In this assignment, you must use the MySQL Command Line Client Window.

• READ ALL INSTRUCTIONS BEFORE STARTING.
• Install MySQL Server if you haven't done it yet. Some instructions are posted here: MySQL
• You'll need to take screen shots throughout the assignment (more details below).
• You may change the properties of your MySQL Command Line window by right-clicking on the title bar (or the icon on the upper left corner of the window), and selecting the Defaults menu.
  • This will allow you change the size and color of the window and the fonts.
  • You should increase the screen buffer size (height), in the Layout tab, to allow you to keep more lines available to review (when you scroll up).
  • The Command History buffer size, in the Options tab, is not the same as the above. It is the number of commands available when you use the up and down arrow keys to review previous commands. You may increase that too.
  • Remember that the command history is gone when you close the MySQL Command Line Client window. Your databases and tables are saved and will still be there when you log in again.  

Perform all the following steps in order. Some steps are repeated on purpose.

Open the MySQL Command Line Client.

1. The first query you must do, before creating the database is:

SELECT NOW();

2. Create a database named 'school'.

• The 'school' database will have the following tables:

student (student_id, first_name, last_name, dob, home_street, home_city, home_state, home_zip)

faculty (employee_id, first_name, last_name, dept_id)

department (dept_id, dept_name, building_code)

• You do not need to specify primary or foreign keys yet.

• Choose appropriate data types and sizes for the fields.

• Make sure the fields student_id and last_name do not allow NULL values. Other fields should allow NULL values.

3. Create the above tables.

4. Load fictitious data into your tables:

• The student table should have at least 10 records. You should have 5 students with Tampa as their home_city. Other students should reside in other cities of your choice.

• The faculty table should have at least 5 records.

• The department table should have at least 3 records. The field building_code is a 3 letter code that identifies the location of the department, such as ENB, CPR...

• You should make up your own data (do not use data from another student).

5. Write (and run) SQL queries to:

• Show all existing databases in your RDBMS.

• Show the tables in the 'school' database.

• Show the structure of each table in the 'school' database.

• Show all the data in each of the three tables in the 'school' database.

• Show only the first name and last name of all the faculty.

• Show only the first name, last name and home city of all the students who live in Tampa.

6. The last query you must do, after everything is done is:

SELECT NOW();

• All of the above steps must be done in the MySQL Command Line Client.
• You must take screen shots of the above commands AND results (showing in your command-line client window). It is okay to include any errors you made along the way.
  • You may use the 'Snipping Tool' or 'Snip and Sketch' (on Windows) , or 'Grab' (on MacOS), or see here for other options: https://www.take-a-screenshot.org/  (Links to an external site.).
  • Please avoid taking pictures of the screen with a camera/phone as it can be very hard to read (blurry/glare/small), and more time-consuming for you than the above tools.

WHO WILL STAFF UP THE CHINA OPERATIONS?

Your international company headquartered in New Jersey is sending an expatriate to China for a three-year assignment to staff up and run a new branch of its industrial products business. The main Chinese customers are using the products in their Middle Eastern and North African petroleum operations. You have extensive overseas experience and presently serve as VP, Human Resources. You chair the selection committee. There were 12 internal people interested in the position, and your committee has narrowed this to 3 final candidates, all of whom want this assignment. Here are the candidates: Tom is a mid-level finance manager with stellar performance reviews. He has no foreign experience and would like to develop his career in this direction. He is single, has an MBA, and has been out of school for 20 years. His background is in finance at the undergrad level, which he studied at Ohio State University, only 50 miles from his hometown. He is involved in the local Council on Foreign Relations and is an accomplished athlete. Firdaus is a deputy VP of HR at corporate. Her family emigrated from Yemen to Chicago when she was in grade school, and she speaks, reads, and writes Arabic, both classical and the Yemeni dialect. She is married, with two children. Her husband George is a professor of history and does not speak Arabic. She has a PhD in engineering, joined the company on the operations side, and has made the midcareer transition to HR successfully. She finished her PhD at the University of London in the UK before she began with the company and is now early midcareer. Her performance reviews are stellar. She encountered an incident at HQ several years ago when there was a discussion about her wearing a headscarf, but this was resolved without her changing her practice. She is well known and well liked throughout HQ. Her husband is ready to take a leave of absence for three years to accompany her.

Gunther is VP of the German-based EU company. His functional background is accounting, and he is credited with the success of the company in the EU. He built the business from a small operation in Frankfurt to the EU sector leader in only seven years. He speaks German and English and is known for being well organized and “button-upped.” His work is timely, accurate, and detailed. Gunther’s boss, the president of international, was a bit surprised that Gunther expressed interest in this position, since it is perceived as junior to the position he has now, although it would have an equivalent title on paper. Gunther has an undergraduate degree in anthropology and took graduate-level accounting courses earlier in his career. The company would like someone who could get the operation up and running, stay for three years, and then transfer the position to a local hire whom they would have developed for the responsibility.

1. Drawing on the cultural dimensions that we have reviewed, along with your business knowledge, whom would you recommend for the position?

2. What would be your reasoning for this choice?

3. Whom would you suggest for a backup candidate, if the first selection declined the position?

The Atlantic Article

The Myth of 'I'm Bad at Math'

Basic ability in the subject isn't the product of good genes, but hard work.

Miles Kimball, Noah Smith and Quartz

October 28, 2013

“I’m just not a math person.”

We hear it all the time. And we’ve had enough. Because we believe that the idea of “math people” is the most self-destructive idea in America today. The truth is, you probably are a math person, and by thinking otherwise, you are possibly hamstringing your own career. Worse, you may be helping to perpetuate a pernicious myth that is harming underprivileged children—the myth of inborn genetic math ability.

Is math ability genetic? Sure, to some degree. Terence Tao, UCLA’s famous virtuoso mathematician, publishes dozens of papers in top journals every year, and is sought out by researchers around the world to help with the hardest parts of their theories. Essentially none of us could ever be as good at math as Terence Tao, no matter how hard we tried or how well we were taught. But here’s the thing: We don’t have to! For high-school math, inborn talent is much less important than hard work, preparation, and self-confidence.

How do we know this? First of all, both of us have taught math for many years—as professors, teaching assistants. Again and again, we have seen the following pattern repeat itself:

1. Different kids with different levels of preparation come into a math class. Some of these kids have parents who have drilled them on math from a young age, while others never had that kind of parental input.
2. On the first few tests, the well-prepared kids get perfect scores, while the unprepared kids get only what they could figure out by winging it—maybe 80 or 85%, a solid B.
3. The unprepared kids, not realizing that the top scorers were well-prepared, assume that genetic ability was what determined the performance differences. Deciding that they “just aren’t math people,” they don’t try hard in future classes, and fall further behind.
4. The well-prepared kids, not realizing that the B students were simply unprepared, assume that they are “math people,” and work hard in the future, cementing their advantage.

Thus, people’s belief that math ability can’t change becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The idea that math ability is mostly genetic is one dark facet of a larger fallacy that intelligence is mostly genetic. Academic psychology journals are well stocked with papers studying the world view that lies behind the kind of self-fulfilling prophecy we just described. For example, psychologist Patricia Linehan writes:

A body of research on conceptions of ability has shown two orientations toward ability. Students with an Incremental orientation believe ability (intelligence) to be malleable, a quality that increases with effort. Students with an Entity orientation believe ability to be nonmalleable, a fixed quality of self that does not increase with effort.

The “entity orientation” that says “You are smart or not, end of story,” leads to bad outcomes—a result that has been confirmed by many other studies. (The relevance for math is shown by researchers at Oklahoma City who recently found that belief in inborn math ability may be responsible for much of the gender gap in mathematics.)

Psychologists Lisa Blackwell, Kali Trzesniewski, and Carol Dweck presented these alternatives to determine people’s beliefs about intelligence:

1. You have a certain amount of intelligence, and you really can’t do much to change it.
2. You can always greatly change how intelligent you are.

They found that students who agreed that “You can always greatly change how intelligent you are” got higher grades. But as Richard Nisbett recounts in his bookIntelligence and How to Get It, they did something even more remarkable:

Dweck and her colleagues then tried to convince a group of poor minority junior high school students that intelligence is highly malleable and can be developed by hard work…that learning changes the brain by forming new…connections and that students are in charge of this change process.

The results? Convincing students that they could make themselves smarter by hard work led them to work harder and get higher grades. The intervention had the biggest effect for students who started out believing intelligence was genetic. (A control group, who were taught how memory works, showed no such gains.)

But improving grades was not the most dramatic effect, “Dweck reported that some of her tough junior high school boys were reduced to tears by the news that their intelligence was substantially under their control.” It is no picnic going through life believing you were born dumb—and are doomed to stay that way.

