Economics ~ Introduction to Managerial Economics

24 Mar

Hello-our internet sucks, so I’m posting this for some of my students 🙂 You’re welcome to enjoy it too!

What is Managerial Economics?

  • Economics (经济学)= The study of how resources (资源) are created (创造), gathered (搜集,聚集), traded (营业), and divided (分离,划分).
    • Resources = Anything you use to help the company work. Examples: time, money, land, tools, labor, raw materials.
      • Natural Resources (自然资源) = Resources created by nature. Examples: wood, water, air, rocks/stones, flowers, natural chemicals
      • Man-Made Resources (人造资源) = Resources created by humans by either combining (mixing together) or changing natural resources into something new. Examples: jewelry, paint, fabric, steel, hammers.
      • Limited Resources (限制性资源) = Resources either no longer being created or only created in small amounts. Meaning the supply is not enough.Examples: Gold, Diamonds, Water in a desert.
      • Unlimited Resources (无限制性资源) = Where there is a large amount of the resource or it is created fast enough to replace any that is lost. Supply is enough.Examples: Water, Air.
      • Raw Materials (原材料) = The resources that are put into the product. Example: If we make a computer, raw materials would include wires, plastic, metal, paint, springs, etc.
      • Market-Supplied Resources (市场提供的资源) = Resources owned by someone outside of the company. Examples = Taxes, Utilities, Rent, Raw Materials, Wages
      • Owner-Supplied Resources (业主提供的资源) = Resources owned by the company’s owners.
  • Manager (经纪, 经理) = A person who is obligated to ensure the company (or department) is effectively organized and controlled.
  • Managerial Economics (管理经济学) = The study of the best method for managers to create, gather, trade, and divide the company’s resources.

Goal of Effective Managers 

  • Wealth or Profit (收益) Maximization Rule = #1 Goal of Effective Managers is to make the owner’s the most profit (as long as they do so ethically and legally)

How to Maximize Profits (收益)?

  • Profit = Revenue – Cost
  • Two ways to Maximize Profit:
    • Make the Highest Revenue
    • Pay the Lowest Costs

What are Revenue, Cost, and Profits?

  • Revenue (收入) = Total Income or Money the Company makes from its work.
  • Cost (成本)  = The losses or sacrifices the company makes in exchange for getting and using resources in its work. 
    • Opportunity Costs (机会成本) = The company’s costs created because it lost some opportunity. 
      • Opportunity Cost of using Market-Supplied Resources = $$ Spent paying for those resources (you lose the opportunity to spend the money on something else)
      • Opportunity Cost of using Owner-Supplied Resources = $$, time, effort lost that the owner would have had if they spent their resources on something else.
    • 2 Types of Opportunity Costs
      • Explicit Costs (明确的成本) = Any money the company pays owners of Market-Supplied Resources
      • Implicit Costs (隐性成本) = Anything the Owner loses by giving the company Owner-Supplied Resources
    • Total Economic Cost = Explicit Costs + Implicit Costs 
  • Profit (收益)  = Everything the company gets to keep from the Revenue after it pays its costs!
    • Present Profit v. Future Profit
      • Present Profit = What we are keeping right now. (Most Important)
      • Expected Future Profit = What we think we’ll get in the future (Companies with higher expected future profits have more value. While companies with a possibility of low future profits will have a lower value)
    • Profit is Counted in Two Ways
      • Example: Joshua has a company (Company A) that just made $150,000 in Revenue. The company spends $9,000 on Taxes and Utilities, $3,000 on Wages, and $5,000 on Raw Materials. Joshua gave the company the building but would have made $2,000 if he used it as a school instead. He also lost $5,000 on his original investment. 
      • Economic Profit (经济利润) = Revenue – Total Economic Cost
        • What is Company A’s Economic Profit?
      • Accounting Profit (会计利润) = Revenue – Explicit Costs.
        • What is Company A’s Accounting Profit?
      • In Managerial Economics, we usually mean Accounting Profit when we say “Profit”

More to come later 🙂

One Response to “Economics ~ Introduction to Managerial Economics”

Trackbacks/Pingbacks

  1. Understanding the #IncomeStatement | Deceptively Blonde - April 5, 2017

    […] **Please notice that all three documents only count and discuss EXPLICIT COSTS (明确的成本).  These documents are working with numbers and math, so the Explicit Costs includes only the money paid out to market-suppliers. It does not include any of the Implicit Costs like time and effort that the owner loses.  Therefore, the profits we see are only ACCOUNTING PROFITS (会计利润).  You can find a more detailed explanation of Costs and Profits here. […]

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

%d bloggers like this: