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Eco 372 Week 4

Decent Essays

Week 4 Journal
Entering this class, I was a little concerned as to whether or not I could keep up. I have previously had economics classes, but it has been over 15 years. However, what I found was that as I got into the reading, many of the concepts and procedures came back to me. I recently took graduate level accounting and statistics classes, and that is helping me understand much more in this class. However, it has also caused me to go a little overboard and work problems further through than necessary. The two most important new things that I have learned are price elasticity of demand and relevant costs.
Relevant costs refers only to those costs that should be used in the decision making process. In one of the examples we discussed, the cost of previously purchased items such as advertising, business cars, and signage was described as sunk cost and not relevant costs. I previously assumed these factors would be considered. Now I know that relevant costs are only those new expenditures that will be incurred due to the decision that is made.
Price elasticity of demand refers to the difference in demand as related to price. According to Douglas (2012), “Price elasticity of demand is defined as the percentage change in quantity demanded divided by …show more content…

According to Elmer-DeWitt (2012), a survey was conducted that shows 49% of consumers are interested in a release of an Apple TV. This represents a forecasted demand. However, the predicted consumer price for a 42 inch Apple TV is approximately $1500. When the same sample population were asked about paying $1500 for a 42 inch Apple TV, the demand numbers plummeted, representing the relationship between price and demand (or price elasticity of demand). The new numbers revealed that only 12% of the surveyed consumers were still interested at the $1500 price

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