For almost everyone, believing that you were born dumb—and are doomed to stay that way—is believing a lie. IQ itself can improve with hard work. Because the truth may be hard to believe, here is a set of links about some excellent books to convince you that most people can become smart in many ways, if they work hard enough:

• The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin
• Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer
• The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle
• Talent is Overrated by Geoff Colvin

So why do we focus on math? For one thing, math skills are increasingly important for getting good jobs these days—so believing you can’t learn math is especially self-destructive. But we also believe that math is the area where America’s “fallacy of inborn ability” is the most entrenched. Math is the great mental bogeyman of an unconfident America. If we can convince you that anyone can learn math, it should be a short step to convincing you that you can learn just about anything, if you work hard enough.

Is America more susceptible than other nations to the dangerous idea of genetic math ability? Here our evidence is only anecdotal, but we suspect that this is the case. While American fourth and eighth graders score quite well in international math comparisons—beating countries like Germany, the UK and Sweden—our high-schoolers  underperform those countries by a wide margin. This suggests that Americans’ native ability is just as good as anyone’s, but that we fail to capitalize on that ability through hard work. In response to the lackluster high school math performance, some influential voices in American education policy have suggested simply teaching less math—for example, Andrew Hacker has called for algebra to no longer be a requirement. The subtext, of course, is that large numbers of American kids are simply not born with the ability to solve for x.

We believe that this approach is disastrous and wrong. First of all, it leaves many Americans ill-prepared to compete in a global marketplace with hard-working foreigners. But even more importantly, it may contribute to inequality. A great deal of research has shown that technical skills in areas like software are increasingly making the difference between America’s upper middle class and its working class. While we don’t think education is a cure-all for inequality, we definitely believe that in an increasingly automated workplace, Americans who give up on math are selling themselves short.

Too many Americans go through life terrified of equations and mathematical symbols. We think what many of them are afraid of is “proving” themselves to be genetically inferior by failing to instantly comprehend the equations (when, of course, in reality, even a math professor would have to read closely). So they recoil from anything that looks like math, protesting: “I’m not a math person.” And so they exclude themselves from quite a few lucrative career opportunities. We believe that this has to stop. Our view is shared by economist and writer Allison Schrager, who has written two wonderful columns in Quartz (here and here), that echo many of our views.

One way to help Americans excel at math is to copy the approach of the Japanese, Chinese, and Koreans. In Intelligence and How to Get It, Nisbett describes how the educational systems of East Asian countries focus more on hard work than on inborn talent:

1. “Children in Japan go to school about 240 days a year, whereas children in the United States go to school about 180 days a year.”
2. “Japanese high school students of the 1980s studied 3 ½ hours a day, and that number is likely to be, if anything, higher today.”
3. “[The inhabitants of Japan and Korea] do not need to read this book to find out that intelligence and intellectual accomplishment are highly malleable. Confucius set that matter straight twenty-five hundred years ago.”
4. “When they do badly at something, [Japanese, Koreans, etc.] respond by working harder at it.”
5. “Persistence in the face of failure is very much part of the Asian tradition of self-improvement. And [people in those countries] are accustomed to criticism in the service of self-improvement in situations where Westerners avoid it or resent it.”

We certainly don’t want America’s education system to copy everything Japan does (and we remain agnostic regarding the wisdom of Confucius). But it seems to us that an emphasis on hard work is a hallmark not just of modern East Asia, but of America’s past as well. In returning to an emphasis on effort, America would be returning to its roots, not just copying from successful foreigners.

Besides cribbing a few tricks from the Japanese, we also have at least one American-style idea for making kids smarter: treat people who work hard at learning as heroes and role models. We already venerate sports heroes who make up for lack of talent through persistence and grit; why should our educational culture be any different?

Math education, we believe, is just the most glaring area of a slow and worrying shift. We see our country moving away from a culture of hard work toward a culture of belief in genetic determinism. In the debate between “nature vs. nurture,” a critical third element—personal perseverance and effort—seems to have been sidelined. We want to bring it back, and we think that math is the best place to start.

After reading the Atlantic Article written by Miles Kimball, Noah Smith and Quartz, respond to the article taking into consideration on your take and your experience. Write Down your compromises and what is it that you can visualize will be the more challenging parts of data analytics in conducting a PHD research.

