Alternative Organization How to Maximize Profit Profit Economist Lester Thurow writes about profit for The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics: http://www.econlib.org/LIBRARY/Enc/Profits.html Survival One of the reasons that firms might not actually maximize profit is something called the principal-agent problem, which is explained in this piece from a publication from India: http://www.blonnet.com/iw/2003/12/14/stories/2003121400061100.htm Circular Flow An article on enotes.com explains circular flow, though it does not have a picture, which might be helpful: http://business.enotes.com/business-finance-encyclopedia/circular-flow Dealing with Three Fundamental Tasks The Demand Curve for Output Amosweb explains how the demand curve is the source of the marginal-revenue curve: http://www.amosweb.com/cgi-bin/awb_nav.pl?s=wpd&c=dsp&k=marginal+revenue The Production Function The article in wikipedia will tell you all you want to know about production functions and probably a lot more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Production_function Searching for Total Cost Profit-Maximizing Output Wikipedia has a short explanation of the profit-maximizing condition, along with some poorly done graphs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profit_maximization   Web ingrimayne.com These links were checked on May 27, 2007 Copyright Robert Schenk