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An Early Application of the Average Total Cost Concept

F. M. Scherer

Harvard University emeritus; visiting professor, Princeton University.

Journal of Economic Literature 2001

E BEGAN to conceptualize average total cost functions during the early decades of the twentieth century. But a century before, a German music publishing firm calculated and used in its internal decision making output-dependent average cost estimates for two methods of printing sheet music. This note describes that early experience and juxtaposes against it the relatively late emergence of the ATC curve in the formal literature of economics.

DOI
10.1257/jel.39.3.897
Volume
39 (3)
Pages
897-901
Language
en
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