A company produces a certain item. The costs of production at two levels of output are: At a production level of \( 18,000 \) items the cost is \( 269,000 \)
At a production level of \( 30,000 \) items the cost is \( 404,000 \)
But we are told that at a production level of \( 26,000 \) items, fixed costs increase by \( 15,000 \) .
(a) Find the variable cost per unit: (b) What is the cost of producing \( 37,000 \) items?