The General Social Survey asked 1,578 US residents: “Do you think the use of marijuana should be made legal, or not?” 61% of the respondents said it should be made legal. Construct a 95% confidence interval for the proportion of US residents who think marijuana should be made legal (p), and interpret it in the context of the data.

Minimum wage, Part I. Do a majority of US adults believe raising the minimum wage will help the economy, or is there a majority who do not believe this? A Rasmussen Reports survey of 1,000 US adults found that 42% believe it will help the economy.24 Conduct an appropriate hypothesis test to help answer the research question.

which of the following is an example of a compensating wage differential?

In the market for lawyers, top graduates from the top programs earn starting salaries that are significantly higher than the starting salaries earned by lower-ranked graduates from the lower-ranked programs.

Nurse anesthetists are paid less than anesthesiologists (who have medical degrees).

Popular movie stars like George Clooney command much higher salaries than other talented but lesser-known actors.

Workers in a dynamite mine receive higher wages than if they worked in other jobs that require the same level of skills.

Twins Jacob and Jacquelyn, graduated from college and started working in the family restaurant business at age 25. Each sibling developed their own plan to provide for their retirement. Both plans earned 10% annual return, and both siblings plan to retire at age 65. Jacquelyn started immediately, investing $3,500 per year for the next 10 years into an individual retirement account, and then makes no additional cash contributions into her IRA account. Jacob plans to wait 10 years until he is 35 to open his individual retirement account. Jacob's plan is to invest $3,500 each year for the remaining years until he retired at age 65.

What were Jacquelyn's out of pocket contributions to her retirement account?

What were Jacob's out of pocket contributions to his retirement account?

How much will Jacquelyn accumulate in her retirement account in total (cash investment and interest) by the time she is 65 years old?

How much will Jacob accumulate in his retirement account in total (cash investment and Interest) by the time he is 65 years old?

The Allure of Franchising

Neil Erlich knew that he wanted to be an entrepreneur when he helped start a contracting business when he was just 14 years old. During his junior year at Sonoma State University, Erlich, with help from his father, a corporate executive, began investigating franchise options that would suit his interests and skills. They honed in on the automotive service industry and reviewed the regulations of several franchises, including Total, Jiffy Lube, and Midas, before settling on Express Oil Change. Erlich was particularly impressed with the support that Express Oil Change offered its franchisees. When Erlich graduated with a business degree, his father put up $375,000 to help him purchase and set up the $1.5 million franchise operation. Erlich, who is the youngest franchisee in the Express Oil Change system, sees the franchisor’s support as one of the greatest benefits of choosing to open a franchise rather than an independent business of his own.” The franchisor is there for you," he says. "It’s very comforting. "

Like Erlich, a growing number of college graduates and twenty-something adults who are disenchanted with the prospects of a dull job in the corporate grind are looking to franchising as a promising career choice. Indeed, franchising is attracting people of all ages and backgrounds, from corporate dropouts and military veterans to retired Baby Boomers and corporate castoffs.

” People say, ’I put 20 years into a company, and because they ran into some tough times, they let me go,’” explains Ray Titus, head of the United Franchise Group.” They think, ’Do I want to put myself into a position where I may get laid off again?’ Instead, they take control of their future by running their own businesses." For many of them, franchising is the perfect fit.

Retirees who are looking for second careers also are turning to franchising as well. "They’ve got school-of-hard-knocks experience and business skills that they can apply on day one at a franchise," says Michael Shay of the International Franchise Association. Judy Divita, a retired corporate human resources manager, and her husband Charlie, a retired college professor and consultant, decided to embark on second careers as franchisees rather than stop working. After researching franchise opportunities, they opened a Subway franchise in Columbia, South Carolina, not far from where Charlie had taught at the University of South Carolina. Over the next nine years, the Divitas opened five more sandwich shops in Columbia, including one on the university campus. In addition to their built-in market of college students, they target the players on the athletic teams that come to campus to participate in more than 400 sporting events ranging from baseball and football to basketball and volleyball each year. The Divitas have won the MVP Award Winner for Innovation from Multi-Unit Franchisee magazine. Their nine outlets generate $4.5 million in annual sales, and the couple’s goal is to have 13 Subway locations within 10 years.” The franchise gives you the basic things to put you in business pretty quickly," says Charlie.” You have to take it beyond that and be creative to come up with novel ways of doing things that are particular to your company and your community.”