Families whether in Cambodia, India, Angola, Haiti, Peru, or Fiji are faced with different health care challenges unique to their communities’ conditions and resources. Approximately, thirty percent of the children in the global community don’t have access to adequate nutrition and hence experience stunting, while forty percent of women have anemia.   Nutrient deficiencies of iron, vitamin A and iodine affects close to two billion people, majority of whom live in the lesser-developed countries of Africa, eastern Mediterranean, south and Southeast Asia, and western Pacific. Food insecurity, defined as inaccessibility to sufficient and safe food for nutrient needs continues to be a major challenge for families. In times of natural disaster and economic downturn families with limited resources are most affected by food insecurity and pursuing health care conditions.

Although, the challenges of today’s global health care may seem insurmountable, a positive outlook is necessary. Current technology is supporting the search for new therapies based on human genomes, while children and adults are living longer. For instance, in 2000, the average life expectancy at birth in the US, an economically developed country, was 79.5 years for women and 74.1 years for men (Arias, 2002). Meanwhile, as we work to support the overall goal of health, which is the state of wellbeing, we need to reflect on the current challenges that require consideration from the individuals, families, communities and nations. Today, as societies develop economically they seem to experience higher rates of chronic diseases, while others who struggle with poverty continue to experience devastation from infectious diseases. The rise in violence and infectious disease along with the cost of chronic diseases, which is far beyond the resources of many countries and families, poses the need for a more global solution. For instance, obesity increases the risk of mortality for many causes of death. It is a risk factor for coronary artery disease, type 2 diabetes, cancer and some musculoskeletal disorders. Most of the increased risk is related to cardiovascular causes (National Institute of Health, 1998). In addition, obesity exacerbates many other health conditions. The financial burden of obesity in the US is $99.2 billion annually (Wolf & Colditz, 1998) comparable to the 1999 Gross National Income for Israel (World Development Indicators, 2001). The direct cost is estimated at $51.6 billion or 5.7% of the US health expenditure and the indirect cost is $47.6 billion. Today, there are no countries even the more economically developed ones with resources that can adequately treat chronic diseases. While, the current political and economic policies are not addressing the global burden of disease, families and individuals are less inclined to have the solutions, rather they just develop strategies to cope with the burden of the problem.

In addition to the burden of health care cost, families in many parts of the world are experiencing social stigma associated with certain diseases. For instance, with regards to HIV/AIDS individuals may not want to be tested because they don’t want to know that they have been infected with the virus. Once they know they have the disease, they would then have to hide it from their families, because it would bring shame to the family.   Such families are judged by the community because they are seen as having a family member who is either sexually promiscuous or drug user. In many parts of the world HIV/AIDS is associated with promiscuity or drug use. Also, since families don’t understand the disease, they may ostracize their members and even isolate them. They may have misconceptions; such as breathing the same air might result in getting HIV/AIDS. In regards to HIV/AIDS, the cost of the drugs may make it inaccessible to the families. In some countries due to the cost of the management of the disease, parents are not treated resulting in their death and orphaned children who become a burden to the extended family. Another stigmatized health care disease is tuberculosis (TB). Issues associated with TB for families are similar, in that TB is feared and dreaded disease. Historically, although severe chronic coughing indicated TB, it was known as “consumption”, because over time it gradually sapped all of the body’s energy, causing weight loss, consuming the victim, and resulting in death. In the old days if someone had TB they would be put in an asylum or shipped to an island. That was the only way a community could contain the disease. In many countries today, the older generation has memories of this experience. A number of these individuals today may be affected, but may not want to let their family know, so their family does not get ostracized resulting in them being removed from society or dying because of all the treatment.   People with active TB usually feel sick and are away from work for periods of time, affecting economic productivity. The challenge facing TB eradication is not the cost of therapy, because the drugs are inexpensive and readily available, but rather the method in which the drugs are prescribed and given to patients. If several drugs are administered in combination for 6-9 months then the cure rate is extremely high. If not, relapses occur and the TB becomes resistant. Resistant TB, especially in AIDS patients is very difficult to treat. The most successful treatment programs are to give the medicine in clinics or by trained health personnel and to actually observe and record that the patients are taking their medicines. These programs are called “Directly Observed Therapy” (DOT) programs. Today, lesser-developed countries have access to the medicines, but may not have the political will to effectively establish DOT programs. Also, practitioners who don’t understand TB are providing partial therapy and inaccurate diagnosis making the problem worst for the governments who seem to have great difficulty in controlling the private practitioner. In general, TB has to be controlled and monitored by a health authority. When diagnosed, managed, treated inappropriately, and not reported to authorities, a country cannot control it. When field workers are themselves affected, they also don’t want to report their TB. Non- reporting and mismanagement of cases are the major challenges of TB control today. Tuberculosis is the leading cause of death of any infectious disease in the world. Thirty-percent of the world’s population is affected by TB. HIV/AIDS is a growing concern with 40 million infected cases as compared to TB with 2 billion affected. Although, the relative number of HIV/AIDS cases is smaller than the number of TB or malaria cases, HIV/AIDS is devastating because it kills people in the prime of life, a time when they are most productive to society and are often caring for children. Malaria, like other chronic infectious diseases such as HIV and TB, also impacts productivity. Recurrent fever, body aches, anemia, and fatigue associated with malaria often lead to loss of work. Children and pregnant women are particularly at high risk for severe disease. For children, recurrent fevers, anemia and anorexia lead to malnutrition and stunted growth. This in turn makes them more susceptible to other diseases. Today, the combination of malnutrition, malaria and diarrhea is a major cause of mortality in children.

