University printers has two service departments (maintenance and personnel) and two operating departments (printing and developing). management has decided to allocate maintenance costs on the basis of machine-hours in each department and personnel costs on the basis of labor-hours worked by the employees in each. the following data appear in the company records for the current period: maintenance personnel printing developing machine-hours — 1,500 1,500 4,500 labor-hours 500 — 500 3,500 department direct costs $ 4,800 $ 14,800 $ 16,000 $ 13,300 required: allocate the service department costs using the step method, starting with the maintenance department. (negative amounts should be indicated by a minus sign. do not round intermediate calculations.)

The monthly demand equation for an electric utility company is estimated to be p equals 60 minus left parenthesis 10 superscript negative 5 baseline right parenthesis x, where p is measured in dollars and x is measured in thousands of killowatt-hours. the utility has fixed costs of $3 comma 000 comma 000 per month and variable costs of $32 per 1000 kilowatt-hours of electricity generated, so the cost function is upper c left parenthesis x right parenthesis equals 3 times 10 superscript 6 baseline plus 32 x. (a) find the value of x and the corresponding price for 1000 kilowatt-hours that maximize the utility's profit. (b) suppose that the rising fuel costs increase the utility's variable costs from $32 to $38, so its new cost function is upper c 1 left parenthesis x right parenthesis equals 3 times 10 superscript 6 baseline plus 38 x. should the utility pass all this increase of $6 per thousand kilowatt-hours on to the consumers?