worker is four trees per day, but the marginal product of the second worker is six trees per day. Why might that

be the case? It’s because of the nature of the capital the workers are using. A two-person saw works much

better with two persons than with one. Suppose we add a third lumberjack to the story. What will that person’s

marginal product be? What will that person contribute to the team? Perhaps they can oil the saw's teeth to

keep it sawing smoothly or they could bring water to the two people sawing. What you see in the table is a

critically important conclusion about production in the short run: It may be that as we add workers, the

marginal product increases at first, but sooner or later additional workers will have decreasing marginal

product. In fact, there may eventually be no effect or a negative effect on output. This is called the Law of

Diminishing Marginal Product and it’s a characteristic of production in the short run. Diminishing marginal
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