In-Class Participation Assignments

Ghanaian Case study

In Ghana, West Africa in a rural community 50 miles from Accra, the capital city, a family from the Akan tribe lives with their 5 children in a home with no electricity and water from a nearby well. The youngest child who is two-years old is on his third bout of malaria and his belly is swollen because his liver and spleen are enlarged. He has not been eating well and has had recurrent fever. His last visit to the medical center indicated severe weight loss, which caused real concern for the mother whose one-year old niece had recently died. The mother worries about her son not eating well. With the rainy season he has had a bad case of bloody diarrhea and feeling very lethargic. The health center is 50 miles away and with 4 other children at home, she can’t take him back again to treat his bloody diarrhea. The danger of the disease is unknown to this family, especially since malaria can kill within 24 hours if it is not treated. Although health care officials in Ghana realize that malaria is more deadly than HIV/AIDS, because it can kill people faster, families tend to downplay it because they have lived with it for many years. The Ghanaian health authorities report on average more than 40% of all outpatient visits in Ghana are from malaria, with about 10% being hospitalized. In addition, 22% of all mortalities in children less than five years of age and 13% of all mortality cases are due to malaria with impact on families (http://www.africaonline.com/site/Articles/1,3,50591.jsp). According to Dr. Carol Baume of Academy of Educational Development (AED) "More than one million people die each year from malaria, most of them children in Africa. Controlled field trials show use of treated nets can reduce childhood mortality by 25 percent." These nets, which are treated with insecticide, have a high cost to the public sector in Africa (estimated at $450-$600 million/year) and so far it has prevented its accessibility to the families such as the family in Ghana (http://www.aed.org/news/news_release_NetMarkMalariaStudies.html).

Indian Case Study

Bandhura, meaning pretty, is the name of the oldest daughter of the Dalai family in a small village in the state of Orissa in Central India. Bandhura lives with her four sisters in a poor family who has always subsisted on agriculture. Despite the poverty, Bandhura’s father has the responsibility to obtain dowry for each of his daughters to facilitate their marriage. Historically, dowries were practiced in the Brahmanical Hindu society, however, today even though her family is from the shudra (lower caste), her father is required to obtain dowry to marry his daughters. One day during the dry season, when the rain was scarce and the crop production was low, Prakash arrives in the village to employ girls to work in a craft business in the nearby town. The villagers take Prakash to Bandhura’s father thinking that he might need to send his daughter to raise money for her dowry. Prakash promises Bandhura’s father that his daughter will engage in local craftwork and will surely learn a skill that can support her after she returns home. Bandhura is taken away in the back of a mini truck along with couple of other girls who were in similar situation to the nearby town and prostituted. In this and other similar towns truck drivers stop at the prostitution houses to relieve the stress of their travel by engaging in unprotected sex and transmitting HIV/AIDS at a rapid rate along their journey to young girls. In a short time, Bandhura gets HIV and decides to return to her village. She feels ashamed and does not want to tell her father the reason for her HIV. She along with a number of other women have been trapped in these prostitution rings without control over their destiny. Today, Bandhura is one of 4 million adults in India who are infected by HIV/AIDS.

