Question 1 An economist uses economic analysis to study and interpret our world. Economic analyses often contrast. Sometimes there is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ answer. However, there are good and bad economic analyses. You must learn how to make good economic arguments.

In this assignment, you will use economic thinking to pose and answer a question inspired by a real-world problem, series of events, or circumstance that happened to you. The topic is completely up to you so long as you use economic thinking to consider and answer the question. Your analysis should be approximately 500 words or less, and should be written in plain English of a standard suitable for the Straits Times’ Forum or Opinion pages. You should avoid using mathematical equations or excessive use of economic terminology.

You should concentrate on issues that you have directly observed and have some (noneconomic) knowledge of. For example, please do not explain what determines crude oil prices or how to improve Singapore’s productivity growth. While these are important questions, they cannot train your ability to use economics because your answer will simply summarize what others say. You should develop your thinking, not your ability to summarize. Independent and original thinking will help you develop your skills the best.

Here is the assessment grading rubric: a) Your title, which should consist of the question or problem you are examining. Titles tell people whether your work is worth reading and without a good title, you can’t catch the attention of a client or of top management. Work on this!
b) Whether your topic is interesting and novel from an economic point of view. This is subjective. Interesting topics could be those which do not seem, at first, to be amenable to economic thinking, such as non-market activities. However, everyday economic exchanges can be interesting if you focus on a point that is unusual, or inconsistent with simplistic economic reasoning. Perhaps the test is: Would a nonfinancial newspaper devote space to covering the topic?
c) The economic integrity of your argument. Is the economic reasoning logical and consistent with standard economic theory; if not, does it explain clearly why the standard economic principles do not apply?
d) Your ability to explain economic arguments to a non-economics audience, including your use of English grammar and language. While this is not an English course, you will never convince anyone you are an expert on any topic if your plain English is plain bad.

Hilda Wilde is a 45-year-old woman who was diagnosed with asthma as a child. She recalls her first asthma attack being horrendous; chest tightness, difficulty breathing, wheezing, feeling anxious and sweating profusely. She was rushed to hospital and spent many days in hospital as a child until she managed to work out the triggers and control it early. The triggers for her asthma were cold temperatures, pollen, smoky environments and respiratory infections/colds, which continue to be the triggers throughout her adult life. She also developed hay fever and an allergy to penicillin in her 20’s, which didn’t surprise her as her mum also had these conditions. One cold Spring day Hilda is outside gardening as she is finding herself stressed by the current coronavirus and gardening usually relaxes her. Hilda is making good progress on weeding when she starts to experience those dreaded sensations she knows only too well; tightness in the chest, shortness of breath and dizziness. She starts to wheeze and cannot stop coughing. Her husband notices Hilda is struggling and brings Hilda’s inhaler (Ventolin) for her. Hilda’s wheezing and shortness of breath does not ease off, even with her inhaler. She finds it hard to talk or get up and walk. Her lips start to turn blue. Hilda’s husband calls an ambulance and Hilda is taken to hospital where she is given corticosteroids. She is told she has to stay in hospital a few days so that her condition can be monitored. However, Hilda is worried about staying in hospital due to the novel coronavirus outbreak. Her GP has previously told her that if she contracts the virus, she is at a greater risk of developing more serious symptoms such as pneumonia or acute respiratory distress. The hospital staff have assured her that they take all the necessary precautions. All coronavirus affected patients are isolated in private rooms, and all healthcare staff practice proper hand hygiene and appropriate use of PPE. A few days later, Hilda’s asthma is under control and she is discharged from hospital. She is told to take her preventer medicine every day, even when she is feeling well. She is also told to follow routine practices and precautions to lessen her risk of contracting coronavirus.

Question 10 Choose 2 signs or symptoms that are characteristic of Hilda’s respiratory disease and link them to the pathophysiology of her condition (i.e., explain how the pathophysiological changes cause the signs and symptoms you specified).

Laundry detergent and bags of ice—products of industries that seem pretty mundane, maybe even boring. Hardly! Both have been the center of clandestine meetings and secret deals worthy of a spy novel. In France, between 1997 and 2004, the top four laundry detergent producers (Proctor & Gamble, Henkel, Unilever, and Colgate-Palmolive) controlled about 90 percent of the French soap market. Officials from the soap firms were meeting secretly, in out-of-the-way, small cafés around Paris. Their goals: Stamp out competition and set prices.

Around the same time, the top five Midwest ice makers (Home City Ice, Lang Ice, Tinley Ice, Sisler’s Dairy, and Products of Ohio) had similar goals in mind when they secretly agreed to divide up the bagged ice market.

