An employer fired one of the employees because the employer did not like the employee's husband, who was a rather loud and obnoxious type. When he came to office parties, he routinely wore everyone's nerves to a frazzle. The employee does not have a contract with the employer and is not in a union. Does she have a cause of action for unjust dismissal?

valuate alternative theoretically explanations and perspectives of economic problems, issues and decisions in a global context

(3) Financing government services through user fees generally leads to a debate/comparison of fees v. taxes. Please describe and define a fee and a tax, identifying the significant differences between the two. Your answer should provide examples of each to support your analysis.

(4) "Sales taxes are fairer than income taxes because sales taxes cannot be avoided by the rich." Discuss & evaluate this idea, using tax policy concepts to provide support for your evaluation. Is it possible to design a sales tax that is more progressive than a personal income tax?

Q.1) Oil-rich countries in the Gulf, already confronted by strong labor protests, are facing renewed pressure from India to pay minimum wages for unskilled workers. With five million immigrant workers in the region, India is trying to win better conditions for their citizens.

source : International Herbal Tribune, March 27, 2008.

Suppose that the Gulf countries paid a minimum wage above the equilibrium wage to the Indian workers. Answer the following questions assuming that migrants to the Gulf are required to have jobs: that means the number of migrants cannot be larger than the quantity of labor demanded.

a) How would the market for labor be affected in the Gulf countries? Would migrant Indian workers be better off or worse off or unaffected by this minimum wage? Draw a supply and demand graph to illustrate your answers.

b) How would the market for labor be affected in India? Draw a supply and demand graph to illustrate your answer. Be careful: the minimum wage is in the Gulf countries, not in India.

( Microeconomics )

What are the major challenges that face expatriates while living abroad?

Please use your own words

What is the projected spending of health care as a percentage of GDP by 2040? How would this impact our economy?

What are the two elements of market failure most important and applicable to the study of cultural economics and especially to how access to some sites are priced and monitored?

Instructions from Professor:

1. What will you be looking for in a political candidate the next time you vote, in terms of economic philosophy and economic policies? What have you learned so far that has influenced your position? Have any of your ideas changed? Your essay should be at least 200 words.

Why does an economy need a rationing​ mechanism?

Suppose the demand functions facing a wireless telephone monopolist are QdL=100−200P for each low-demand consumer and QdH=120−200P for each high-demand consumer, where P is the per-minute price in dollars. The marginal cost is $0.02 per minute. Suppose the monopolist offers a menu of two-part tariff plans, with one plan intended for each type of consumer. Suppose too that for any per-minute price PL in the low-demand plan, the fixed fee in the low-demand plan leaves a low-demand consumer with zero surplus; that the number of minutes in the low-demand plan is capped at the number of minutes desired by a low-demand consumer at that plan's per-minute price; and that the high-demand plan has a per-minute price of $0.02 per minute and a fixed fee that leaves the high-demand consumer approximately indifferent between the low- and high-demand plans. Suppose that there are 100 high-demand consumers and 400 low-demand consumers. Will the monopolist's profit be higher when the per-minute price in the low-demand plan is $0.07 or $0.12? Instructions: Round your answers to 2 decimal places as needed.

a. Suppose the monopolist's per-minute price in the low-demand plan is $0.07.

Profit = $.

b. Now suppose the monopolist's per-minute price in the low-demand plan is $0.12.

Profit = $.

Suppose the demand functions facing a wireless telephone monopolist are

          QdL=60−200P

for each low-demand consumer and

          QdH=160−200P

for each high-demand consumer, where P is the per-minute price in dollars. The marginal cost is $0.10 per minute. Suppose the monopolist offers a menu of two-part tariff plans, with one plan intended for each type of consumer. Suppose too that for any per-minute price P_L in the low-demand plan, the fixed fee in the low-demand plan leaves a low-demand consumer with zero surplus; that the number of minutes in the low-demand plan is capped at the number of minutes desired by a low-demand consumer at that plan's per-minute price; and that the high-demand plan has a per-minute price of $0.10 per minute and a fixed fee that leaves the high-demand consumer approximately indifferent between the low- and high-demand plans. Suppose that there are 200 high-demand consumers and 400 low-demand consumers. Will the monopolist's profit be higher when the per-minute price in the low-demand plan is $0.15 or $0.20?

