Building Airplanes

Abstract

This exercise has worked well in microeconomics courses to illustrate many of the basic concepts involved in the study of marginal supply curves for firms and industries. It also helps students understand the demand for labor and the effects of technological advances. With minor changes in the exercise itself, it could easily be used to examine issues in introductory management, organizational theory, strategy and policy, etc. Consequently, this paper discusses some of these potential uses as well as my actual use of the exercise in my microeconomics courses.