Macroeconomic Homework Week 3 Unsw

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HOANG NAM VU z3486394 TUTORIAL HAND-IN QUESTION WEEK 3 Assume that Nominal interest rate is real interest rate. (i) The cost to Patrick of owning the lawn mower for a year. The cost to Patrick of owning the lawn mower for a year will be equal to : The Depreciation Cost + The interest rate cost = 5000 x 10% + 5000 x 6% = 500 + 300 = 800 (ii) User-cost as a decimal Patrick’s user-cost as a decimal = 800/5000 = 0.16 (iii) Suppose that Patrick’s father had given him the $5,000 for his birthday, is the nominal interest rate now irrelevant to the user cost calculation? Explain. Although Patrick does not have to borrow money from the bank when he has available fund received from his father, there is still opportunity cost associated with using money to buy the lawn mower instead of investing 5000$ in other financial products such as bond with interest rate larger or equal to 6%. Therefore, nominal interest rate should not be neglected. For the sake of simplicity, we assume that Patrick may purchase bond with 6% interest rate which will give him income of 300$ at the end of the year. We treat 300$ opportunity cost the same way with 300$ annual interest rate cost if he has to borrow. To conclude, even when Patrick does not have to borrow money from the bank, nominal interest rate is still relevant to the user cost calculation. (iv)General formula for the user-cost of capital. User cost of capital = ( Nominal interest rate + Physical rate of depreciation on a lawn mower ) x Initial purchase price of lawn mower (v) Factors that can affect a firm’s cost of capital. Price of the capital goods, Depreciation rate, Nominal interest rate are all factors can affect firm’s cost of capital. (vi) At the aggregate level, what factor is likely to be the most significant cause of variation in the cost of

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