宏观经济学---曼昆chap03讲述.ppt

* * * Suggestion: Display these questions and give your students 3-4 minutes, working in pairs, to try to find the answers. Then display the analysis on the next slide. * * The labor supply curve is vertical: We are assuming that the economy has a fixed quantity of labor, Lbar, regardless of whether the real wage is high or low. Combining this labor supply curve with the demand curve we’ve developed in previous slides shows how the real wage is determined. * If L=3, then the benefit of hiring the fourth worker (MPL=7) exceeds the cost of doing so (W/P = 6), so it pays the firm to increase L. If L=7, then the firm should hire fewer workers: the 7th worker adds only MPL=4 units of output, yet cost W/P = 6. The point of this slide is to get students to see the idea behind the labor demand = MPL curve. * In our model, it’s easiest to think of firms renting capital from households (the owners of all factors of production). R/P is the real cost of renting a unit of K for one period of time. In the real world, of course, many firms own some of their capital. But, for such a firm, the market rental rate is the opportunity cost of using its own capital instead of renting it to another firm. Hence, R/P is the relevant “price” in firms’ capital demand decisions, whether firms own their capital or rent it. * The previous slide used the same logic behind the labor demand curve to assert that the capital demand curve is the same as the downward-sloping MPK curve. The supply of capital is fixed (by assumption), so the supply curve is vertical. The real rental rate (R/P) is determined by the intersection of the two curves. * When I teach this theory, after saying “accepted by most economists” I append “at least, as a starting point.” This theory is fine for macro models with only one type of labor. But taken literally, it implies that people who earn low wages have low marginal products. Thus, this theory would attribute the entire observed wage ga