How did the “Real Plan” work? Why was it successful?

What led the central bank to introduce a crawling peg in March 1995?

What were the most important developments in Brazil’s balance of payments from January 1997 to April 1998? What factors contributed to these changes?

What policies did the central bank pursue in response to the BOP developments? Were the policies successful?

What would you expect the effects of a devaluation or adoption of a floating exchange rate regime to be on the Brazilian economy?

From 1997-2006, the returns on Magni were as follows, Using Blume's Formula:

A. What would be the 1-year average forecast?

B. What would be the 2-year average forecast?

C. What would be the 6-year average forecast?

D. What would be the 10-year average forecast?

In this assignment, you will study recessions using AD-AS model

1. Present two charts of an economy, one for the real GDP growth, and the other for inflation.

2. Highlight two periods of recessions.

3. Based on the price level data, discuss the causes of the recessions using AD-AS model.

4. Explain why AD/AS shifted at the time.

Sample HW:( This part is the sample of HW, you have to find another examples, numerical for the charts you have to find by you self).

Hong Kong quarterly real GDP growth (1992 - 2017)

Inflation in Hong Kong, (1991 to 2017)

Over 25 years, two significant recessions occurred, one started in 1998 and the other started in 2009.

According to the price level data, in 1998, there was deflation. We can conclude that the recession was caused by the decrease in AD. At that time, aggregated demand decreased because housing price plummeted, and the wealth of households dropped. Hence, consumption decreased and so the AD decreased.

According to the price level data, in 2009, there was slight deflation. We can conclude that the recession was caused by the decrease in AD. At that time, aggregated demand decreased because of the global financial crises, stock market tumbled and the wealth of households dropped. Hence, consumption decreased and so the AD decreased.

In this assignment, you will study recessions using AD-AS model

1. Present two charts of an economy, one for the real GDP growth, and the other for inflation.

2. Highlight two periods of recessions.

3. Based on the price level data, discuss the causes of the recessions using AD-AS model.

4. Explain why AD/AS shifted at the time.

Sample HW:( This part is the sample of HW, you have to find another examples, numerical for the charts you have to find by you self).

Hong Kong quarterly real GDP growth (1992 - 2017)

Inflation in Hong Kong, (1991 to 2017)

Over 25 years, two significant recessions occurred, one started in 1998 and the other started in 2009.

According to the price level data, in 1998, there was deflation. We can conclude that the recession was caused by the decrease in AD. At that time, aggregated demand decreased because housing price plummeted, and the wealth of households dropped. Hence, consumption decreased and so the AD decreased.

According to the price level data, in 2009, there was slight deflation. We can conclude that the recession was caused by the decrease in AD. At that time, aggregated demand decreased because of the global financial crises, stock market tumbled and the wealth of households dropped. Hence, consumption decreased and so the AD decreased.

13. In an imaginary economy, consumers buy only hot dogs and hamburgers. The fixed basket consists of 10 hot dogs and 6 hamburgers. A hot dog cost $3 in 2006 and $5.40 in 2007. A hamburger cost $5 in 2006 and $6 in 2007. Which of the following statements is correct?

a. When 2006 is chosen as the base year, the consumer price index is 90 in 2007.

b. When 2006 is chosen as the base year, the inflation rate is 50 percent in 2007.

c. When 2007 is chosen as the base year, the consumer price index is 100 in 2006.

d. When 2006 is chosen as the base year, the inflation rate is 50 percent in 2007.

14. The CPI was 120 in 2000 and 132 in 2001. Dorgan borrowed money in 2000 and repaid the loan in 2001. If the nominal interest rate on the loan was 12 percent, then the real interest rate was

a. 2 percent.

b. 10 percent.

c. 12 percent.

d. 22 percent

15. By not taking into account the possibility of consumer substitution, the CPI

a. understates the cost of living.

b. overstates the cost of living.

c. may overstate or understate the cost of living, depending on how much prices rise.

d. may overstate or understate the cost of living, regardless of the extent to which prices rise

16. You know that a candy bar cost five cents in 1962. You also know the CPI for 1962 and the CPI for today. Which of the following would you use to compute the price of the candy bar in today's prices?

a. five cents × (1962 CPI/ today's CPI)

b. five cents × (1962 CPI/(today's CPI - 1962 CPI))

c. five cents × (today's CPI/1962 CPI)

d. five cents × today's CPI - five cents × 1962 CPI.

17. The nominal interest rate tells you

a.   how fast the number of dollars in your bank account rises over time.

b.   how fast the purchasing power of your bank account rises over time.

c.   the number of dollars in your bank account today.

d.   the purchasing power in your bank account today.