Instructions: Round your answers to 2 decimal places as needed.

a. Suppose the monopolist's per-minute price in the low-demand plan is $0.15.

    Profit = $.

b. Now suppose the monopolist's per-minute price in the low-demand plan is $0.20.

    Profit = $.

General Instructions

Redstone Clayworks, Inc. is located in Sedona, Arizona and manufactures clay fire pits for patios. They are one of about two dozen firms around the world that manufacture and sell clay fire pits for retailers such as Home Depot, Lowe’s, Front Gate, and other upscale home product chains. There is virtually no product differentiation. A clay fire pit is a clay fire pit.

Assume that the world market demand and supply curves for clay fire pots intersects at $300 per unit.

The spreadsheet below gives some of Redstone’s production cost data. A template for the spreadsheet is provided in the Course Materials.

Add columns to show, respectively, average fixed cost (AFC), average variable cost (AVC), average total cost (ATC), and short-run marginal cost (SMC). Then, add columns to show, respectively, total revenue (TR), marginal revenue (MR), total profit, average profit, and profit margin.

Place your completed spreadsheet in the Drop Box,and use it to answer questions 1-7. Your spreadsheet and calculations are worth 15 points and count as 500 words toward your word count requirement.

Your spreadsheet must include formulas showing how you arrived at the calculations. As an alternative, you may also submit a document showing your step-by-step calculations for each of the cells. You will not receive credit if you do not show your work using one of these two methods.

For Questions 2, 4, and 5, be sure to employ both of the General Rules for Implementing the Output Decision in your explanations.

A detailed explanation should be given for each question.

Explain the Phillips Curve and potential differences between the short-run version and the long-run version. How were the economic performance and policies of the country affected by the Phillips Curve in the 1970s, and what eventually happened to break this pattern?

Chapter 17 Betty to the Rescue

• “The highest form of treason: to do the right thing for the wrong reason.”

  —T.S. Eliot

Sometimes angels work behind the scenes in secret ways. Betty Mavis was an unsuspected angel for Supervisor Mark Armen of Glacier Hills Township. Glacier Hills was just north of the city of Westminister. Armen had been a political science professor at Ansell College in Westminister, but he was a resident of Glacier Hills, and when the opportunity present itself, he decided a tour of duty in public service was in order. He still had to get elected. Several students helped in his campaign and all were supportive. Particularly helpful was graduate student Paul Turwill. Tur-will took the lead in getting together volunteers to knock on every door in Glacier Hills. He also talked residents into having signs on their lawn. In the true sense of the word, he was a go-getter. After long summer nights of campaigning, Armen and Turwill and those students who were over 21 would gather at the Knolls Tavern to discuss their activities. Betty Mavis often came along, usually with a textbook in hand, and always with a smile.

Armen told Turwill that he would help him get a job with the township if he were to be elected and a job opening was available. The election was a success, and as it happened, the previous, outgoing supervisor had a secretary who indicated she wished to resign when her boss left office. That created an opening for a secretary. Armen approached the township clerk, another elected official who served as personnel director. Armen was told that he could choose anyone he wished to be his secretary. He brought up the possibilities of having Turwill serve instead as his assistant, but with the understanding that Turwill and Armen would take care of all of the secretarial tasks of the supervisor’s office. The clerk had no problem with that arrangement, and at the first meeting led by new Supervisor Mark Armen, the issue was placed in front of the full board, and it was discussed briefly. There was no opposition when it was established that Turwill could type and he had had some clerical work experience. Turwill was hired. He was able to continue with his master’s degree program as all his remaining classes were in the evening. He agreed not to take any class on Monday night, as that was when the township board meetings were.

