Downtown Street, a British Company, is considering establishing an operation in the United States to assemble and distributes top hats. The initial investment is estimated to be £20,000,000 (British pounds - GBP) which is equivalent to US$23,000,000 at the current exchange rate. Given the current corporate income tax rate in the United States, Downtown Street estimates that total after-tax annual cash flow in each of the three years of the investments life would be US$10,000,000, US$12,000,000, and US$15,000,000, respectively. However, the U.S. national legislature is considering a reduction in the corporate income tax rate that would go into effect in the second year of the investment’s life, and would result in the following total annual cash flows: US$10,000,000 in year 1, US$14,000,000 in year two, and US$18,000,000 in year three. Downtown Street estimates the probability of the tax rate reduction occurring at 50%. Downtown Street uses a discount rate of 12% evaluating potential capital investments. Present value factors are as follows:

Period PV Factor

1 0.893

2 0.797

3 0.712

The U.S. operation will distribute 100% of its after-tax annual cash flow to Downtown Street as a dividend at the end of each year. The terminal value of the investment at the end of three years is estimated to be US$25,000,000. Neither the dividends nor the terminal value received from the U.S. investment will be subject to a British income tax.

Exchange rate between GBP and USD are forecasted as follows:

Year 1 GBP 0.74 = USD 1.00

Year 2 GBP 0.70 = USD 1.00

Year 3 GBP 0.60 = USD 1.00

Determine the expected net present value of the potential US investment from a parent company perspective.

Consider 3 individuals A, B & C with the following risk profiles (4 points)

Individual A: P(healthy) = 90% and I(healthy) = 1000 and I(sick) = 0

Individual B: P(healthy) = 95% and I(healthy) = 3000 and I(sick) = 500

Individual C: P(healthy) = 99% and I(healthy) = 4000 and I(sick) = 500

P() = probability

I() = Income

An insurance company has agreed to cover these individuals for $1000 each. They have to pay a premium of 100. True or False

1. Individual A has a fair and full insurance

2. Individual B has a fair and full insurance

An insurance company has agreed to cover these individuals for $2500 each. They have to pay a premium of 250. True or False

3. Individual B has a unfair but full insurance

4. Individual C has a unfair and full insurance

Create a recommendation for a new client wishing to adopt a retirement plan, providing support for why you believe this is perhaps the best plan.

The new client is a US-based subsidiary of a German pharmaceutical firm. It began hiring US-based employees less than a year ago and currently has about 35 hired. The firm is finding it challenging to compete with larger companies here in the US without offering benefits similar to those larger firms such as retirement plans. The CFO of the firm has come to you and is giving you the following fact set in addition to the above:

• Anticipate hiring another 70 employees in the next 24 months,
• they would like a very high degree of latitude with respect to company contributions,
• they are willing to make a commitment to low-level contributions at this time however only for those employees who are contributing themselves,
• currently half of their workforce, and within 24 months still about one third of their workforce is anticipated to make more than $130,000 a year in compensation

1. Discuss how an individual who wants to maintain weight, lose weight, or gain weight needs to adjust his/her nutrition and exercise program.

For each transaction below, enter its value and sign, and whether it belongs to the current or financial accounts. Compute the Current Account Balance, the Financial Account Balance, and indicate whether there is a Balance of Payment surplus or a Balance of Payments deficit (i.e. compute the Balance of Official Transactions).

a. The London Symphony Orchestra is hired to tour the United States. It is paid 100 British pounds, which the (American) tour organizer had in its bank account with a British Bank.

b. The United States Treasury pays interest on T-bills held by Black Rock, a British Bank, for $200. The bank holds the US dollars in a London account.

c. The Federal Reserve purchases $100 worth of euros from a French bank, paying in US dollars that the French bank holds on its balance sheet.

d. A Chinese holding company buys IMB, and American company, by acquiring its shares in the American stock market. The Chinese firm pays $400 to acquire IMB, and it pays with US dollars it had in its accounts.

e. The import of wool from Nepal to the United States for $100. The American importer pays for the wool in US dollars, which are then held in Nepal.

Economics Hypothetical Scenarios: Please Answer both of them thank you

1.a) Think about two people: a poor person and a rich person. Let each person have the
same nicotine habit (i.e. they consume cigarettes at the same rate) and suppose the
government imposes a tax on cigarettes to pay for health care, who is hurt more by
the tax? Why?

b)Assume that I have a doughnut, and you have a doughnut, and there is one doughnut
lying on the ground.
i) Is this efficient?
ii) If I just take the doughnut from the ground and cram it down my throat without
sharing it with you, is that efficient?
iii) If we fight over it, and smoosh half of it in the fight, is that effcient?

iv) if one of us agree to split half of it in the fight, is that efficient?
v) If a third party offers to split the doughnut fairly between us in exchange for a quarter of the doughnut is that efficient?

vi) If a third party forces us to split the doughnut fairly between us in exchange for a quarter of the doughnut is that efficient?

