Are firms like homebuilders that sell products whose demand depends partly on demographic factors likely to be more or less affected by the business cycle than are other firms whose products are less dependent on these factors (holding constant other factors that affect the demand for new houses)? Briefly explain.

Cool beans is a locally owned coffee shop that competes with two large coffee chains, planeteuro and frothies. alicia, the owner, hired two students to count the number of customers that entered each of the coffee shops to estimate what percent of people who are interested in coffee are visiting each shop. after a week, the students found the following results: 589 visited cool beans, 839 visited planeteuro, and 1,290 visited frothies. the students were surprised that cool beans had 139 visits on monday which represented 59% of all people who visited one of the three coffee shops on mondays. how many people visited one of the three coffee shops during the week?

Suppose there are three types of consumers who attend concerts at your university’s performing arts center: students, staff, and faculty. each of these groups has a different willingness to pay for tickets; within each group, willingness to pay is identical. there is a fixed cost of $1,000 to put on a concert, but there are essentially no variable costs. for each concert: i. there are 140 students willing to pay $20. (ii) there are 200 staff members willing to pay $35. (iii) there are 100 faculty members willing to pay $50. a) if the performing arts center can charge only one price, what price should it charge? what are profits at this price? b) if the performing arts center can price discriminate and charge two prices, one for students and another for faculty/staff, what are its profits? c) if the performing arts center can perfectly price discriminate and charge students, staff, and faculty three separate prices, what are its profits?

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%