Franchising can be the ideal path to owning a business for people in almost any phase of professional life, whether they are retirees looking for a new direction and extra income or recent college graduates who are ready to embark on exciting careers. "Boosted by a brand name, training, advertising, and an established business plan, a franchise can ease the struggle and the risk of opening a business and still let you call some shots,” says one business writer.

1. These examples show people at different stages of their professional lives choosing to become business owners with the help of a franchise. What conclusions can you draw from their stories about the benefits and appeal of franchising? (300 words – 40- marks)

2. What are the disadvantages of investing in a franchise? (200 words – 30 marks)

3. Suppose that one of your friends who is about to graduate is considering purchasing a franchise. What advice would you offer him or her before signing the franchise contract? (200 words – 30 marks)

1. State the Null Hypothesis
2. State the Alternative Hypothesis
3. Find the test statistic
4. Find the critical value or values
5. State the conclusions to the hypothesis test.

Please find all of the above for the scenarios below

Part I. A university is looking into its mathematics placement procedure. The university assumes its population mean math SAT score of all incoming freshmen is 600. Suppose that a simple random sample of 33 freshmen at that university reveals a mean math SAT score of 614 with a standard deviation of 47. Test the claim, at the 0.05 alpha level, that the mean math SAT score of freshmen at this university is more than 600

Part II. Question 2: This same university is looking into its English placement as well. The university assumes its population mean Verbal SAT score for all incoming freshmen is 570. Suppose that a simple random sample of 51 freshmen at that university reveals a mean verbal SAT score of 520 with a standard deviation of 35. Test the claim, at the 0.05 alpha level, that the mean Verbal SAT score of freshmen at this university is different from 570.

2. The long-term graduation rate for female athletes at a certain midwestern university is 72%. A random sample of female athletes at this school over the past few years showed that 29 of 35 females athletes graduated.

   (a) (10 pts) Test to determine if the proportion of female athletes who graduate from this school is greater than 72% at the 0.05 level of significance.

   (b) (5 pts) Suppose that a Type I error was made in the hypothesis test in part (a). Explain what a Type I error would be in the context of this problem. What is the probability of committing a Type I error in this problem?

Jenny and Mike are married and earned salaries this year of $72,800 and $15,300, respectively. In addition to their salaries, they received interest of $350 from municipal bonds and $1,600 from corporate bonds. Jenny contributed $3,600 to an individual retirement account, and Jenny paid alimony to a prior spouse in the amount of $2,600 (under a divorce decree effective June 1, 2005). Jenny and Mike have a 10-year-old son, Daniel, who lived with them throughout the entire year. Thus, Jenny and Mike are allowed to claim a $2,000 child tax credit for Daniel. Jenny and Mike paid $8,200 of expenditures that qualify as itemized deductions and they had a total of $6,955 in federal income taxes withheld from their paychecks during the year. (Use the tax rate schedules.)

1. What is Jenny and Mike's gross income

2. What is Jenny and Mike's adjusted gross income

3. What is the total amount of Jenny and Mike's deductions from AGI?

4. What is Jenny and Mike’s taxable income?

5. What is Jenny and Mike’s taxes payable or refund due for the year?

Schedule Y-1-Married Filing Jointly or Qualifying Widow(er)

Nordic Industrial Park: bridging distance across international markets

When a resource-constrained firm enters a high-distance market, it helps greatly if it can utilise a low- distance entry point.

The lure of the Chinese market has led several Western companies to venture into a context that is unfamiliar and bewildering, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) lacking the deep pockets of large multinationals. It is useful for SMEs to have a ‘bridge’ into a high-distance market. One way to accomplish this is to use a foreign-owned industrial park (i.e. a space designated for industrial use).