If both groups could meet their goals, it would enable each to act as though they were a single firm—in essence, a monopoly—and enjoy monopoly-size profits. The problem? In many parts of the world, including the European Union and the United States, it is illegal for firms to divide up markets and set prices collaboratively.

These two cases provide examples of markets that are characterized neither as perfect competition nor monopoly. Instead, these firms are competing in market structures that lie between the extremes of monopoly and perfect competition. Discuss the market conditions based on the above scenario.

Q2. It’s no secret that small businesses play a vital role in the US economy. However, most non-employer small businesses average just $44,000 a year in annual revenue, with many of these companies earning $25,000 or less. While various factors can affect a business’ revenue potential, one of the most important is the pricing strategy utilized by its owners.

Good pricing strategy helps you determine the price point at which you can maximize profits on sales of your products or services. When setting prices, a business owner needs to consider a wide range of factors including production and distribution costs, competitor offerings, positioning strategies and the business’ target customer base.

While customers won’t purchase goods that are priced too high, your company won’t succeed if it prices goods too low to cover all of the business’ costs. Along with product, place and promotion, price can have a profound effect on the success of your small business.

Here are some of the various strategies that businesses implement when setting prices on their products and services. Analyze pricing strategies.

Read the article (link is below) and answer the questions that follow in a paper format. (Paper has to be 1-page, 11-inch font- single-spaced). I already did #1, please I need help with 2 & 3. The article is super confusing. COPY THE BELOW LINK AND PASTE IN YOUR BROWSER

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/50596700_A_long_noncoding_RNA_maintains_active_chromatin_to_coordinate_homeotic_gene_expression

Primary Paper HW assignment guidelines

Your primary paper consists of three parts:

1. In your own words, state the essential take home message of the paper assigned.

-Here you should briefly mention what was known about this topic before this paper was published

-Then state what the aim/goal/purpose of this published study was. In other words, what did the authors set out to do?

-Also describe why this research is important (if you think it is important)/ what are the researchers hoping to contribute to the existing knowledge.

2. State how the authors demonstrated the essential point of the paper: what experiments and what methods they used to prove the point

-In this section you should link how a particular approach/method was used to obtain a particular result and why it would be important/relevant. For example:

-Authors used method A to get/show result B. Result B is important because (it supports their original hypothesis in the following way/describe how/ or it provides novel findings regarding mechanism X

-Continue the bulleted list to correlate specific method with specific result and how it supports the claims made in the paper.

3. Discuss the strengths and significance of the paper and also the weaknesses and indicate additional lines of investigation that you think would be worth pursuing that were opened up by the paper.

-Here I want you to critique the experimental approach and author’s conclusions, not their writing style or format of the paper. Also, keep in mind that these are primary research articles published in scientific journals, so they are intended for a scientific, not general audience. Hence the language could be a bit dense.

-I want you to be very specific here. Do not write general and vague statements. Instead, refer to specific data in the paper (in figure X, or table Y) and indicate any possible flaws or limitations of the experiment.

-Propose possible future directions or follow up studies. You can look up papers that cited this research or follow up on the last author’s subsequent research.

-Explain if this paper contributed anything new to the field and if it enabled better understanding of the subject

12. All of the following are arguments used by proponents of offshoring except:

a. It creates enormous value for firms and economies.

b. Western firms are able to tap into low-cost and high-quality labor.

c. Firms can focus on their core capabilities.

d. For every dollar spent by US firms on India, the U.S. obtains $1.13.

e. It is not true that some US employees may lose their jobs.

14. Which are true regarding informal constraints?

a. When formal institutional constraints fail, informal constraints tend to fail as well.

b. Following the collapse the former Soviet Union, informal constraints were unable to facilitate growth of entrepreneurial firms.

c. Even in developed economies, the best-connected firms can reap significant benefits.

d. All of the above.

e. None of the above.

15. Which is the instrumental view regarding motivation to become ethical?

a. Jump on the “bandwagon” to appear more legitimate without becoming more ethical.

b. Be self-motivated to “do it right” regardless of social pressures.

c. Good ethics are a way to achieve good profits.

d. Ethics is an instrument to impose the values of the elite on the masses.

e. Ethics is a game that is played like a musical instrument.

17. Which of the following are NOT true in regards to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

a. They create approximately 50% of total value added in the world.

b. They generate 60-90% of employment, depending on where they are located.

c. Each year 4-6% of adult working population in North America, Western Europe, Central and Eastern Europe attempt to start a new venture.

d. Around the world, a majority of entrepreneurial firms (including 60% of start-ups in the US) succeed within 6 years.

18. To achieve success, entrepreneurial resources must be:

a. Of low value so as to reduce cost.

b. Common.

c. Non-core competencies that are hard to imitate.

d. Organizationally embedded.

e. All of the above.