18. Consider two countries. Country A has a population of 1,000, of whom 800 work 8 hours a day to make 128,000 final goods. Country B has a population of 2,000 of whom 1,800 work 6 hours a day to make 270,000 final goods

a.   Country A has higher productivity and higher real GDP per person than country B.

b.   Country A has lower productivity and lower real GDP per person than country B.

c.   Country A has higher productivity, but lower real GDP per person than country B.

d.   Country B has lower productivity, but higher real GDP per person than country B.

19. The Peapod Restaurant uses all of the following to produce vegetarian meals. Which of them is an example of physical capital?

a. The owner's knowledge of how to prepare vegetarian entrees.

b. The money in the owner's account at the bank she borrowed money from.

c. The tables and chairs in the restaurant.

d. The land the restaurant was built on.

20. In a particular country in 1998, the average worker needed to work 25 hours to produce 40 units of output. In that same country in 2008, the average worker needed to work 40 hours to produce 68 units of output. In that country, the productivity of the average worker

a. decreased by 1. 7 percent between 1998 and 2008.

b. remained unchanged between 1998 and 2008.

c. increased by 4. 75 percent between 1998 and 2008.

d. increased by 6. 25 percent between 1998 and 2008

Mr. and Mrs. Z, both in their late 30s, file a joint tax return. They have one dependent child who is age 5. Mr. Z is an employee with wages = $100,000. Federal tax withholding from his paycheck = $16,000. Their itemized deductions = $30,000. Any preferential tax rate = 0%. Allowable adjustment for retirement account = $5,000. Mrs. Z runs a part-time business that she operates as a sole proprietor. This year’s information is as follows:

Revenue $30,000, Cost of Goods Sold, $16,000, Other Expenses = $4,500 (including cost recovery = $800 and entertainment of clients = $500). She sold some business assets, one for a gain of $1,000, all of which is subject to depreciation recapture, and the others for a net loss of $1,500.

Mr. and Mrs. Z have some investments. This year they received $3,000 from an investment in bonds issued by the state of Alabama. They also sold two stocks they had held for several years, one for a gain of $6,000 and one for a loss of $4,000.

Calculate Mr. and Mrs. Z’s adjusted gross income (AGI), taxable income, total tax liability, and amount due or refund

can you include the QBI and self employment too

Case Study: The Impact of Covid-19 on Event Cinemas (Please DO NOT COPY the PREVIOUS ANSWER)!!

Event Cinemas plans to make staff redundant as it copes with the impact of Covid-19 on its business. It said it had been affected by: the lockdown, changes in the future film line-up; the impact of coronavirus and the public health response to the pandemic. It was starting a consultation process with staff and unions to reduce its workforce. Unite Union said the cinema chain wanted to reduce labour by 50 per cent.

Carmen Switzer, general manager of Events Cinemas New Zealand said:

“The efforts to contain the spread of coronavirus globally has impacted the planned release of new films and the measures put in place under level 2 restrict the number of customers able to access cinemas. The reality is in order to preserve as many jobs as we can in the long term and ensure we remain in a good position to get through this crisis we have made the difficult – but essential – decision to work with our teams to reduce our workforce. This will mean starting the process of redundancies and entering a consultation period with staff. Unfortunately, like many other businesses, we are not exempt from the impact of this pandemic. We are committed to working openly and honestly with our people during this time, supporting them in the best way we can.”

Cinema chains are struggling because producers don't want to deliver films to show in empty theatres. A significant problem for them is a lack of films to show.

Switzer said:

"The re-opening of Event Cinemas NZ is dependent on both the global film releases scheduled by the major Hollywood studios and Alert Level restrictions and how they apply to cinemas. For multiplex cinemas it will not be viable to fully re-open until the next major film dated for release which is Tenet, July 16. In the meantime, we are looking at how we may re-open on a limited basis with alternative and retrospective film content before mid-July.”

“We have invested in e-commerce to ensure we can meet social distancing requirements and developed sanitation plans that are being tested with customers and have been well-received. We will make further announcements about a formal re- opening date soon. We know our customers cannot wait to visit us and we look forward to welcoming audiences back to their local cinema."

Union spokesman John Crocker said negotiations were still under way to determine whether the chain's staff would have hours cut or be offered voluntary redundancy as an option. "A lot of businesses have struggled with restrictions around how they operate but cinemas are in a really difficult position because they don't have any product." He said it was possible that the extended wage subsidy could help them get through to the point where films could start showing again.

Cinemas can reopen at Alert Level 2 but must implement measures to ensure physical distancing between customers.

