The average curve and the marginal curve are U-shaped in the short-run and flatter in the long-run due to________
Answer Details
The reason why the average curve and the marginal curve are U-shaped in the short-run and flatter in the long-run is due to economies of scale.
Economies of scale refer to the cost advantages that firms experience as they increase their production output. In the short-run, firms are often operating at less than their optimal capacity and therefore may experience diseconomies of scale as they increase output, which leads to higher average costs and a U-shaped average curve. Meanwhile, the marginal cost curve intersects the average cost curve at its minimum point, which is why it is also U-shaped in the short-run.
However, in the long-run, firms have more time to adjust their inputs and can increase the scale of their operations. As they do so, they can experience economies of scale, which lead to lower average costs and a flatter average curve. This means that the marginal cost curve intersects the average cost curve at a lower point than in the short-run, making it flatter. Overall, this illustrates how economies of scale can affect a firm's production costs and how this can be reflected in the shape of the average and marginal cost curves.