19. Which of the following is NOT an example of one of the five entrepreneurial strategies?

a. Use speed and stealth to disrupt and pre-empt competitors.

b. Emphasize analysis over action.

c. Less novel, but substantially new ways of doing business can also be innovative.

d. Centrally located network positions are most helpful.

e. Selling an equity stake to outside investors.

20. “Greenfield ventures” are:

a. Examples of international grain corporations.

b. Environmentally friendly MNEs.

c. Wholly owned subsidiaries that are built from scratch in a foreign country.

d. Irrigation projects in areas stricken by famine.

e. Joint ventures in agriculture between governments and private firms.

answer this question after reading the below post

Which of these five management styles do you prefer when dealing with conflict and why?

Recognizing that conflict and conflict resolution will be a skillset that every manager should be prepared for, having a variety of conflict management techniques that are appropriate for a given scenario will always be advantageous; however many conflict management specialists will develop their own preferences of style based upon experience.

Here are the five conflict management styles according to Thomas, K.W., and R.H. Kilmann:

1.Accommodating – This is when you cooperate with a high-degree, and it may be at your own expense, and actually work against your own goals, objectives, and desired outcomes. This approach is effective when the other party is the expert or has a better solution. It can also be effective for preserving future relations with the other party.
2.Avoiding – This is when you simply avoid the issue. You aren’t helping the other party reach their goals, and you aren’t assertively pursuing your own. This works when the issue is trivial or when you have no chance of winning. It can also be effective when the issue would be very costly. It’s also very effective when the atmosphere is emotionally charged and you need to create some space. Sometimes issues will resolve themselves, but “hope is not a strategy”, and, in general, avoiding is not a good long-term strategy.
3.Collaborating – This is where you partner or pair up with the other party to achieve both of your goals. This is how you break free of the “win-lose” paradigm and seek the “win-win.” This can be effective for complex scenarios where you need to find a novel solution. This can also mean re-framing the challenge to create a bigger space and room for everybody’s ideas. The downside is that it requires a high degree of trust and reaching a consensus can require a lot of time and effort to get everybody on board and to synthesize all the ideas.
4.Competing – This is the “win-lose” approach. You act in a very assertive way to achieve your goals, without seeking to cooperate with the other party, and it may be at the expense of the other party. This approach may be appropriate for emergencies when the time is of the essence, or when you need quick, decisive action, and people are aware of and support the approach.
5.Compromising – This is the “lose-lose” scenario where neither party really achieves what they want. This requires a moderate level of assertiveness and cooperation. It may be appropriate for scenarios where you need a temporary solution, or where both sides have equally important goals. The trap is to fall into compromising as an easy way out when collaborating would produce a better solution.

Bartman Industries’ and Reynolds Incorporated’s stock prices and dividends, along with the Wilshire 5000 Index, are shown below for the period 1996-2001. The Wilshire 5000 data are adjusted to include dividends.

1. Use the data given to calculate annual returns for Bartman, Reynolds, and the Wilshire 5000 Index, and then calculate average returns over the 5-year period. (Hint: Remember, returns are calculated by subtracting the beginning price from the ending price to get the capital gain or loss, adding the dividend to the capital gain or loss and dividing the result by the beginning price. Assume that dividends are already included in the index. Also, you cannot calculate the rate of return for 1996 because you do not have 1995 data).

2. Calculate the standard deviations of the returns for Bartman, Reynolds, and the Wilshire 5000. (Hint: Use the sample standard deviation formula given in the chapter, which corresponds to the STDEV function in Excel.)

3. Now calculate the coefficients of variation for Bartman, Reynolds, and the Wilshire 5000.

4. Construct a scatter diagram graph that shows Bartman’s, Reynolds’ returns on the vertical

   axis and the market index’s returns on the horizontal axis.

5. Estimate Bartman’s and Reynolds’ betas by running regressions of their returns against the

   Wilshire 5000’s returns. Are these betas consistent with your graph?

6. The risk-free rate on long-term Treasury bonds is 6.04 percent. Assume that the market risk premium is 5 percent. What is the expected return on the market? Now use the SML

   equation to calculate the two companies’ required returns.

7. If you formed a portfolio that consisted of 50 percent of Bartman stock and 50 percent of

   Reynolds stock, what would be its beta and its required return?

8. Suppose an investor wants to include Bartman Industries’ stock in his on her portfolio.

   Stocks A, B and C are currently in the portfolio and their betas are 0.769, 0.985 and 1.423, respectively. Calculate the new portfolio’s required return if it consists of 25 percent of Bartman, 15 percent of Stock A, 40 percent of Stock B and 20 percent of Stock C.