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COMPANY TOWN: A small town closely associated with the production activity by a single firm. The firm is typically the only employer in the town and most of the goods and services sold throughout the town are provided by this firm. Company towns were quite prevalent in the late 1800s and early 1900s during the U.S. industrial revolution, often affiliated with a large mining, lumber, or manufacturing facility that was isolated from major urban areas. The company literally built a town around this facility to provide support services for their employees. The downside, however, was the lack of competition for both the employment of labor (monopsony) and the provision of consumer goods (monopoly). In some cases, the controlling firm exploited its market control creating circumstances not but different from slavery. Such company towns were a key motivation from the formation of labor unions.
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                           VARIABLE INPUT: An input whose quantity can be changed in the time period under consideration. The most common example of a variable input is labor. Variable inputs provide the means used by a firm to control short-run production. The alternative to variable input is fixed input. A fixed input, like capital, provides the capacity constraint in production. As larger quantities of a variable input, like labor, are added to a fixed input like capital, the variable input becomes less productive, which is the law of diminishing marginal returns. A variable input is a resource or factor of production which can be changed in the short run by a firm as it seeks to change the quantity of output produced. Most firms use several variable inputs in short-run production, especially labor, material inputs, and energy. However, in the analysis of short-run production, a great deal of insight is achieved by focusing on the variable use of labor.Short-Run Taco ProductionAs an illustration of variable inputs, consider the short-run production of Shady Valley's favorite lunch time meal, Super Deluxe TexMex Gargantuan Tacos (with sour cream and jalapeno peppers). The key variable input for Waldo Millbottom, the owner and proprietor of Waldo's TexMex Taco World, is the staff of workers.In the day-to-day production of TexMex Gargantuan Tacos, Waldo is primarily interested in having a sufficient quantity of labor--waitpersons, kitchen help, buspersons, cashier, greeting host, chef, maitre d', valet parking attendants, and floor show performers. To alter the production of TexMex Gargantuan Tacos, Waldo changes the size of his workforce. However, Waldo does not concern himself with the size of the restaurant, number of tables and chairs, amount of kitchen equipment, and available parking spaces. These are fixed inputs. Usually Labor, But Not AlwaysThe designation of labor as a variable input is not just an arbitrary choice made to ease the economic exposition of short-run production. Labor is usually an input that can be changed quickly. If a firm wants to add a half dozen additional machinists to its workforce, it can probably do so in a few weeks. However, if a firm wants to add 50,000 square feet of factory space, then the construction company probably needs a year or two to complete this job. In terms of short-run production for many firms, labor is typically variable and capital is typically fixed.However, not all firms are typical. In some examples of short-run production, capital is the variable input and labor is the fixed input. One illustration is offered by the academic world of higher education. The labor of tenured faculty (with emphasis on "tenured") tends to be a fixed input in the production of education. By contrast, some forms of capital, especially computer equipment, are more easily changed and can be thought of as variable inputs in the production of education.
Recommended Citation:VARIABLE INPUT, AmosWEB Encyclonomic WEB*pedia, http://www.AmosWEB.com, AmosWEB LLC, 2000-2025. [Accessed: June 17, 2025].
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RED AGGRESSERINE
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Today, you are likely to spend a great deal of time at a going out of business sale looking to buy either a how-to book on building remote controlled airplanes or an extra large beach blanket. Be on the lookout for door-to-door salesmen.
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The penny is the only coin minted by the U.S. government in which the "face" on the head looks to the right. All others face left.
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"The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex, overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one. " -- Mark Twain, writer
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T-BOND
Treasury Bond
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