A large share of the world supply of diamonds comes from Russia and South Africa. Suppose that the marginal cost (and ATC) of mining diamonds is constant at $1,000 per diamond, and the demand for diamonds is described by the following schedule: Table 2: Demand for Diamonds
Price Quantity
$8,000 5,000
7,000 6,000
6,000 7,000
5,000 8,000
4,000 9,000
3,000 10,000
2,000 11,000
1,000 12,000
(a) If there were many suppliers of diamonds, what would be the price and quantity?
(b) If there were only one supplier of diamonds, what would be the price and quantity?
(c) If Russia and South Africa formed a cartel, what would be the price and quantity? If the countries split the market evenly, what would be South Africa's production and profit? What would happen to South Africa's profit if it increased its production by 1,000 while Russia stuck to the cartel agreement?
(d) Use your answers to part (c) to explain why cartel agreements are often not successful.

Profits from using currency options and futures.on july 2, the two-month futures rate of the mexican peso contained a 2 percent discount (unannualized). there was a call option on pesos with an exercise price that was equal to the spot rate. there was also a put option on pesos with an exercise price equal to the spot rate. the premium on each of these options was 3 percent of the spot rate at that time. on september 2, the option expired. go to the oanda.com website (or any site that has foreign exchange rate quotations) and determine the direct quote of the mexican peso. you exercised the option on this date if it was feasible to do so. a. what was your net profit per unit if you had purchased the call option? b. what was your net profit per unit if you had purchased the put option? c. what was your net profit per unit if you had purchased a futures contract on july 2 that had a settlement date of september 2? d. what was your net profit per unit if you sold a futures contract on july 2 that had a settlement date of september 2

Why is investing in a mutual fund less risky than investing in a particular company’s stock?

David consumes two things: gasoline (g) and bread (b). david's utility function is u(g, b) = 10g^0.25 b^0.75. use the lagrange technique to solve for david's optimal choices of gasoline and bread as a function of the price of gasoline, p_g, the price of bread, p_b, and his income m. with recent decrease in the price of gasoline (maybe due to external shock such as shale gas production) does david increase his consumption of gasoline? for david, how does partial differential g/partial differential p_g depend on his income m? that is, how does david's change in gasoline consumption due to an increase in the price of gasoline depend on his income level? to answer these questions, find the cross-partial derivative, |partial differential^2 g/partial differential m partial differential p_g.