A typical Event cinema employs the following positions:

Management:

• General Manager - The General Manager oversees all activities within the cinema, ensuring that each department is operating within the required service standards and returning a profit to the business. They function as the primary strategic leader, creating, developing and implementing cinema strategies.

• Assistant Manager - This is a hands-on role supporting the General Manager in managing all facets of the cinema including revenue management, food and beverage, marketing, recruitment and training, customer service and achieving financial targets. A key part of this role is direct customer service.

• Supervisor - Supervisors can be appointed in any area of the cinema and are there to help the management team ensure the cinema functions run smoothly and efficiently.

• Duty Manager – Duty Managers assist in managing the day-to-day operation of the cinema to ensure customers’ expectations are exceeded whilst maximising profits.

Crew:

• Usher - Ushers need to know what movies are showing, their ratings, what the latest- release films are and need to work hard to keep facilities in top class shape for customers to enjoy every time they see a movie. This involves cleaning and maintaining the auditoriums, restrooms and foyers while managing access to the theatre and the auditoriums.

• Ticket Seller - This is a pivotal role in customer service as the first-person customers interact with. Using state-of-the-art ticketing software, this role is responsible for selling tickets, voucher and movie products and keeping customers informed about all the latest marketing and promotional campaigns on offer.

• Food & Beverage Crew - Their main responsibility is selling movie snacks and treats to customers and making sure the F&B outlets like Scoop Alley and Event bars and cafes look clean and inviting. There’s also a whole lot of behind the scenes preparation work that goes on to make sure that the food and drink products are ready to sell when the doors are open.

Gold Class: The Gold Class crew involves a number of different roles, but the primary focus of each one is providing amazing guest service in this luxury cinema environment:

• Bartender -The Bartender prepares quality drinks in a consistent way by following the recipe guidelines that are in place.

• Wait Staff/Runners - This role is all about greeting and welcoming guests and delivering the food and drinks in an efficient manner so not to interrupt guests’ movie experience. It also involves clearing, cleaning and resetting tables in the auditoriums and in the lounge.

• Cooks - Cooks need to be fast and efficient and able to produce great tasting food in a really short-time frame so not to keep guests waiting. Producing a consistent quality product is also a vital part of this role and Event has standard recipe guidelines to help with this.

Event Cinemas NZ is a subsidiary company of Australia Stock Exchange-listed Event Hospitality and Entertainment Ltd, a corporation that owns and operates a number of subsidiary businesses in the entertainment and hospitality sectors within Australasia. Event Hospitality and Entertainment Ltd’s key subsidiary businesses in the hospitality sector include Rydges and QT hotels while Event Cinemas is a key business in the entertainment sector across Australasia. As the parent company Event Hospitality and Entertainment Ltd operates under a divisional structure with separate subsidiary businesses grouped on product/service lines.

a) What is a divisional structure? Use an organisational chart to explain your answer. Compare a divisional structure with a functional structure. Refer to Event Hospitality and Entertainment Ltd to explain your answer.

b) Give two reasons why a divisional structure based on product lines might be appropriate for Event Hospitality and Entertainment Ltd.

c) Outline one circumstance when it might be appropriate for Event Hospitality and Entertainment Ltd to change its organisational structure to a divisional structure based on geographic rather than product/service lines.

.

For application case 4.6 – Data Mining Goes to Hollywood, describe the research study, the methodology, the results and the conclusion.

Data Mining Goes to Hollywood: Predicting Financial Success of Movies

Predicting box-office receipts (i.e., financial success) of a particular motion picture is an interesting and challenging problem. According to some domain experts, the movie industry is the “land of hunches and wild guesses” due to the difficulty associated with forecasting product demand, making the movie business in Hollywood a risky endeavor. In support of such observations, Jack Valenti (the longtime president and CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America) once mentioned that “…no one can tell you how a movie is going to do in the marketplace…not until the film opens in darkened theatre and sparks fly up between the screen and the audience.” Entertainment industry trade journals and magazines have been full of examples, statements, and experiences that support such a claim. Like many other researchers who have attempted to shed light on this challenging real-world problem, Ramesh Sharda and Dursun Delen have been exploring the use of data mining to predict the financial performance of a motion picture at the box office before it even enters production (while the movie is nothing more than a conceptual idea). In their highly publicized prediction models, they convert the forecasting (or regression) problem into a classification problem; that is, rather than forecasting the point estimate of box-office receipts, they classify a movie based on its box-office receipts in one of nine categories, ranging from “flop” to “blockbuster,” making the problem a multinomial classification problem. Table 5.4 illustrates the definition of the nine classes in terms of the range of box-office receipts.

Data

Data was collected from variety of movie-related databases (e.g., ShowBiz, IMDb, IMSDb, AllMovie, etc.) and consolidated into a single data set. The data set for the most recently developed models contained 2,632 movies released between 1998 and 2006. A summary of the independent variables along with their specifications is provided in Table 5.5. For more descriptive details and justification for inclusion of these independent variables, the reader is referred to Sharda and Delen (2007). Business Intelligence Spring 2017

Methodology

Using a variety of data mining methods, including neural networks, decision trees, support vector machines, and three types of ensembles, Sharda and Delen developed the prediction models. The data from 1998 to 2005 were used as training data to build the prediction models, and the data from 2006 was used as the test data to assess and compare the models’ prediction accuracy. Figure 5.15 shows a screenshot of IBM SPSS Modeler (formerly Clementine data mining tool) depicting the process map employed for the prediction problem. The upper-left side of the process map shows the model development process, and the lower-right corner of the process map shows the model assessment (i.e., testing or scoring) process (more details on IBM SPSS Modeler tool and its usage can be found on the book’s Web site).

Results

Table 5.6 provides the prediction results of all three data mining methods as well as the results of the three different ensembles. The first performance measure is the percent correct classification rate, which is called bingo. Also reported in the table is the 1-Away correct classification rate (i.e., within one category). The results indicate that SVM performed the best among the individual prediction models, followed by ANN; the worst of the three was the CART decision tree algorithm. In general, the ensemble models performed better than the individual predictions models, of which the fusion algorithm performed the best. What is probably more important to decision makers, and standing out in the results table, is the significantly low standard deviation obtained from the ensembles compared to the individual models. Business Intelligence Spring 2017

Conclusion

The researchers claim that these prediction results are better than any reported in the published literature for this problem domain. Beyond the attractive accuracy of their prediction results of the box-office receipts, these models could also be used to further analyze (and potentially optimize) the decision variables in order to maximize the financial return. Specifically, the parameters used for modeling could be altered using the already trained prediction models in order to better understand the impact of different parameters on the end results. During this process, which is commonly referred to as sensitivity analysis, the decision maker of a given entertainment firm could find out, with a fairly high accuracy level, how much value a specific actor (or a specific release date, or the addition of more technical effects, etc.) brings to the financial success of a film, making the underlying system an invaluable decision aid.

Exceptional Electronics began operations September 1, 2019. The firm sells its merchandise for cash and on open account. Sales are subject to a 7 percent sales tax. During September, Exceptional Electronics engaged in the following transactions:

Required:
Record the transactions in a general journal.

Analyze:
What portion of the sales during September were for entertainment items? Assume the cash sales transactions are for non-entertainment items. (Hint: Do not forget to reduce sales by any sales returns or allowances.)

Exceptional Electronics began operations September 1, 2019. The firm sells its merchandise for cash and on an open account. Sales are subject to a 7 percent sales tax. During September, Exceptional Electronics engaged in the following transactions:

DATE TRANSACTIONS 2019

Sept. 1 Sold a high-definition television set on credit to Candy Cho; issued Sales Slip 101 for $2,400 plus sales tax of $168.

3 Sold stereo equipment on credit to Jim Peterson; issued Sales Slip 102 for $900 plus sales tax of $63.

7 Sold a microwave oven on credit to Bridgette Huffman; issued Sales Slip 103 for $200 plus sales tax of $14.

12 Accepted return of defective stereo equipment from Jim Peterson; issued Credit Memorandum 101 for $200 plus sales tax of $14. The stereo equipment was sold on September 3.

15 Recorded cash sales for the period from September 1 to September 15 of $10,800 plus sales tax of $756.

16 Sold a gas dryer on credit to Kathy Sundstrand; issued Sales Slip 104 for $500 plus sales tax of $35.

17 Sold a home entertainment system on credit to Mark Navalta; issued Sales Slip 105 for $2,400 plus sales tax of $168.

18 Received $700 from Candy Cho on account.

20 Received payment in full from Jim Peterson for the sale of September 3, less the return of September 12.

25 Gave Mark Navalta an allowance because of scratches on his home entertainment system sold on September 17, Sales Slip 105; issued Credit Memorandum 102 for $200 plus sales tax of $14.

27 Received payment in full from Bridgette Huffman for the sale of September 7.

29 Sold a dishwasher on credit to Mark Navalta; issued Sales Slip 106 for $600 plus sales tax of $42.

30 Recorded cash sales for the period from September 16 to September 30 of $11,100 plus sales tax of $777.

Required: Record the transactions in a general journal. Analyze: What portion of the sales during September were for entertainment items? Assume the cash sales transactions are for non-entertainment items. (Hint: Do not forget to reduce sales by any sales returns or allowances.)