What is "marginal cost"

marginal cost \marginal cost\, marginal cost of production \marginal cost of production\n. (Economics) The increase in total cost of production as a result of producing one more unit of output; since certain ovrhead costs are fixed, the marginal cost is almost aways less than the total per-unit cost of production averaged over all units produced.

Syn: incremental cost, differential cost.

n. The increase in cost that accompanies a unit increase in output; the partial derivative of the cost function with respect to output. Additional cost associated with producing one more unit of output.

n. the increase or decrease in costs as a result of one more or one less unit of output [syn: incremental cost, differential cost]

In economics, marginal cost is the change in the total cost that arises when the quantity produced is incremented by one unit, that is, it is the cost of producing one more unit of a good. In general terms, marginal cost at each level of production includes any additional costs required to produce the next unit. For example, if producing additional vehicles requires building a new factory, the marginal cost of the extra vehicles includes the cost of the new factory. In practice, this analysis is segregated into short and long-run cases, so that, over the longest run, all costs become marginal. At each level of production and time period being considered, marginal costs include all costs that vary with the level of production, whereas other costs that do not vary with production are considered fixed.

The graph is plotted with Price, Cost and Revenue on the Y-axis and Quantity on the X-axis.

If the good being produced is infinitely divisible, the size of a marginal cost will change with volume; so a non-linear and non-proportional cost function includes the following:

• variable terms dependent on volume,
• constant terms independent on volume and occurring with the respective lot size,
• jump fix cost increase or decrease dependent on steps of volume increase.

In practice the above definition of marginal cost as the change in total cost as a result of an increase in output of one unit is inconsistent with the differential definition of marginal cost for virtually all non-linear functions. This is as the definition finds the tangent to the total cost curve at the point q which assumes that costs increase at the same rate as they were at q. A new definition may be useful for marginal unit cost (MUC) using the current definition of the change in total cost as a result of an increase of one unit of output defined as: TC(q+1)-TC(q) and re-defining marginal cost to be the change in total as a result of an infinitesimally small increase in q which is consistent with its use in economic literature and can be calculated differentially.

If the cost function is differentiable joining, the marginal cost is the cost of the next unit produced referring to the basic volume.

$$\text{Marginal Cost }(MC) = \frac{\ dC}{\ dQ}$$

If the cost function is not differentiable, the marginal cost can be expressed as follows.

$$MC = \frac{\Delta C}{\Delta Q}$$

A number of other factors can affect marginal cost and its applicability to real world problems. Some of these may be considered market failures. These may include information asymmetries, the presence of negative or positive externalities, transaction costs, price discrimination and others.