=+B. Let effort be denoted by , and “good voter feelings” by x. Suppose that a politician’s tastes are defined by u1x,,2 5 x 2 a,, and suppose that the production frontier for producing “good feelings”

among voters is given by x 5 , 2 2 0.25, 3

.

a. When effort , is on the horizontal and x is on the vertical, what is the marginal rate of substitution for this politician?

b. What does your answer imply for the shape of indifference curves?

c. Setting this up similar to a profit-maximization problem, solve for the politician’s optimal level of effort.