You manage a $16.5 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. 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 .6?

Which of the following statements is correct? large corporations are taxed more favorably than sole proprietorships. corporate stockholders are exposed to unlimited liability. due to limited liability, unlimited lives, and ease of ownership transfer, the vast majority of u.s. businesses (in terms of number of businesses) are organized as corporations. most businesses (by number and total dollar sales) are organized as partnerships or proprietorships because it is easier to set up and operate in one of these forms rather than as a corporation. however, if the business gets very large, it becomes advantageous to convert to a corporation, mainly because corporations have important tax advantages over proprietorships and partnerships. most business (measured by dollar sales) is conducted by corporations in spite of large corporations’ often less favorable tax treatment, due to legal considerations related to ownership transfers and limited liability.

4. suppose that pollution in a neighborhood comes from two factories, with marginal benefit curves given by mb1 = 12 – p1 and mb2 = 8 – p2. the level of pollution in the neighborhood is given by p = p1 + p2. the government wants to limit pollution by instituting a pollution-rights market. the government’s desired level of p is 10, so it prints 10 pollution rights and offers them for sale to the firms.a)find the equilibrium selling price of a pollution right, as well as the allocation of rights (and hence pollution levels) across the two factories. b)repeat part (a) for the case where the government’s desired level of pollution equals 14. c)comment on the usefulness of a pollution rights market in achieving efficient levels of pollution abatement.

Singer and mcmann are partners in a business. singer’s original capital was $40,000 and mcmann’s was $60,000. they agree to salaries of $12,000 and $18,000 for singer and mcmann respectively and 10% interest on original capital. if they agree to share remaining profits and losses on a 3: 2 ratio, what will mcmann’s share of the income be if the income for the year was $15,000?