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Basic Question 1 of 8

An economist's notion of costs differs from an accountant's notion of costs as follows:

I. Accounting cost is the sum of explicit and implicit costs.
II. Economic cost equals implicit cost.
III. Economic cost includes the opportunity costs of nonpurchased inputs; accounting cost includes only actual cash payments.
IV. Economic costs are smaller than accounting costs.

User Contributed Comments 7

User Comment
piesiu What about non-cash accounting costs like Depreciation?
gord I agree piesiu...the wording is a bit tricky on that one. With that said, III is clearly the more correct of the four choices and that is reason enough to select it
bobert The opportunity cost of an asset has an associated depreciation, the economic depreciation. The non-cash depreciation method in accounting is an expense, but it is actually incurred so to speak because an asset was explicitly purchased. I believe that is where the difference lies.
BandB Why not II. Economic cost is implicit cost, isn't it?
indrasenareddy economic cost include both explicit and implicit costs. SO it is not correct to say economic cost is implict cost.
choas69 accounting cost = explicit cot
economic cost = implicit & explicit costs
kingirm incorrect answer. there may be non-cash payments or costs...
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Learning Outcome Statements

determine and interpret break even and shutdown points of production, as well as how economies and diseconomies of scale affect costs under perfect and imperfect competition

CFA® 2025 Level I Curriculum, Volume 1, Module 1.