Consider the case of the Nordic Industrial Park (NIP) that provides a physical space for offices and light-manufacturing facilities, and a range of value-added services to set up a business in China. These include legal services (e.g. registering the company and drafting contracts), human resource management (e.g. recruitment, payroll and expat relocation), accounting (e.g. financial reporting), and information and communication technology (e.g. internet access). NIP was co-founded by Ove Nodland, a Norwegian who first came to China in 1994 to manage different ventures. Nodland learnt that even though rules were set in Beijing (the national capital and political centre of China), they were implemented by local officials – and so they mattered greatly. Over the years he invested considerable energies in building close relationships with various officials, and took care to ensure that the ventures he worked for complied with local regulations and aligned themselves with local governmental priorities. Nodland’s local guanxi (network connections) grew rapidly.

After a decade’s experience in China, Nodland realised he was well placed to help European SMEs enter China more broadly. He chose to focus on what he knew best: firms from the Nordic region (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden) setting up a base in Ningbo, a port city in Zhejiang province just south of Shanghai (the commercial centre of China) and renowned for its entrepreneurialism. Thus was born the concept of NIP in 2002, which was sold to Silver Rise Hong Kong Pte Ltd, part of China’s Yinmao Group, in 2013, with Nodland staying on as consultant. In 2015, NIP was selected by the Zhejiang provincial government as one of the first designated ‘international industrial cooperative parks’ which further strengthened its local standing. Going forward, NIP has signalled its intent to attract projects from Nordic universities and achieve an output value in excess of RMB 2bn (€280m, £224m, $364m) by 2017.

From the perspective of a European SME entering NIP, there are multiple benefits:

• Process: L ower start-up costs. NIP leverages its knowledge of the Chinese business environment by hand-holding clients through the complexities associated with starting and running a business in China, thereby allowing firms to focus their time and energies on core business activities.

• Physical environment: A familiar ambience. NIP’s architecture and design mimics Scandinavian features that set it apart from standard Chinese buildings. Not only does this give expat managers a sense of the familiar, it is also a symbolic reminder to Chinese employees that they are part of a Western organisation.

• People: A like-minded community. By virtue of being part of the largest concentration of Nordic companies in China, expat managers have the opportunity to share experiences with and pick up ‘tricks of the trade’ from other managers with a similar cultural background through hallway conversations and lunchtime meetings. Of course, entering a facility like NIP comes at a cost, but offers benefits in terms of ‘reducing distance’.

Questions

1 Consider NIP’s services in light of the CAGE framework and analyse how they may help reduce distance.

2 What might be the drawbacks in being located in an industrial park?

Should Parents Pay Their Children When They Earn High Grades in School?

We all probably recall knowing someone in school who got $5 for every “A” they earned in school. Research has found that encouragement of autonomous functioning, individual challenge, and positive feedback stimulates an intrinsic motivation to achieve (Deci & Ryan, 1985). If the environment is highly controlling, however, the internal forces for mastery-achievement may be undermined. Parents who use surveillance and frequent rewards socialize their children to be motivated by, and desire, extrinsic rewards. Two specific parenting behaviors were related to extrinsic motivation and lower school performance. They found that over controlling parents (those who engaged in extreme supervision of homework completion) had children who were more likely to rely on external sources for evaluation. Their grades and achievement scores were lower as well. Parents who relied on external rewards also had children with extrinsic motivation and lower school performance. Ginsburg and Bronstein speculate that extrinsically rewarded children use external criteria to assess their performance, which alters the children’s perception of themselves. This may undermine their ability to self-regulate and choose appropriate work. These children do not learn how to judge their own performance. Encouragement of intrinsic motivation, which is bidirectional and reciprocal, will foster independent self-evaluation and academic success. The goal is for the child to develop the ability to self-regulate and take responsibility for academic success; thus, the parents are not solely responsible for their child’s outcome. So, does paying our children for good grades motivate them to do well in school? Do you see how these children are not able to learn how to judge their own performance? Elaborate. What are some ways that parents can foster the development of intrinsic motivation?