A merchant who sells newspapers and magazines at the corner kiosk heard you manage the Times’ inventory and asks for your advice. She has a small, variable number of customers who daily purchase the Chicago Sun Times. In order to get the newspapers in time, she has to place an order for the next day’s newspapers before noon. She pays $0.50 for each newspaper and sells them for $1.50 each. She has kept detailed records of her past sales of the Chicago Sun Times and estimates that 10% of the time she sells 10 newspapers, 40% of the time she sells 11, 30% of the time she sells 12, and 20% of the time she sells 13. (a) What is the merchant’s marginal profit and marginal loss? (b) Determine how many Chicago Sun Times newspapers she should buy every day to maximize expected profits. (c) Calculate the merchant’s expected profits for the optimal order quantity.

Economics:
10th Edition
ISBN:9781285859460
Author:BOYES, William
Publisher:BOYES, William
Chapter25: Monopoly
Section: Chapter Questions
Problem 13E
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A merchant who sells newspapers and magazines at the corner kiosk heard you manage the Times’ inventory and asks for your advice. She has a small, variable number of customers who daily purchase the Chicago Sun Times. In order to get the newspapers in time, she has to place an order for the next day’s newspapers before noon. She pays $0.50 for each newspaper and sells them for $1.50 each. She has kept detailed records of her past sales of the Chicago Sun Times and estimates that 10% of the time she sells 10 newspapers, 40% of the time she sells 11, 30% of the time she sells 12, and 20% of the time she sells 13. (a) What is the merchant’s marginal profit and marginal loss? (b) Determine how many Chicago Sun Times newspapers she should buy every day to maximize expected profits. (c) Calculate the merchant’s expected profits for the optimal order quantity. (d) The merchant has always purchased 13 newspapers, thinking that the best way to maximize profits was to always meet the demand. Calculate how much more the merchant will make, on average per day, by utilizing the optimal quantity you just determined instead of Q = 13. Explain why his approach is not optimal.

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