
Production Costs and Firm Profits
The firm's primary objective in producing output is to maximize profits. The production of output, however, involves certain costs that reduce the profits a firm can make. The relationship between costs and profits is therefore critical to the firm's determination of how much output to produce.
Explicit and implicit costs. A firm's explicit costs comprise all explicit payments to the factors of production the firm uses. Wages paid to workers, payments to suppliers of raw materials, and fees paid to bankers and lawyers are all included among the firm's explicit costs.
A firm's implicit costs consist of the opportunity costs of using the firm's own resources without...