Case study

You have just been appointed to be a U.S. Foreign Service Officer (FSO), employed by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Your first assignment is working overseas in an embassy where you may give out millions of dollars in foreign aid loans to an important nation.

This nation has two types of loans from the United States government.

Type I loans for $2,000,000,000 and Type II loans for $34,000,000,000. Type I loans are listed by country in congressional reports, while

Type II loans are buried in one line with other country's repayments and defaults. If the U.S. Congress is clearly informed of a loan default, it will not give out any new loans to that country.

The U.S. Ambassador knows that this country is going to default on all loans to the United States government. However, if the country makes a small payment of $1,000,000 on the Type I loan, the U.S. Congressional report will appear as if the country is in good financial condition. This will make him look good.

You have been instructed by the Ambassador to set up an appointment with the Minister of Finance. During the meeting, you are told to tell the Minister to make the $1,000,000 payment on schedule for the Type I loan. If the nation does make the payment the U.S. Embassy will request another $30,000,000,000 appropriation from the U.S. Congress, which the Ambassador knows he can receive.

The Ambassador believes he will be appointed the next U.S. Secretary of State if this plan is accomplished.

Questions:

What should you do to maintain the LOSS RESERVE?

What are the ethical issues involved here regarding non-payment of loan?

What are the financial issues involved here and how does this related to loan defaulter or fraudulent?

What would you do with this information if you were in charge?

Do you really want this Ambassador as the U.S. Secretary of State?

Consider the data below of inches of rainfall per month for three different regions in the Northwestern United States: Plains Mountains Forest

Plains                   Mountains          Forest

March                  14.8                      12.6                      11.0

April                     21.4                      13.0                      9.7

May                      17.1                      18.1                      16.5

June                     18.9                      15.7                      18.1

July                       17.3                      11.3                      13.0

August                 16.5 14.0                      15.4

September 16.9 16.7 14.2

Using SPSS, perform a two-sample t-test to test the hypothesis that there is not the same amount of rainfall in both the Mountains and the Forest regions in the Northwestern United States with a significance level of 0.02. You do not need to test Normality first. In the output, the first test in the table (Levene’s Test for Equality of Variances), concerns whether the variances of the populations are equal (the null hypothesis) or not (the alternative hypothesis); we are assuming unequal variances in this course, so use the second row. If parts of your table do not export, you can copy and paste it to preserve the test statistic and significance from SPSS, or transcribe both of them (and include what does export from the SPSS output). You should include the hypotheses of your test, what the P-value is from the output, and your conclusion about the hypotheses. What are the degrees of freedom of your test statistic (using the formula from the book)? Then, using SPSS, perform an ANOVA test for the hypothesis that there is not the same amount of rainfall in every region in the Northwestern United States with a significance level of 0.03. You should include the hypotheses of your test, what the P-value is from the output, and your conclusion about the hypotheses. What are the two degrees of freedom of your test statistic? Please attach your Word file and, in a written analysis, give your answers and explain your conclusions by Sunday, July 26th at midnight Eastern Time

You have just been appointed to be a U.S. Foreign Service Officer (FSO), employed by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Your first assignment is working overseas in an embassy where you may give out millions of dollars in foreign aid loans to an important nation.

This nation has two types of loans from the United States government.

Type I loans for $2,000,000,000 and Type II loans for $34,000,000,000. Type I loans are listed by country in congressional reports, while

Type II loans are buried in one line with other country's repayments and defaults. If the U.S. Congress is clearly informed of a loan default, it will not give out any new loans to that country.

The U.S. Ambassador knows that this country is going to default on all loans to the United States government. However, if the country makes a small payment of $1,000,000 on the Type I loan, the U.S. Congressional report will appear as if the country is in good financial condition. This will make him look good.

You have been instructed by the Ambassador to set up an appointment with the Minister of Finance. During the meeting, you are told to tell the Minister to make the $1,000,000 payment on schedule for the Type I loan. If the nation does make the payment the U.S. Embassy will request another $30,000,000,000 appropriation from the U.S. Congress, which the Ambassador knows he can receive.

The Ambassador believes he will be appointed the next U.S. Secretary of State if this plan is accomplished.

Questions:

What should you do to maintain the LOSS RESERVE?

What are the ethical issues involved here regarding non-payment of loan?

What are the financial issues involved here and how does this related to loan defaulter or fraudulent?

What would you do with this information if you were in charge?

Do you really want this Ambassador as the U.S. Secretary of State?

The original, first generation Apple Watch was released in 2015. Although the original Apple Watch was designed to compete with various activity trackers at the time, the Apple Watch was sufficiently different for us to assume that there were no close substitutes in 2015.

At the launch Tim Cook announced that the Apple Watch would sell for $500 in the United States and Europe. At that price, q was 1,000, where q was number of watches sold in thousands. An industry group determined that the marginal and average cost of producing the Apple Watch was constant at $100.

1. How much profit did Apple make at the launch of the Apple Watch, given the price and quantity sold (that is, given p=500 and q=1,000)?

In the hope of maximizing its profit, Apple commissioned an economist to estimate demand for the Apple Watch across the U.S. and Europe. The economist determined that the inverse demand function was:

p=600-0.1q.

