Our students will look at this analysis and decide not only to go forward with the ice cream business on the beach but to charge $1.80, since that is the price on the demand curve corresponding to a sales volume of 30,000 ice cream bars. Their expected revenue will be $54,000, which coincidently is the same as in the original plan, but the economic costs will be only $49,000, which is lower than in the original analysis, and their economic profit will be slightly higher, at $5000.
At first glance, a $5000 profit does not seem like much. However, bear in mind that we already assigned an opportunity cost to the students’ time based on the income foregone by not accepting the corporate internships. So the students can expect to complete the summer with $10,000 each to compensate for the lost internship income and still have an additional $5000 to split between them.
