Financial Statement Disclosure:

International Clothiers Ltd. has offices in Canada, Bermuda, Europe and the United States. Each of the following events have occurred after the company’s 31 December 2017 year-end, but before their financial statements had been finalized:

a. On 27 January, International Clothiers Ltd entered into a long-term lease for a private airplane for the company president and CEO. The lease requires payments of US$75,000 per month for 60 months.

b. The board of directors met on 15 February 2018 and decided to discontinue its shoe division due to continuing losses and a change in business strategy.

c. One of the company’s major retail customers declared bankruptcy on 22 March. The retail customer accounted for 20% of International Clothier’s year-end receivables and 35% of International Clothier’s revenue in 20x7.

In New York, which has the largest ride-for-hire fleet in the United States, licenses have been issued for 13,437 taxicabs. There are an estimated 42,000 drivers in the city, with a licensed vehicle being used by two or three drivers a day. In 2014, only 6% of cab drivers in New York were born in the United States, and 36% came from Bangladesh and Pakistan. The New York taxi fleet picks up 600,000 passengers per day. An estimated 25,000 livery cars provide for-hire service by prearrangement and carry 500,000 passengers per day. 10,000 “black cars” provide services mostly for corporate clients.

Regulators have long required that taxicabs available to be hailed on the street be licensed. The license is to ensure that the taxi service is safe and reliable, and that fares are fair. For-hire vehicles must be insured to cover drivers and passengers, meet safety standards, and (if taxicabs) have a sealed meter. Regulations also require that licensed cabs be quickly and easily identifiable. This is normally achieved by a distinctive color (e.g., yellow). Cabs must also display whether or not they are in service.

Taxicabs charge a regulated fare, set by a government agency, based on the time and distance of the trip, as measured by a meter. Some trips to and from established destinations, such as an airport, may have a fixed price and will displayed in the cab. Taxicabs are required to carry standardized meters that must be prominently displayed, are sealed and periodically checked to ensure that the proper fare is being charged. Limousine services are generally prohibited from charging fares based on time and distance, and they do not carry a meter. Typically, fees are based on time, often with a minimum billed time. The fee normally has to be agreed on in advance.

In many jurisdictions the licensing system limits the supply of taxicabs. One common variant of licensing is the medallion system that is used in cities such as New York, Boston, Chicago and San Francisco. Medallions are small metal plates attached to the hood of a taxi certifying it for passenger pickup throughout a defined area (normally metropolitan boundaries). When the medallion system was first introduced in New York in 1937, the idea was to make sure that taxi driver was not a criminal luring passengers into his vehicle. To get a medallion, the taxi service has to adhere to the regulatory requirements in that jurisdiction and be approved by the appropriate regulatory agency. Medallions may be given to individual taxi drivers who own their own cars, but more typically taxi companies that own fleets of cars acquire them. The taxi companies then lease cars and medallions to drivers on a daily or weekly basis. In some locations the driver may own the car, but lease or purchase the medallion from an agent who has acquired it. An example would be Medallion Financial, a publicly traded company that owns hundreds of medallions in New York, sells them to aspiring young cabbies, and arranges for loans to finance their purchase.

In cities that utilize a medallion system the supply of medallions has often been limited. The rationalizations for doing this include ensuring quality, guaranteeing a fair return to taxi companies, and helping to support demand for other forms of public transportation, such as buses, trains and the subway. It has also been argued that limiting the number of cabs helps to reduce congestion and pollution.

In practice, the supply of medallions has often not kept pace with growing population. In New York, Chicago and Boston for example, the number of medallions issued has barely budged since the 1930s. In New York, there were 11,787 medallions issued after World War II, a number that remained constant until 2004. By 2014 there were 13,437 medallions issued in New York.

Medallions can be traded. Thus, over time, a secondary market in medallions has developed. In this market, the price is not set by the agency issuing them, but by the laws of supply and demand. The effect of limited supply has been to drive up the price of medallions. In New York, taxi medallions were famously selling for over $1 million in 2012. In Boston the price was $625,000. In San Francisco the price was $300,000 and the city took a $100,000 commission on the sale of medallions. The average annual price of medallions surged during the 2000s. In New York, prices increased 260% between 2004 and 2012. The inflation adjusted annualized return for medallions over this time period in New York was 19.5%, compared to a 3.9% annual return for the S&P 500.

As noted above, drivers often do not own the medallions. There are three players in many taxi markets: the medallion holders (often taxi companies) who have acquired the right to operate a taxi from the regulatory agency, the taxi driver, and taxi dispatch companies. A taxi dispatch company is a middleman or broker, who typically matches available cabs with customers and takes a fee for its scheduling services. While an individual taxi driver may own a medallion, most often taxi companies own them. Tax companies own a fleet of cabs, which they lease out to drivers (with a medallion). A minority of drivers may own their own cab. In New York, about 18% of cabs were owner operated in 2014, putting most medallions in the hands of taxi companies.

