Alexander Solla wrote:
...and (probably) the most efficient production plan given the costs of his inputs. This is a problem I am going to have to solve programmatically, too. I intend on solving it by finding the input in a given category of necessary inputs with the lowest average cost per unit. I'm not concerned about "hard" cost allocation limits -- i.e. it's okay for the firm to buy more of an input than might be necessary for another output as long as the average unit cost is the lowest (since all the inputs will be used eventually anyway). Hard allocation complicates the problem, since you have an upper bound on what you can spend, and you want to spend it most effectively, presumably with as little "waste" of available cash as possibile. Bin packing.
This is Linear Programming: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_programming Regards, Yitz