Political leaders often praise the patronage system. If an official is given the power to make an appointment untied to arms-length merit considerations and open competition, it is considered a plus. This is what Mark Armen had been teaching right out of the textbooks in his political personnel classes. He had his classes read George Washington Plunkitt,¹ which explained that the only way you can motivate staff is if you get to select them unhindered by rules and examinations. Patronage was the key to loyalty. When Armen the professor yielded to Armen the political leader, it didn’t seem to work out that way at all. Turwill was a big mistake. He immediately took on a lazy air. He did not show respect to other members of the staff, mostly older women who, while a bit stern in demeanor, had efficiently taken care of township business over the previous 3 decades. Stern was the nature of most workers in the community of German immigrants—many of whom were recent immigrants. Turwill was a bit sloppy in his work. Armen had to have letters retyped, and after a while just took on the task of typing his letters by himself.

Armen was outgoing and liked to joke around with citizens and students alike. He was into jogging, and would tour the township streets in his running outfit two or three mornings a week. He actually used the running to look at sites for rezoning or other issues that had come up in meetings. It was a good way to keep in touch with the citizens. He would wave and smile at constituents and even stop to chat if the occasion called for it. Some of the solid citizens took offense at this style of activity. They were especially critical when they would phone the township and ask for the supervisor only to get Turwill to answer in a sarcastic way that the supervisor was out jogging.

Armen was very concerned when some of Turwill’s college friends would stop by and have closed-door meetings with him. Armen also had an impression that Turwill and his friends would go behind the township hall and participate in recreational drug activity. Armen was well aware that many of the students on campus did drugs, and he had seen Turwill smoking on occasion. The township hall was not the place, and working hours were not the time.

A patronage appointee cannot be easily fired. This is especially the case if he or she earned the job through hard political work. This is the case when someone won an appointment through the recommendation of a close friend. A patronage appointee who knows this may use this. The patronage appointee may take on a feeling that he already paid his dues for the job and he doesn’t have to work as hard as others for their pay. Such was the case with Turwill. Armen pondered solutions, and he knew that any direct action would have costs in friendships on campus, and in respect from his township colleagues who had gone along with his judgment when Turwill was hired. The solution to the problem of Turwill was not easy. Armen’s first thought was to move him to some work outside of the township hall. Armen did let Turwill know that he could not defend him if anyone else saw him smoking marijuana about the premises, and Turwill seemed to understand the warning.

Armen thought about putting Turwill with the township work crews, but that was mostly manual labor, and Armen was not going to make Turwill a supervisor of work crews—where the workers were more skilled than he was. Fortunately the township received a neighborhood development grant for a poor area near the river—Riverdale. The grant entailed hiring crews to clean up the streets, paint houses, and conduct recreational programs. Armen put Turwill in charge of organizing teams to go to the Riverdale area and to work with them. While Turwill thought the work was a bit demeaning, he thought it was less boring that being at township hall all day. He seemed to be doing a satisfactory job in Riverdale. Armen only worried about the fall—in 2 months the Riverdale project would be over—then he would have the Tur-will project on his hands again.

Ah! The day of miracles. One day in August, Turwill came into Armen’s office with a big smile and announced that there was an opening for an assistant public works director in the city of Westminister, and the pay was 40% higher than his current salary. He asked if he should apply.

Armen put on his professor’s hat for a moment and said, “Paul, you know you are welcome here. I owe you this; I know I wouldn’t be here without your work. But the job you have here has to be considered temporary—I am here on a 2-year term; you know my job here is temporary too. You do not have a career job here; there is no career ladder. Westminister is a big city, a post like assistant public works director can have a career ladder. And I can’t raise your salary. Believe me, I know I owe you, and I know you can work hard, and I’ll let the people in Westminister know you are a good student and you can work hard. My professorial advice is simply ‘go for it.’”

Armen made a few inquiries about the position in Westminister, and he found that they wanted a person with a master’s degree and experience, and that they were conducting a national search. His brief moments of thinking that the “Paul problem” was being solved ended. On the other hand, maybe his talk with Turwill could encourage him to look for other jobs, too. But hopes dashed can be hopes revived. Two days later Turwill told the supervisor that he had made the list of ten finalists for the job at Westminister. Armen was indeed a bit dumbfounded.

The next week Turwill was invited for a personal interview. He reported back to Armen with another smile on his face. He had been the first candidate interviewed, because they were talking to people in the local area first. He related that the interview had gone extremely well. In the course of discussions about work experience Turwill had told the Westminister director of public works that he had worked on sidewalk construction crews during summers of his college years. The director asked where, and Turwill replied in Geddes, where he grew up. Geddes was a town of 10,000, forty miles to the west of Glacier Hills.