In New York, regulations allow medallion owners to lease them out to drivers for 12-hour shifts. The critical problem facing a driver is that they must get access to a medallion in order to make a living. Due to this, companies that own medallions can extract high fees from drivers. There are also reports that some taxi dispatch companies use their position as schedulers to extract payment in the form of bribes from drivers in return for good shifts.

Drivers, who legally are viewed as “independent contractors”, can begin a 12-hour shift owing as much as $130 to their medallion leasing company. They may not break even until half way through their shift. One consulting company report found that in 2006 a driver’s take home pay in New York for a 12-hour shift averaged $158. In 2011, the New York transportation authority calculated that it was $96. A study of taxi drivers in Los Angeles found that drivers worked on average 72 hours a week for a median take home wage of $8.39 an hour. The LA drivers were paying $2000 in leasing fees per month to taxi companies. None of the drivers in the LA study had health insurance provided by their companies, and 61% were completely without health insurance. Given the compensation, it is perhaps not surprising that some drivers can be rude, impatient, and prone to drive fast and take poor care of their cabs.

The LA study noted that because city officials heavily regulate the taxi business, taxi companies are active politically, paying lobbyist to advocate their interests and contributing to the campaign funds of local politicians. The same is true in New York, where the medallion owners trade association, the Metropolitan Taxi Board of Trade, lobbies hard to influence public policy. In 2011, for example, medallion owners were initially able to block plans to create a fleet of green “Boro” cabs to serve New York’s outer boroughs. They argued that doing so would drive down the price of their medallions. In June 2013, however, the New York Supreme Court overruled lower court rulings and allowed the licensing of Boro cabs to go ahead. The intention now is to issue 18,000 new licenses to green cabs. These cabs, however, will not be able to pick up passengers in lower Manhattan, which remains the territory of yellow cabs.

Analyze the competitive structure of the taxi market such as New York prior to the introduction of Uber?

1) You visited Switzerland over summer and brought back 3,722.25 swiss francs to the United States. How many U.S. dollars will you get if you exchange your swiss francs for U.S. dollars? The exchange rate is 1 U.S dollar = 1.0147 swiss francs.

Enter your answer rounded off to two decimal points. Do not enter $ or comma in the answer box. For example, if your answer is $12.345 then enter as 12.35 in the answer box.

2) Suppose the exchange rate between U.S. dollars and Swiss francs is SF 1.224 = $1.00, and the exchange rate between the U.S. dollar and the euro is $1.00 = 1.1651 euros. What is the cross-rate of Swiss francs to euros (SF/Euro)?

Enter your answer rounded off to FOUR decimal points.

3) ABC Company sells 2,412 chairs a year at an average price per chair of $182. The carrying cost per unit is $22.78. The company orders 344 chairs at a time and has a fixed order cost of $113.3 per order. The chairs are sold out before they are restocked. What are the total shortage costs?

Enter your answer rounded off to two decimal points. Do not enter comma or $ in the answer box. For example, if your answer is 12.345 then enter as 12.35 in the answer box.

Red Canyon T-shirt Company operates a chain of T-shirt shops in the southwestern United States. The sales manager has provided a sales forecast for the coming year, along with the following information:

• Each T-shirt is expected to sell for $17.
• The purchasing manager buys the T-shirts for $7 each.
• The company needs to have enough T-shirts on hand at the end of each quarter to fill 27 percent of the next quarter’s sales demand.
• Selling and administrative expenses are budgeted at $84,000 per quarter plus 14 percent of total sales revenue.

Required:
1.Determine budgeted sales revenue for each quarter.



2. Determine budgeted cost of merchandise purchased for each quarter.



3. Determine budgeted cost of good sold for each quarter.



4. Determine selling and administrative expenses for each quarter.



5. Complete the budgeted income statement for each quarter.

Monitor Muffler sells franchise arrangements throughout the United States and Canada. Under a franchise agreement, Monitor receives $750,000 in exchange for satisfying the following separate performance obligations: (1) franchisees have a five-year right to operate as a Monitor Muffler retail establishment in an exclusive sales territory, (2) franchisees receive initial training and certification as a Monitor Mechanic, and (3) franchisees receive a Monitor Muffler building and necessary equipment. The stand-alone selling price of the initial training and certification is $18,000, and $570,000 for the building and equipment. Monitor estimates the stand-alone selling price of the five-year right to operate as a Monitor Muffler establishment using the residual approach. Monitor received $90,000 on July 1, 2018, from Perkins and accepted a note receivable for the rest of the franchise price. Monitor will construct and equip Perkins’ building and train and certify Perkins by September 1, and Perkins’ five-year right to operate as a Monitor Muffler establishment will commence on September 1 as well. Required: 1. What amount would Monitor calculate as the stand-alone selling price of the five-year right to operate as a Monitor Muffler retail establishment? 2. What journal entry would Monitor record on July 1, 2018, to reflect the sale of a franchise to Dan Perkins? 3. How much revenue would Monitor recognize in the year ended December 31, 2018, with respect to its franchise arrangement with Perkins? (Ignore any interest on the note receivable.)