Case Study Discussion Questions

1.     What are the options for both the West African and Indian family in regards to their health care challenge?

2.        For each case study describe how cultural beliefs and attitudes might influence the family’s response to the health care issue.

3.      Please describe which of these theories (human ecology, family systems, and social construction) might be used to frame the experience of each of these families?

As a global manager, create a scenario for analysis using the three-sector model: Real Loanable Funds Market, Real Goods Market, and the Foreign Exchange Market for Question A. There is no “set” answer here. You are the manager doing the analysis and setting up the scenario. Use your own assumptions.

A. In the post-World War II period, the economies of Japan and Germany were rebuilt, and both economies were able to achieve economies of scale in the steel and automobile industries. In the mid-1990s, India and China built labor-intensive industries in the apparel industry, followed by other labor intensive industries expanded through an export-led growth policy on the part of China. Vietnam followed this type of policy beginning in 1986. The country has achieved stable growth, low inflation, and increasing prosperity. In the early 2000s, South Korea became a major producer of automobiles, and also expanded production in technology and related consumer goods for export. Currently, High Income economies (using the World Bank GNI per capita classification system) in North America, Europe, and the Far East (the Triad Area) engage extensively in trade in consumer goods. We find that the current level of global exports is about $19 trillion. The trade between nations of the Triad Area represents about $9.5 trillion. In the euro-zone, there is a division between stronger nations (Germany and France, for example) compared to other nations facing significant macroeconomic problems (Greece and Spain, for example).

A health psychologist hypothesizes that stress levels in the nation have been increasing over the years. In the late 1990s, the average score on the Birk Stress Inventory (BSI) in the nation was 17 with a standard deviation of 6.2. A current sample of 29 produces a mean BSI score of 14.8. What can be concluded with an α of 0.10?

a) What is the appropriate test statistic?
---Select--- na z-test one-sample t-test independent-samples t-test related-samples t-test

b)
Population:
---Select--- current sample the nation stress levels the years the BSI score
Sample:
---Select--- current sample the nation stress levels the years the BSI score

c) Obtain/compute the appropriate values to make a decision about H₀.
(Hint: Make sure to write down the null and alternative hypotheses to help solve the problem.)
critical value =  ; test statistic =
Decision:  ---Select--- Reject H0 Fail to reject H0

d) If appropriate, compute the CI. If not appropriate, input "na" for both spaces below.
[  ,  ]

e) Compute the corresponding effect size(s) and indicate magnitude(s).
If not appropriate, input and select "na" below.
d =  ;   ---Select--- na trivial effect small effect medium effect large effect
r² =  ;   ---Select--- na trivial effect small effect medium effect large effect

f) Make an interpretation based on the results.

The current population is significantly more stressed.The current population is significant less stressed.    The current population does not significantly differ in stress.

1. Property rights and a strong titling system are seen as important to economic development because they allow:

a. loans to be taken out against the equity of their assets, increasing investment.

b. loans to be taken out without risk, increasing the quality, not quantity, of investment.

c. savers to invest in property and capital.

d. agencies with authority to verify titling to thrive in the economy.

2. Over the 1980 and 1990s, countries that were given large amounts of aid:

a. experienced growth of 1 percent regardless of the policy in place.

b. saw GDP shrink by 1 percent regardless of the policy in place.

c. saw GDP shrink by 1 percent even if they had sound policy in place.

d. experienced mixed impacts on their GDP growth.

3. Japan, Singapore, and Taiwan have all:

a. had success with import substitution policy.

b. imitated South Korea's export-led growth policy and failed.

c. imitated South Korea's import substitution policy and failed.

d. had success with export-led growth policy.

4. Successful export-led growth policy entails:

a. choosing the "right" industries to invest in.

b. blocking the "right" industries from importing to domestic markets.

c. choosing the "right" incentives to encourage exports.

d. choosing the "right" disincentives to reduce imports.

5. When governments choose to favor some industries over others, they undertake:

a. industrial espionage.

b. corporate growth policy.

c. corporate pricing policy.

d. industrial policy.

3-1 Looking back on 4 March 2008 when the interest rate was set at 7.25% by RBA (Reserve Bank Australia), however since then RBA gradually reduced the interest rate to its lowest 1% on 3 July 2019. Present an overview on the expectations or motivations behind such interest rate cut by RBA? (summary)

[Note: In the early 1990s the interest rate was 17.5%, you don’t need to go back such distant past, your analysis should focus between 2008 to 2019]

3-2 Identify the possible impact of interest rate cut on investments in the capital market in Australia.

