2.8 In 1796, Gottfried Christoph Hrtel, a German music publisher, calculated the cost of printing music using

2.8 In 1796, Gottfried Christoph Härtel, a German music publisher, calculated the cost of printing music using an engraved plate technology and used these estimated cost functions to make production decisions. Härtel figured that the fixed cost of printing a musical page—the cost of engraving the plates—was 900 pfennigs. The marginal cost of each additional copy of the page was 5 pfennigs

(Scherer, 2001).

a. Graph the total cost, average cost, average variable cost, and marginal cost functions.

b. Would the cost be lower if only one music publisher prints a given composition? Why?

c. Härtel used his data to do the following type of analysis: Suppose he expected to sell exactly 300 copies of a composition at 15 pfennigs per page.

What is the highest price the publisher would be willing to pay the composer per page of the composition if he wants to at least break even? M L-9687