Topic 14 - Productivity Experiment

On Tuesday, our class engaged in a market productivity experiment. We selected a manager, a quality check manager, and an accountant. The rest of us are workers. The company starts off with one worker making widgets. We count the number of widgets a worker makes at the end of each day (which is one minute). The next day, the company adds one more worker to the workforce. This experiment is supposed to show that as the number of workers increase, the number of widgets made should also increase. The marginal product of increasing by one worker should increase, but should have a diminishing product near the end. I was a worker that was added on the 9th or 10th day. The company has a limited amount of technology to make the widgets and sometimes the workers are fighting over an equipment. Some errors in the experiment are that Gary, our quality checker, is too strict on the quality of the widgets. And the workers' skills are inconsistent. Sometimes they look good and sometimes they just simply look bad. Therefore, in our experiment, we did not really see the expected results. We did try to use specialization. However, it turned out that we made too many papers and we only have two staplers. Therefore, the process became really slow.

Topic 13: The Return of the Zeppelin

The demand for Zeppelin fell after the explosion of Hindenburg in the 1930s and so did supply. People were afraid to ride on the Zeppelin because they fear that the same thing will happen like the Hindenburg. However, technology has now improved and Zeppelin are now being made with better quality materials and are much safer to ride with. Airship Ventures is an oligopoly because it is one of three Zeppelins in service worldwide. It does not have many competitors and therefore people can only get this service either from Airship Ventures or the other two companies. Zeppelin can also be considered an oligopoly because as mentioned above, there are only three Zeppelins in the world. There are few determinants of demand in this case. If the future price of Zeppelin is going to rise, then people will "use" more of this service now. People's income are also increasing, which is also another determinant because they will have more money to use this service. If price of substitutes go up, then people might also use Zeppelin more often. I just watched a youtube video of Eureka in Long Beach, California and it doesn't really seem that dangerous to me. It looks almost like an airplane. I guess the technological change has completely changed the way Zeppelin are made. However, I think it still has the dangerous sides to it because it still isn't as safe as airplanes.