Web Links

• Learn more about efficiency improvements in the rail industry by following the link to the Web site of Burlington Northern Santa Fe at http://www.bnsf.com/media/bnsffacts.html. (Note: The instructions have changed since the book was published.)
• To see how CSX Corporation has integrated information technologies into its rail operations, use the link http://www.csx.com/?fuseaction=general.csxo_corp.

Industry-Level Capital Expenditures
In this chapter, you learned about the explicit and implicit costs that firms incur in the process of producing goods and services. This Internet application gives you an opportunity to consider one type of cost—expenditures on capital goods.

     Title: U.S. Census Bureau’s Annual Capital Expenditures Survey

     Navigation: Go to http://www.census.gov/csd/ace/ and select PDF Download. Then click on the most recent Annual Capital Expenditures Survey.

Application
Read the Introduction in the report, and then answer the following questions:

1. What types of business expenditures does the Census Bureau include in this report?

2. Are the inputs that generate these business expenditures more likely to be inputs that firms can vary in the short run or in the long run?

3. Which inputs account for the largest portion of firms' capital expenditures? Why do you suppose this is so?