costs on your Income Statement. • Notice for Total Revenues it shows from 2009 to 2014. If there isn’t a chart provided in the income statement that shows that trend you’ll need to cre...
Post a Comment
Read more

Choosing a Firm To Write Your SNHU ECO-201 Final Project About

If you have not yet selected a firm for your final paper, these companies have proven successful for this assignment by previous students and all on this list are publicly traded, US-based companies. Their products and markets are easy to identify and analyze with the microeconomic tools developed in this course. If you would like to choose a company not on this list, please work with me to make sure it’s a good fit for the assignment. List of Pre-Approved Companies to use for your ECO-201 Final Paper 1. Starbucks 2. Nike 3. Southwest Airlines 4. Netflix 5. Ford 6. GM 7. Under Armour 8. Chipotle 9. American Outdoor Brands (formerly Smith and Wesson) 10. Coca Cola 11. Whole Foods 12. Boston Beer Company (Samuel Adams) 13. Anheuser-Busch 14. First Solar 15. Tesla 16. Wendy’s 17. McDonalds 18. Harley Davidson 19. Campbells 20. UPS 21. Goodyear 22. Hasbro 23. EA If any of these options interest you, then you can go ahead and email your selection to me and get start...
Post a Comment
Read more