Question

Firms choose how to produce the goods and services they sell. In many cases, firms face a trade-off between using more workers or using more machines. For example,Many times in the past several decades, firms may have chosen between a production method in the United States that uses fewer workers and more machines and a production method in China that uses more workers and fewer machines.(T/F)

Answer 1

True

Step-by-step explanation:

In order to produce something (to generate output), firms need inputs, and these inputs are called the factors of production. There are three factors of production: land, labor, and capital, and because all businesses require land to operate, the most common trade-off that firms face is between labor and capital.

Labor refers to workers, and capital refers to physical or monetary assets such as machinery or money.

Firms have to constantly decide whether to acquire more labor instead of capital, or viceversa, in order to maximize profit.

Manufacturing firms usually prefer to invest in physical capital, even if it means laying off workers. Automation is a perfect example of this, and one of the reasons, along with outsourcing, that has caused the loss of manufacturing jobs in the U.S.