The clientele of black & company's audit practice consists primarily of privately-owned small and middle market companies. recently, the firm won two audits of public companies, including one issuer. from an independence perspective, what effect will these new client engagements have on black & company?

The leading producer of cell phone backup batteries, jumpstart, has achieved great success because they produce high-quality battery backups that are not too expensive. even so, another company that produces lower-quality batteries at the same price has also achieved some success, but not as much as jumpstart. also, in general, the price of backup batteries has declined because of economies of scale and learning. in addition, jumpstart has added complementary assets, such as a carrying case. considering all of these factors, the backup battery industry is most likely in the introduction stage. growth stage. shakeout stage. maturity stage.

Ajustification for job training programs is that they improve worker productivity. suppose that you are asked to evaluate whether more job training makes workers more productive. however, rather than having data on individual workers, you have access to data on manufacturing firms in ohio. in particu- lar, for each firm, you have information on hours of job training per worker (training) and number of nondefective items produced per worker hour (output). (i) carefully state the ceteris paribus thought experiment underlying this policy question. (ii) does it seem likely that a firm’s decision to train its workers will be independent of worker characteristics? what are some of those measurable and unmeasurable worker characteristics? (iii) name a factor other than worker characteristics that can affect worker productivity. (iv) if you find a positive correlation between output and training, would you have convincingly established that job training makes workers more productive? explain.

Xie company identified the following activities, costs, and activity drivers for 2017. the company manufactures two types of go-karts: deluxe and basic. activity expected costs expected activity handling materials $ 625,000 100,000 parts inspecting product 900,000 1,500 batches processing purchase orders 105,000 700 orders paying suppliers 175,000 500 invoices insuring the factory 300,000 40,000 square feet designing packaging 75,000 2 models required: 1. compute a single plantwide overhead rate, assuming that the company assigns overhead based on 125,000 budgeted direct labor hours. 2. in january 2017, the deluxe model required 2,500 direct labor hours and the basic model required 6,000 direct labor hours. assign overhead costs to each model using the single plantwide overhead rate.