You manage a $23 million portfolio, currently all invested in equities, and believe that the market is on the verge of a big but short-lived downturn. You would move your portfolio temporarily into T-bills, but you do not want to incur the transaction costs of liquidating and reestablishing your equity position. Instead, you decide to temporarily hedge your equity holdings with S&P 500 index futures contracts. Required:
a. Should you be long or short the contracts? Why?
b. If your equity holdings are invested in a market-index fund, into how many contracts should you enter? The S&P 500 index is now at 1,650 and the contract multiplier is $250.
c. How does your answer to (b) change if the beta of your portfolio is 0.6?

The impact fiscal multiplier is a. usually estimated to have an average value of 2. b. usually estimated to have an average value of 0. c. the actual immediate multiplier effect of a fiscal policy action after taking into consideration direct fiscal offsets and other short-term crowding out of private spending. d. the multiplier effect of a fiscal policy action that applies to a long-run period after all influences on equilibrium real gdp have been taken into account.

Atlas manufacturing produces a unique valve, and has the capacity to produce 50,000 valves annually. currently atlas produces 40,000 valves and is thinking about increasing production to 45,000 valves next year. what is the most likely behavior of total manufacturing costs and unit manufacturing costs given this change? a. total manufacturing costs will increase and unit manufacturing costs will also increase. b. total manufacturing costs will stay the same and unit manufacturing costs will stay the same. c. total manufacturing costs will increase and unit manufacturing costs will decrease. d. total manufacturing costs will increase and unit manufacturing costs will stay the same.

1. all other things equal, according to the law of demand, when the price of a good falls, the demand for the good falls the demand for the good rises the quantity demanded of the good falls the quantity demanded of the good rises 2. when a market is in equilibrium, the quantity of the good that buyers are willing and able to buy exactly equals the quantity that sellers are willing and able to sell cannot be determined is less than the quantity that sellers are willing and able to sell is greater than the quantity that sellers are willing and able to sell 3. which of the following factors does not influence the demand for a good or service? consumer (buyer) income the price of related goods the number of sellers buyer expectations 4. when the number of sellers in a market increases, demand rises supply rises the price rises, all else equal the number of buyers falls