A firm decides whether to produce products by an onshore plant or an offshore plant. The fixed cost and the variable cost of the onshore plant are $40,000 and $1.2, while the fixed cost and the variable cost of the offshore plant are $30,000 and $1.0 (suppose the variable cost includes all costs related to production and transportation). However, although the offshore plant has lower cost, the reliability of the two plants are different: while the onshore plant can always guarantee to satisfy all order request, the offshore plant has 60% probability to meet all order request and 40% probability to satisfy only 80% of the order request. The demand in the next season is 20,000 and the marginal revenue of each unit of product is $5. Question: Which plant should the firm choose?

Suppose that hubert, an economist from an am talk radio program, and kate, an economist from a nonprofit organization on the west coast, are arguing over government bailouts. the following dialogue shows an excerpt from their debate: kate: to recent financial crises, the concept of bailouts is a hot topic for debate among everyone these days. hubert: indeed, it’s gotten crazy! a government bailout of severely distressed financial firms is unnecessary because free markets will properly price assets. kate: i don’t know about that. without a bailout of severely distressed financial firms, the economy will experience a deep recession. the disagreement between these economists is most likely due todifferences in scientific judgments . despite their differences, with which proposition are two economists chosen at random most likely to agree? business managers can raise profit more easily by reducing costs than by raising revenue. central banks should focus more on maintaining low unemployment than on maintaining low inflation. employers should not be restricted from outsourcing work to foreign nations

Suppose general motors demands labor according to the labor demand function 푤푤= 40−0. 5퐸퐸, where 푤푤 is the hourly wage and 퐸퐸 is the number of employees. the united auto workers union has a utility function given by 푈푈=푊푊∗퐸퐸. a.in 1984, the united auto workers union started negotiations with general motors by assuming that they were a monopoly union. find the wage and employment demands that the united auto workers union would have demanded before any bargaining began. b.if general motors and the united auto workers union both had excellent bargaining representatives, would this be the final labor contract? if not, then explain in words and graphically where they would end up after the bargaining process.

Variable rate cd’s = $90 treasury bills = $150 discount loans = $20 treasury notes = $100 fixed rate cds = $160 money market deposit accts. = $140 savings deposits = $90 fed funds borrowing = $40 variable rate mortgage loans $140 demand deposits = $40 primary reserves = $50 fixed rate loans = $210 fed funds lending = $50 equity capital = $120 a. develop a balance sheet from the above data. be sure to divide your balance sheet into rate-sensitive assets and liabilities as we did in class and in the examples. b. perform a standard gap analysis and a duration analysis using the above data if you have a 1.15% decrease in interest rates and an average duration of assets of 5.4 years and an average duration of liabilities of 3.8 years. c. indicate if this bank will remain solvent after the valuation changes. if so, indicate the new level of equity capital after the valuation changes. if not, indicate the amount of the shortage in equity capital.