What is the relationship between production and costs?
Categories: Study Economics Intermediate class NCERT
What is the relationship between production and costs?
Production is the process by which inputs are transformed into ‘output’. Production is carried out by producers or firms. A firm acquires different inputs like labour, machines, land, raw materials etc. It uses these inputs to produce output. This output can be consumed by consumers, or used by other firms for further production. For example, a tailor uses a sewing machine, cloth, thread and his own labour to ‘produce’ shirts. A farmer uses his land, labour, a tractor, seed, fertilizer, water etc to produce wheat. A car manufacturer uses land for a factory, machinery, labour, and various other inputs (steel, aluminium, rubber etc) to produce cars. A rickshaw puller uses a rickshaw and his own labour to ‘produce’ rickshaw rides. A domestic helper uses her labour to produce ‘cleaning services’. We make certain simplifying assumptions to start with. Production is instantaneous: in our very simple model of production, no time elapses between the combination of the inputs and the production of the output. We also tend to use the terms production and supply synonymously and often interchangeably. In order to acquire inputs, a firm has to pay for them. This is called the cost of production. Once the output has been produced, the firm sells it in the market and earns revenue. The difference between the revenue and cost is called the firm’s profit. We assume that the objective of a firm is to earn the maximum profit that it can. In this chapter, we discuss the relationship between inputs and output. Then we look at the cost structure of the firm. We do this to be able to identify the output at which the firms profits are maximum.
Production Function
The production function of a firm is a relationship between inputs used and output produced by the firm. For various quantities of inputs used, it gives the maximum quantity of output that can be produced.
Consider the farmer we mentioned above. For simplicity, we assume that the farmer uses only two inputs to produce wheat: land and labour. A production function tells us the maximum amount of wheat he can produce for a given amount of land that he uses, and a given number of hours of labour that he performs. Suppose that he uses 2 hours of labour/ day and 1 hectare of land to produce a maximum of 2 tonnes of wheat. Then, a function that describes this relation is called a production function. One possible example of the form this could take is:
q = K × L,
Where, q is the amount of wheat produced, K is the area of land in hectares, L is the number of hours of work done in a day. Describing a production function in this manner tells us the exact relation between inputs and output. If either K or L increase, q will also increase. For any L and any K, there will be only one q. Since by definition we are taking the maximum output for any level of inputs, a production function deals only with the efficient use of inputs. Efficiency implies that it is not possible to get any more output from the same level of inputs.
A production function is defined for a given technology. It is the technological knowledge that determines the maximum levels of output that can be produced using different combinations of inputs. If the technology improves, the maximum levels of output obtainable for different input combinations increase. We then have a new production function. The inputs that a firm uses in the production process are called factors of production. In order to produce output, a firm may require any number of different inputs. However, for the time being, here we consider a firm that produces output using only two factors of production – labour and capital. Our production function, therefore, tells us the maximum quantity of output (q) that can be produced by using different combinations of these two factors of production labour (L) and Capital (K).
We may write the production function as
q = f (L, K) (3.1)
where L is labour and K is capital and q is the maximum output that can be produced.