[Note: Here you can investigate the differences in impact between debt instruments and equity instruments in the capital market, you can use table, chart, graph wherever you would find it appropriate]

3-3 Identify the possible impact of interest rate cut on the Real Estate market in Australia.

[Note: You can analyse the differences in impact between foreign sourced investment and local sourced investment in the Real Estate Market, you can use table, chart, graph wherever you would find it appropriate]

3-4 There are four countries (Japan, Sweden, Denmark and Switzerland) have negative interest rates. What could be the expectations/ motivations to drop interest rate below zero?

Could you please give me a quick summary of the solution to each question so that I may expand on this. It is for my current job.

You have recently been hired by Intersoll Motors Inc. (IMI) in its relatively new treasury management department. IMI was founded eight years ago by Geoff Boycott. Geoff found a method to manufacture a cheaper battery that will hold a larger charge, giving a car powered by the battery a range of 700 km before requiring a charge. The cars manufactured by IMI are midsized and carry a price that allows the company to compete with other mainstream auto manufacturers. The company is privately owned by Geoff and his family and it had sales of $97 million last year. Cost of goods sold totalled $80M and depreciation was $2M.

IMI’s growth to date has come from its profit. When the company had sufficient capital, it would expand production. Relatively little formal analysis has been used in its capital budgeting process. Geoff has just read about capital budgeting technique and has come to you for help. For starters, the company has never attempted to determine its cost of capital, and Geoff would like you to perform the analysis. Because the company is privately owned and not yet publicly traded, base all weights on the book values instead of the market values.

IMI’s capital is made up of a bank loan and owner’s equity. It has a 15-year loan for 8,000,000 with an APR of 13.15% based on semi-annual compounding. IMI has been paying 100,200 monthly for 8 years. Geoff receives a salary in the form of an equity dividend of $1M per year. This amount is expected to grow at 3% per year indefinitely. His required return on equity is 20%. The firm’s marginal tax rate is 35% and this is expected to continue indefinitely.

1. What is IMI’s outstanding debt value? Calculate the book value of debt as the amount still owing on the bank loan.

2. What is the value of the unlevered firm? The levered firm?

3. Determine IMI’s yearly cost of capital based on book values. (Find the after-tax WACC using the

   yearly cost of debt)

4. Would the firm benefit from increasing its debt? Why? (No calculation necessary)

5. In a real-world situation, why might firms choose to avoid debt? (No calculation necessary)

Case Study #11—Martha Stewart Read the Martha Stewart case study located in the section titled Case Studies in your textbook concerning the following situation: This case focuses on the corporate governance aspect of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (MSO), a media empire founded by Martha Stewart. Stewart is a former model and devoted her career to domestic perfection and luxury. She is the brand icon of MSO; however, with new technology and the shift of consumer tastes and preferences, MSO’s business model is receiving serious threats from other competitors. After a review of the history of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, the case discusses its competition, the legal problem that Martha Stewart encountered, changing leadership within MSO, Martha Stewart’s questionable compensation, and the future of MSO. The case concludes with a discussion of MSO’s future at a crossroads.

The case underscores the importance of corporate governance when conditions in the environment change. An analysis of the separation of ownership and managerial control, board of directors, and executive compensation will aid in evaluating the future of MSO. Some analysts suggest that MSO will lose its competitiveness once Martha Stewart leaves the company; others suggest that the MSO brand has lost its brand image by going into product lines such as cleaning fluids and dog poop bags. Also, a few analysts suggest that MSO is a potential takeover target.

This case is ideal for demonstrating the importance of corporate governance. The following points are to guide a review and discussion of some important concepts.

Discuss MSO’s corporate governance. Has the company been able to separate the ownership and managerial control?

Evaluate the effectiveness of MSO’s board of directors. Have the directors been able to monitor and control the company?

Executive compensation is a method of governance mechanisms. Discuss Martha Stewart’s compensation and evaluate its effectiveness.

Is MSO in financial trouble? Discuss the possibility of the market for corporate control. Will MSO become a takeover target?

Describe MSOs next move in terms of growth and expansion. Provide an analysis, of what additional recommendations would be required to be done to help MSO achieve its goals?

Evaluate MSO’s international strategy and its use of alliances to achieve company objectives, what would be their best strategy?