U-SHAPED COST CURVES: The family of short-run cost curves consisting of average total cost, average variable cost, and marginal cost, all of which have U-shapes. They are U-shaped because each has high but falling cost at low quantities of output, which then reaches a minimum, then has rising cost at larger quantities of output. Although the average fixed cost curve is not U-shaped, it's occasionally included with the other three just for sake of completeness.

     See also | average total cost | average variable cost | marginal cost | average fixed cost | average total cost curve | average variable cost curve | marginal cost curve | average fixed cost curve | short-run production | stages of production | increasing marginal returns | decreasing marginal returns | law of diminishing marginal returns | total cost | total variable cost | total fixed cost |

U-SHAPED COST CURVES, AmosWEB GLOSS*arama, http://www.AmosWEB.com, AmosWEB LLC, 2000-2018. [Accessed: September 24, 2018].

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Changes in production the occur when all resources are proportionately changed in the long run. Returns to scale come in three forms--increasing, decreasing, or constant based on whether the changes in production are proportionally more than, less than, or equal to the proportional changes in inputs. Returns to scale are the guiding principle for long-run production, playing a similar role that the law of diminishing marginal returns plays for short-run production.

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