This case was provided by Pro- fessor Daniel Purdy, Assistant Director of the MBA Program, and Professor Wendy Wilhelm, Professor of Marketing, both of Western Washington University.

The College of Business at Western Washington University is a full-service business school at a midsized regional university. The College of Business special- izes in undergraduate business education with selected gradu- ate programs. While the College emphasizes mostly professional education, it does so within a

offerings, such as the highly suc- cessful Manufacturing and Sup- ply Chain Management degree.

The College is commit-
ted to a student-centered style
of education that emphasizes
the students not as customers
but as equal stakeholders in the
process of education. As part
of its commitment to involving
the students as true partners,
the College has recently begun
the process of conducting focus
groups of undergraduate and
graduate students. The objec-
tive of these focus groups is to
identify negative and positive attitudes about the College and develop new ideas to improve the College.

liberal arts context. Business majors range from standards such as Accounting, Marketing, and Finance to more unique

The following is an excerpt from the transcript of the first undergraduate focus group. This group included 14 stu- dents with the following makeup: 50% male and 50% female; 93% work part-time or more, and 7% do not work; and 29% management majors, with other majors no more than 15%.

Moderator: So what do you guys think are some ways that the College (not the University) can be improved? Jeff: I really like the fact that professors are accessible, willing to help and a lot of them let us call them by their first name. Something that I think could be better is that we don’t spend enough time learning how to do things but in- stead professors spend too much time talking about theory. Sarah: Yea, Yea, I agree totally. It seems like most of the time we aren’t learning practical skills but just talking about what we “should” do, not really learning how to do it. Moderator: Interesting points, how would you suggest the College try to increase the amount of practical learning? Todd: It would really be cool if we could do more real-life professional work in our classes. Things like skill-based projects that focus on doing what we would really do in our profession.

Tim: I think we should all have to do a mandatory intern- ship as part of our major. Right now, some majors let you do it as an elective but they are really hard to find and get. Moderator: Good ideas. Are there other things you think we could improve?

Rhonda: I agree that the professors try really hard to be open to students but the advising is really not very good, I don’t know how to fix it but I know my advisor is pretty much useless.

Ariel: I know, I know. It is so frustrating sometimes. I go to my advisor and she tells me to just fill in my degree

planning sheet and she’ll sign it. It’s like they don’t even know what I should be taking or why.
Jon: My advisor is kind of funny, he just tells me that he doesn’t really know that much about classes he doesn’t teach and my guess is as good as his. At least he’s honest anyway. Moderator: Ok, Ok, so the advising you are getting from the faculty leaves a little to be desired. What do you guys do to figure out how to plan your degrees if your advisors aren’t helping much?

Sarah: I just ask my friends who are further along in the major than I am.
Mark: Yea, me too. In the Student Marketing Association we all give each other advice on what professors are good, what classes go good together, which have prerequisites and stuff like that. It would be cool if we could have some- thing like that for the whole college.

Moderator: Don’t you think CBE could be improved if we developed some sort of Peer-Advising Program?

Using these excerpts as representative of the entire focus group transcript, answer the following questions:

1. Do you think focus groups were the appropriate research method in this case, given the research objectives? What other type(s) of research might provide useful data?

2. Evaluate the questions posed by the moderator in light of the research objectives/question: (a) Are any of them leading or biased in any way? (b) Can you think of any additional questions that could/should be included?

3. Examine the findings. How is CBE perceived? What are its apparent strengths and weaknesses?

4. Can we generalize these findings to all of the College’s students? Why or why not?

2. How many human genome equivalents are in 20 ng of cfDNA?

3. Investors have poured over 1 billion dollars into a company called “Grail” that promises ultra-sensitive early detection of cancer from one drop of blood. We routinely extract 20 ng/of cfDNA from 4 mLs of plasma. Assume one drop of blood has 40 ul of plasma. How many human genomes worth of cfDNA are in this one drop? Are claims they can detect one cancer genome among 10,000 normal cfDNA genomes well-founded?

4. Our qPCR standard is at 0.1 ng/uL. For the first qPCR standard dilution, we take 10uL of the qPCR standard and add it to 90uL TT buffer. How is this equivalent to 5000 GEs? (Note: the qPCR standard is a dilution of our LPA)

1. A US company designs its products in US but manufactures those products in

China.

a) What type of currency exposure the US Company will face?

b) List three strategies to manage the operation exposure, and explain how

they can be used to hedge the operation exposure.

2. A US company has a manufacturing subsidiary in Brazil and it categorizes

Brazilian Real as the functional currency.

a) Explains the concept of functional currency;

b) Under US accounting, what currency translation method it will use for this

subsidiary?

c) Explain the benefit of using this translation method.

3. Join a research team and the team decides on a topic. < don't bother