“You grew up in Geddes?” the director had exclaimed. “So did I. Turwill, your name is? Is that right?”

“Yes, Paul Turwill.”

The director asked, “Do you know Tom Turwill?”

“Of course,” Turwill replied. “That’s my father.”

“I can’t believe it. Your father, wow! You must be that little kid he brought to the class picnics,” the director said. “Your father was my best buddy all though school. The stories I won’t tell you, wow!”

And so went the interview. The director said he would call Turwill in a few days.

The next day the director called Mark Armen. Armen gave Turwill a toned-down good recommendation, but the director sensed something. He asked, “You’re not trying to get rid of him are you?”

Without giving a direct answer, Supervisor Armen repeated the essence of his conversation with Turwill. “I am also Paul’s professor at the college, and I have to reflect on what the job here means and what your job would mean for his career. You are offering a professional public administration post with career opportunities. His job here is simply more limited. He is certainly welcome to stay here, but you are presenting a real professional opportunity and he is capable of taking advantage of it and doing a good job.”

Armen worried that his line of bull might not be effective, but he let it rest, and the director thanked him for his views on Turwill. Turwill got the job.

Armen dropped into the Knolls a few weeks later and Betty Mavis strolled in, books in hand. He asked her how the term was going. She said, “This internship and one more class and I’ve got my degree.”

“Hey, great, tell me about your internship,” Armen said.

Mavis said, “You should know about my internship, you helped set it up last fall.”

Armen sort of remembered and said, “Something to do with personnel, at the county.”

“Right on personnel, but it is the personnel department with the city of Westminister, and let me tell you, I saved your friend Paul’s butt, too.”

Armen inquired as to how she had done that.

Mavis related that the applicants for the assistant public works director were on her desk, and a screening committee had selected ten for interviews. Turwill’s application was in the pile of rejected applications. Mavis said she simply took out the bottom application from the pile of ten and placed Turwill’s into the second spot. Evidently, the director just grabbed the pile of ten and sorted out the locals, and Tur-will was the first one to get an interview call. Mavis heard he had gotten the job, but she hadn’t told anyone how he got the interview. Turwill told her that she had really saved him. She said she thought so because Turwill was always complaining about his township job.

Armen had not thought about Mavis’s graduation, and Mavis had not brought up the subject. But Armen knew she was a waitress at a nice restaurant, the Great Lakes Steakhouse. Armen went into the tavern the week after graduation, and Mavis was there again. This time she was direct.

“Hey, Professor, when you going to take care of me? When do I get a job?”

Armen said, “O.K. Right now, this is your job interview.”

They went though her courses, the jobs she had held, and her skill levels.

Armen said, “Look, I never filled Paul Turwill’s job, and I told the clerk I really didn’t need an assistant, but I know we have a backlog of clerical work, and we could use some organization. You come in tomorrow, and we’ll discuss your job with the clerk.”

The next day Mavis was hired. Armen returned to teaching when his 2-year term ended. Mavis’s new job was a clerical job, but over the next 25 years she grew her position into a professional position. The word in township hall was that she made the place work. Indeed she was even recognized by the Greater Westminister Women’s Club as “Professional Woman of the Year.”

Rethinking patronage—sometimes it can work out O.K.

Questions

• 1. Patronage involves basic ethical questions. Was it proper for Armen to hire Turwill in the first place? There was certainly more qualified office staff available.
• 2. What could Armen have done to let Turwill know that his position with the township involved serious work?
• 3. Shouldn’t Armen have had some clues about how Turwill might act in the township office situations? Wouldn’t he have been familiar with his character? Did he do a disservice to Turwill by not carefully determining (and telling him) his specific job duties, and specific expectations for on-the-job work?

Specifically answer this prompt: Have you ever experienced a time where you (as either a buyer or a seller) had more (or less) information about the quality of the product or the available prices of close substitutes to the product? Explain your situation.

One common example is: used car sales. Buyers sometimes have a lot less information than sellers about the quality of the used car.

A story from your experience about the lack of "full information" in a market you have participated in.