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(BQ) Part 2 book "Principles of microeconomics" has contents: Costs and the changes at firms over time, the rise and fall of industries, monopoly, product differentiation, monopolistic competition, and oligopoly; antitrust policy and regulation,.and other contents. | Pa r t THREE The Economics of the Firm CH AP TER 8 Costs and the Changes at Firms over Time CH AP TER 9 The Rise and Fall of Industries CH AP T ER 1 0 Monopoly CH AP T ER 1 1 Product Differentiation, Monopolistic Competition, and Oligopoly CH AP T ER 1 2 Antitrust Policy and Regulation 203 CHAPTER 8 Costs and the Changes at Firms over Time O n a cold Saturday morning, a wrenching story appeared on the front page of a California newspaper. It began: The end came at precisely 11:46 a.m. Friday. After 82 years, after four generations of toil and take-home pay, with deep roots tapping into two centuries, the end came without frill or fanfare. . . . There were tears. There were handshakes. . . . “Listen. There’s a silence. It’s like a hush has fallen over the place,” said Bob Armstrong, the superintendent of the plant.1 The story was an account of a firm—a cannery—shutting down its production facilities. It sounds like something out of a Depression-era Steinbeck novel, but in fact this article was written in 1999, a year when the U.S. economy was enjoying an unprecedented boom. Even in a boom year, many firms, such as this cannery, shut down. But many more firms start up, so that the number of firms in existence continues to increase year after year. In the United States, about 700,000 firms start up each year. Many of these firms are successful and will expand, but others may have to downsize and eventually shut down. The purpose of this chapter is to develop a model for analyzing the changes at firms over time. To do so, we will extend the model of firm behavior developed in Chapter 6. What we will find in this chapter is that costs are of vital importance to a firm’s decision to start up or shut down. Some of the most successful new firms, as well as some of the most rapidly growing older firms, in the United States have prospered because of their ability to use innovative management techniques and new technologies that cut costs. For example, .