9. The broiler chicken market comprises virtually all chicken consumed in the United States. Historically, broiler chicken was priced on a boom-and-bust cycle — when prices for chicken went up, so did supply; then prices would fall. Suppliers and retailers argue that they paid too much for chicken—a burden that has likely been felt by consumers, too. But then, as Watts puts it, “it’s been boom for the past 10 years or so.” Plaintiffs in these lawsuits allege that starting in 2008, prices for chicken suddenly stabilized and began to rise, even as the inputs those companies sold to farmers fell. They allege that this stabilization was a result of collusion among the companies, made possible in part by a piece of database software called Agri Stats. The first lawsuit brought against the processors was a class action filed by a food wholesaler, Maplevale Farms, in September 2016. That suit alleged that from 2008 onward, Tyson and Pilgrim’s Pride coordinated their efforts to reduce their broiler stock and forced a “nearly 50 percent increase in Broiler wholesale prices since 2008, despite input costs (primarily corn and soybeans) falling roughly 20 percent to 23 percent over the same time period.” Maplevale claimed that consequently, it paid inflated prices for chicken over the course of several years. Through Agri Stats, poultry companies can share information about production numbers, bird sizes, financial returns, and more. The database company gathers information from 95 percent of poultry processors and tracks 22 million birds a day. Companies can then use this information, according to farmers, retailers, and distributors, to set a higher price for their products. Assume extreme consolidation in the poultry processing sector precipitated these and other allegations of anticompetitive conduct among the top companies. Tyson and Pilgrim’s Pride alone control 60 percent of the market. Sanderson Farms, Perdue, and Koch Foods control another 25 percent.

a. The chicken companies are engaging in what type of economic behavior? ( Characteristic of this market structure. )(4 pts)

b. This behavior is characteristic of what market structure? Draw the graph for this market structure or describe it. (Put your answer on the answer sheet ) ( 8 pts)

1.) Think back to August 6, 1945. The United States has just dropped an atomic weapon on the city of Hiroshima killing tens of thousands of Japanese and devastating the infrastructure. A Keynesian at that time might conclude that there is a silver lining in the destruction, as economic prosperity will result. Evaluate this claim in a few sentences.

2.) Do people need money in order for market prices to form? Explain.

3.)  Most introductory economics textbooks have a section on “market failure.” It is here that students learn that markets may fail to achieve their potential – leaving people worse off than they theoretically could be. The existent of market failure is often taken as an excuse for government intervention to do whatever markets fail to do. In just a couple of sentences, explain why economists (and others, particularly politicians) must accept the possibility of “government failure” as well? That is, tell me why government solutions to perceived market “failures” may themselves fail to achieve their own stated goals? The U.S. Drug war is an apt example of a discrepancy between a stated political policy goal and the actual attainment of that goal.

Can Employers legally eliminate birth control from healthcare coverage?

The Supreme Court of the United States is taking up this issue this session, and it will be among the first-ever cases heard remotely due to the current pandemic.  

What is the issue presented to the Supreme Court in this matter?

What rule will the court need to apply to decide it?

What are the best arguments of each side?

Which do you find most persuasive, and why?

Do you expect different Supreme Court Justices to approach this differently? How will that matter?

What do you expect the outcome will be, and why?

Do you expect the outcome to be fair and just?

Microeconomics

Construct Production Possibility Frontiers graphs with constant opportunity costs for United States and Chile.  Assume there are two goods in these economies: Wheat and Copper.  If the U.S. puts all of its resources into the production of wheat, it can produce 300,000 units of wheat; if it puts all of its resources into the production of Copper, it can produce 150,000 units of copper. If the Chile puts all of its resources into the production of wheat, it can produce 100,000 units of wheat; if it puts all of its resources into the production of Copper, it can produce 100,000 units of copper.  

            a. Determine the opportunity costs of both countries to produce both wheat and copper.

b. Which country has the absolute advantage in the production of each good? Explain why.

            c. Which country has the comparative advantage in the production of each good? Explain why.