EXERCISE 12-17 (20 MINUTES)

4. When the selling division has no idle capacity, as in part (3), market

price works very well as a transfer price. The cost to the company of a

transfer when there is no idle capacity is the lost revenue from sales to

outsiders. If the market price is used as the transfer price, the buying

division will view the market price of the transferred item as its cost—

which is appropriate since that is the cost to the company. As a conse-

quence, the manager of the buying division should be motivated to

make decisions that are in the best interests of the company.

When the selling division has idle capacity, the cost to the company of

the transfer is just the variable cost of producing the item. If the market

price is used as the transfer price, the manager of the buying division

will view that as his/her cost rather than the real cost to the company,

which is just variable cost. Hence, the manager will have the wrong cost

information for making decisions as we observed in parts (1) and (2)

above.

Problem 12-30 (60 minutes)