1.You are an employer seeking to fill a vacant position on an assembly line. Are you more concerned with the average product of labor or the marginal product of labor for the last person hired? If you observe that your average product is just beginning to decline, should you hire any more workers? What does this situation imply about the marginal product of your last worker hired? What would be the elasticity of the labor [ E_L = MP_L/AP_L]? State how the law of diminishing returns is reflected in the shape of the total product curve and indicate the relationship between diminishing marginal return and the stages of the production. You can use any suitable production data. [ Hint. You can use text book data in Ch 6. P.206 ; Or p. 227.ex2]

1.If the firm's average cost curves are U-shaped, why does its average variable cost curve achieve its minimum at a lower level of output than the average total cost curve? You are given the following data on output and inputs for 10 production periods: