Joe’s sister, Flo Grow, is a university administrator. She uses an alternative method of gardening. Flo has found that happy plants only need fertilizer and talk. Where f is the number of bags of fertilizer used and t is the number of hours she talks to her plants, the number of happy plants produced is exactly h = t+2f. Suppose fertilizer costs wf per bag and talk costs wt per hour.
(a) If Flo uses no fertilizer, how many hours of talk must she devote if she wants one happy plant? _____. If she doesn’t talk to her plants at all, how many bags of fertilizer will she need for one happy plant? ______.
(b) If wt < wf /2, would it be cheaper for Flo to use fertilizer or talk to raise one happy plant?
(c) Flo’s cost function is c(wf, wt, h) = _____.
(d) Her conditional factor demand for talk is t(wf, wt, h) = ____ if wt < wf /2 and _____ if wt > wf /2.