Your bakery has workers who are cookie specialists and cake specialists. After a busy weekend, your bakery is short on cookies, and you need to rebuild your cookie inventory. To do this, you decide to shift workers away from cake production and into cookie production.
As you reassign each worker, you track how many cakes you give up and how many trays of cookies you gain:

What is the marginal opportunity cost of increasing cookie production from 10 trays to 20 trays?

• A. 5 cakes
• B. 10 cakes
• C. 12 cakes
• D. 15 cakes

Answer: (D)

Verified step by step guidance

1. Identify the change in cookie trays produced when increasing production from 10 trays to 20 trays. From the table, this corresponds to moving from 1 worker reassigned to 2 workers reassigned, which increases cookie trays from 10 to 20 trays.
2. Determine the corresponding change in cakes lost when increasing cookie production from 10 trays to 20 trays. According to the table, cakes lost increase from 3 cakes to 15 cakes.
3. Calculate the marginal opportunity cost of increasing cookie production from 10 trays to 20 trays by finding the difference in cakes lost divided by the difference in cookie trays gained. Use the formula: \(\text{Marginal Opportunity Cost} = \frac{\Delta \text{Cakes Lost}}{\Delta \text{Cookie Trays Gained}}\).
4. Substitute the values from the table into the formula: \(\Delta \text{Cakes Lost} = 15 - 3\) and \(\Delta \text{Cookie Trays Gained} = 20 - 10\).
5. Interpret the result as the number of cakes given up for each additional tray of cookies produced between 10 and 20 trays, which represents the marginal opportunity cost.