Economic decisions are made at every level in society. when we try to decide which production method to use among several alternatives, which of the following key economic questions are we trying to answer?

Chang corp. has $375,000 of assets, and it uses only common equity capital (zero debt). its sales for the last year were $595,000, and its net income was $25,000. stockholders recently voted in a new management team that has promised to lower costs and get the return on equity up to 15.0%. what profit margin would the firm need in order to achieve the 15% roe, holding everything else constant? a. 9.45%b. 9.93%c. 10.42%d. 10.94%e. 11.49%

Blue computers, a major pc manufacturer in the united states, currently has plants in kentucky and pennsylvania. the kentucky plant has a capacity of 1 million units a year and the pennsylvania plant has a capacity of 1.5 million units a year. the firm divides the united states into five markets: northeast, southeast, midwest, south, and west. each pc sells for $1,000. the firm anticipates a 50 perc~nt growth in demand (in each region) this year (after which demand will stabilize) and wants to build a plant with a capacity of 1.5 million units per year to accommodate the growth. potential sites being considered are in north carolina and california. currently the firm pays federal, state, and local taxes on the income from each plant. federal taxes are 20 percent of income, and all state and local taxes are 7 percent of income in each state. north carolina has offered to reduce taxes for the next 10 years from 7 percent to 2 percent. blue computers would like to take the tax break into consideration when planning its network. consider income over the next 10 years in your analysis. assume that all costs remain unchanged over the 10 years. use a discount factor of 0.1 for your analysis. annual fixed costs, production and shipping costs per unit, and current regional demand (before the 50 percent growth) are shown in table 5-13. (a) if blue computers sets an objective of minimizing total fixed and variable costs, where should they build the new plant? how should the network be structured? (b) if blue computers sets an objective of maximizing after-tax profits, where should they build the new plant? how should the network be structured? variable production and shipping cost ($/unit) annual fixed cost northeast southeast midwest south west (million$) kentucky 185 180 175 175 200 150 pennsylvania 170 190 180 200 220 200 n. carolina 180 180 185 185 215 150 california 220 220 195 195 175 150 demand ('000 units/month) 700 400 400 300 600

Which is cheaper: eating out or dining in? the mean cost of a flank steak, broccoli, and rice bought at the grocery store is $13.04 (money.msn website, november 7, 2012). a sample of 100 neighborhood restaurants showed a mean price of $12.75 and a standard deviation of $2 for a comparable restaurant meal. a. develop appropriate hypotheses for a test to determine whether the sample data support the conclusion that the mean cost of a restaurant meal is less than fixing a comparable meal at home. b. using the sample from the 100 restaurants, what is the p-value? c. at a = .05, what is your conclusion? d. repeat the preceding hypothesis test using the critical value approach