Consider an industry where many small firms produce a good under perfect competition but with external economies of scale: i. e. the average cost for each firm declines as the scale of the local industry (the aggregate local production) increases (so if the industry is active in a country, it will be concentrated in a specific location). a) What is a real-world example of an industry like this

If you were running a company, what are at least two things you could do to improve its productivity.

Oceanside marine company manufactures special metallic materials and decorative fittings for luxury yachts that require highly skilled labor. oceanside uses standard costs to prepare its flexible budget. for the first quarter of the year, direct materials and direct labor standards for one of their popular products were as follows: direct materials: 2 pound per unit; $ 11 per pound direct labor: 2 hours per unit; $ 19 per hour oceanside produced 2 comma 000 units during the quarter. at the end of the quarter, an examination of the direct materials records showed that the company used 7 comma 500 pounds of direct materials and actual total materials costs were $ 98 comma 100. what is the direct materials cost variance? (round any intermediate calculations to the nearest cent, and your final answer to the nearest dollar.)

"in my opinion, we ought to stop making our own drums and accept that outside supplier's offer," said wim niewindt, managing director of antilles refining, n.v., of aruba. "at a price of $21 per drum, we would be paying $4.70 less than it costs us to manufacture the drums in our own plant. since we use 70,000 drums a year, that would be an annual cost savings of $329,000." antilles refining's current cost to manufacture one drum is given below (based on 70,000 drums per year):