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VARIABLE INPUT: An input whose quantity can be changed in the time period under consideration. This should be immediately compared and contrasted with fixed input. The most common example of a variable input is labor. A variable input provides the extra inputs that a firm needs to expand short-run production. In contrast, 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. This is, by the way, the law of diminishing marginal returns.
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INCREASING MARGINAL RETURNS In the short-run production by a firm, an increase in the variable input results in an increase in the marginal product of the variable input. Increasing marginal returns typically surface when the first few quantities of a variable input are added to a fixed input. This is one of two alternatives for marginal returns. The other is decreasing marginal returns. A related phenomenon for long-run production is increasing returns to scale.
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Before 1933, the U.S. dime was legal as payment only in transactions of $10 or less.
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"Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness." -- Martin Luther King, Jr., clergyman
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