Output, Costs, Revenue and Profit

James Penstone — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 14:17:00 +0000

[Image: nDevilTV Some rights reserved]

The Cambridge IGCSE syllabus requires us to have a good understanding of the following:

define total and average cost, fixed and variable cost and perform simple calculations;

analyse particular situations to show changes in total and average cost as output changes;

define total and average revenue and perform simple calculations;

describe the principle of profit maximisation as a goal.

We have seen useful videos on YouTube before, particularly MJMFoodie’s very visual explanations (which are often aimed at higher stages of education, such as IB). One of her useful videos (on fixed and variable costs) is here:

Another useful video by MJMFoodie gives an introduction to the topic and explains the idea of the law of diminishing returns.

A great idea for a learning activity to really understand this topic is for you to work with one other person towards producing your own video, MJMFoodie style. It should be simple – create a PowerPoint (or similar) with images. These images can be your own that you have drawn on the computer, scanned into the computer, or other images produced by other people. It is obviously preferable to use images that are not copyrighted, so some good places to visit for non-copyright images are here:

http://www.everystockphoto.com/

http://search.creativecommons.org/

As you assemble your slideshow, make sure you are working on your script to go with each slide. Later on you will want to record your voiceover while playing the slideshow. In that case, planning the video out is essential and you should start with your partner by story-boarding the video.

Your video should summarise this theory on costs, revenue and profit as outlined in the syllabus above. It should summarise it in a highly visual and accessible way. Your video should ideally last somewhere between 5 and 10 minutes.

A good starting point is to consult the relevant chapter in the text book you are using. A good text book is this one, which introduces the idea using Sue’s Teddy Bear Firm.

Economics: A Complete Course for IGCSE and O Level: Endorsed by University of Cambridge International Examinations

Other simple summaries of aspects of this topic are found here:

Tutor2U – Simple Overview of Output, Fixed Costs and Variable Costs

Tutor2U – Simple Overview of Revenue, Costs and Profit

Tutor2U – Simple Overview of Average Costs and the Scale Of Production

Types of Firm (Types of Business)

James Penstone — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 12:16:22 +0000

The Cambridge IGCSE Economics syllabus requires students to describe (and therefore understand) the following as part of section 4.4 The private firm as producer and employer:

the type of business organisation in the public and private sectors: sole proprietors,
partnerships, private companies, public companies, multi-nationals, co-operatives, public corporations;

To start us thinking about some of these, we can refer to these youtube videos which essentially cover the same information.

1) Main Types of Business (by Yerlanstudent):

2) Accounting: Business Organizations (by Studio4Learning)

Notice that these videos are US based. Corporations are limited companies (but not all limited companies are corporations). We need to be able to distinguish between private and public limited companies.

The following websites are useful resources for understanding the differences between the different types of business organisation further:

1) Tutor2U: gcse economics – firms – types of business ownership

2) biz/ed: public liability (but also a comparison of business types) [more complex notes]

3) thetimes100: Types of businesses [note that the tables in boxes have overlap between the columns so need a bit of concentration]

opengecko » Private Firm as Producer and Employer

Output, Costs, Revenue and Profit

Types of Firm (Types of Business)