You are a newspaper publisher. You are in the middle of a one-year rental contract for your factory that requires you to pay $500,000 per month, and you have contractual labor obligations of $1 million per month that you can’t get out of. You also have a marginal printing cost of $0.25 per paper as well as a marginal delivery cost of $0.10 per paper.

Answer and Explanation:

The computation is shown below:

Fixed cost is

= $500,000 + $1,000,000

= $1,500,000

And, the marginal cost is

= $0.25 + $0.10

= $0.35 per paer

Now

as we know that

AFC = FC ÷ Q

Now for At 1,000,000 papers,

AFC is

= 1,500,000 ÷ 1,000,000

= $1.50/mo

At 800,000 , it would be

AFC = 1,500,000 ÷ 800,000

= $1.875/mo

MC = $0.35 per paper  and the same is not changed

Now for break even, the average total cost is

ATC = AFC + AVC

ATC = FC ÷ Q + VC ÷ Q

VC = MC × Q

ATC = FC ÷ Q + MC

ATC = FC ÷ Q + 0.35

At Q = 1,000,000,

ATC = 1.50 + 0.35

ATC = $1.85

At Q = 800,000 , it would be

ATC = 1.875 + 0.35

=  $2.225

As it can be seen that

The AFC changes from 1.50 to 1.875 which shows an increment of 0.375.

The MC remains constant or same  at 0.35 as the printing and delivery costs per paper are remain same

And, The minimum amount that we must charge to break even rises i.e. from 1.85 to 2.225. That is a rise of 0.375