2. Given the estimated inverse demand, what single price should Apple charge for the Apple Watch in order to maximize its profit?
3. Given that Apple changed the price of the Apple Watch based on the economist’s recommendation, how much profit did Apple make at the new price?

As it turned out, the economist’s estimation actually allowed Apple to distinguish between customers in the United States and customers in Europe, and they were in fact different. These differences were expressed in their different inverse demand functions:

The U.S. market:                              p^A=900-0.25q^A

The European market:                   p^E=400-(1/6)q^E

4. Given the differences across the two groups of customers and assuming that resale across the two continents is impossible, what price should Apple charge in the United States and Europe, respectively?

Given this (group) price discrimination strategy, how much profit did Apple make in each of the two markets? What was total profits earned?

A large, U.S. based supermarket chain wants to purchase a medium-sized European supermarket chain based in London. The U.S. supermarket has reached a point of saturation in the United States and they are looking for ways to grow. The U.S. based supermarket chain pursues a cost-leadership strategy in the United States and offers customers value through low prices and a vast variety of products. The U.S. based supermarket currently has a global market share of 2% and earns approximately 1.78% in operating income. All 32,500 stores are located in the United States. The company has core competencies in supply chain management and store operations. The leadership team is comprised of executives that worked a Walmart and K-Mart. The London based supermarket has grown year-over-year at a steady rate of 9% for the last 10 years. The chain has 11,500 stores in the U.K., France, Spain, Germany, and Italy. Yet, 10,000 of the stores are in the U.K. The company pursues a focused differentiation across its footprint. The London based supermarket has a global market share of 1.5% and earns approximately 6.2% in operating income. The company has strong capabilities and competencies in follow-up services, which allows the company to adjust its product and service offerings based on local preferences and tastes. This allows the company to charge premium prices that customers are happy to pay. The leadership team at the London based supermarket has core competencies in logistics and distribution that has translated well in sourcing items locally.

Utilizing the information in the question, address the following:

a) Why would U.S. based supermarket want to acquire the London based supermarket chain. Provide at least two points of support.

b) given your limited understanding of the potential transaction (the acquisition), what are some potential issues/challenges that may exist? Provide at least two issues/challenges

Using the provided case study (“Why Illegal Immigration Is an Intergovernmental Mess and Will Remain So” in Chapter 4 of the textbook), craft a paper analyzing the issues at play through the lens of public-administration theory and ethics. Specifically consider: What are the issues and perspectives related to immigration in the United States? How is immigration policy developed and what factors impact its development? What concepts in public administration would guide the actions of a public agent charged with enforcing the law? Specifically, you must address the critical elements listed below.

I. Overview: In this section, outline the issues related to immigration in the United States by briefly explaining the context and perspectives related to legal and illegal immigration in the United States.

II. Policy Development and Enforcement: In this section, analyze how immigration policy is developed and the variables that impact its enforcement. A. Discuss the political, social, economic, and cultural variables that impact public policy in immigration reform. B. Analyze ethical expectations of public administrators (such as border-patrol agents) charged with enforcing laws or policies that have been developed, especially in light of intense public opinion or scrutiny.

III. Situational Response: In this section, imagine you are a border-patrol agent. How would your role impact your ability to defend and advocate for your personal opinion on immigration? A. Defend your position on whether public-agency employees give up certain First Amendment rights by virtue of serving in their positions. B. Explain how Miles Law applies in this situation. C. Explain how organizational-culture theory could influence your actions as a border-patrol agent. D. Describe the ways that you could advocate to change the law without breaking it as a border-patrol agent.

You are designing a slide for a water park. In a sitting position, park guests slide a vertical distance h down the water-slide, which has negligible friction. When they reach the bottom of the slide, they grab a handle at the bottom end of a 6.00-m-long uniform pole. The pole hangs vertically, initially at rest. The upper end of the pole is pivoted about a stationary, frictionless axle. The pole with a person hanging on the end swings up through an angle of 72.0∘, and then the person lets go of the pole and drops into a pool of water. Treat the person as a point mass. The pole’s moment of inertia is given by I=1/3ML^2 where L = 6.00 m is the length of the pole and M = 31.0 kg is its mass. For a person of mass 70.0 kg, what must be the height h in order for the pole to have a maximum angle of swing of 72.0∘ after the collision?

Explain why this statement is false: Since there are many hotels and many hotel customers in San Francisco, it is definitely appropriate to use the supply and demand model to analyze the market for hotel rooms in San Francisco. [Hint: Under what circumstances is the supply and demand model appropriate?]

Outline the three different parts of the Theme Park product. Explain why the product lifecycle of the Theme Parks steeps early very quickly. Disney theme park product is the responsibility of “Disney Imagineers” who are they and what are interactive products? (give examples where possible)

The senior vice president for marketing at a Hotel believes that the company’s recent advertising of the hotel has decreased the average room idle rate. To test the hypothesis, random sample of daily idle rates (in percentages) before the advertising is collected. A similar random sample of daily idle rates is collected after the advertising took place. The data are as follows.

Before (%) 8 17 12 21 19 10 After (%) 6 10 1 11 17 8

Is there evidence that the average room idle rate of the hotel has decreased after the advertising at the 0.01 level of significance.