(1) The foreign project has a life of three years. The initial investment on long-term capital is $60m.

(2) Annual revenue in each of the three years will be ¥ 6000m. Annual costs of goods sold will be ¥ 3000m.

(3) Japan: beta =1.2, Rf = 4%, Rm = 6%, Rd= 7%, 30% debt and 70% equity;

        US: beta =2, Rf = 3%, Rm = 7%, Rd= 4%, 30% debt and 70% equity.

(4) Current spot rate: ¥100/$; Annual inflation rate in Japan is 3%; Annual inflation rate in the US is 2%.

(5) Corporate tax rate is 30%; straight-line depreciation method; investment in long-term capital fully depreciated over three years.

What is the after-tax cost of debt in Japan?

What is the cost of equity in the US?

What is the cost of capital in the US?

What is the exchange rate at the end of the third year in the life of the project?

What is the dollar cash flow occurring in the second year?

What is the NPV of the project from the parent’s viewpoint?

The parent (i.e., U.S.) firm should conclude that the project is good?

Consider the US and China who can both produce soya beans and mobile phones. In a year, the US can produce 80 billion tonnes of soya beans or it can produce 400 million mobile phones. In a year, China can produce 50 billion tonnes of soya beans or it can produce 400 million mobile phones.

1. Explain which country has the absolute advantage in soya beans production and which country has the absolute advantage in mobile phone production?

2. What is the US’ opportunity cost of producing 1 billion tonnes of soya beans? What is China’s opportunity cost of producing 1 billion tonnes of soya beans? Explain which country has the comparative advantage in soya beans production?

3. Explain which country should specialise in soya beans production and which country should specialise in mobile phone production?

d. What is the maximum (in terms of tonnes of soya beans) that the US would be willing to pay for China’s mobile phones? What is the minimum (in terms of tonnes of soya beans) China would accept for its mobile phones? Will they trade and if so, which country benefits from the trade?

Create a form that has the following fields:

• Name
• Address
• City
• Country (Please Select Country, US, Canada)
• State/Province (Drop Down List)
• Postal Code
• Submit Button

Create two arrays of objects, one for US States, one for Canadian Provinces. The object should contain Name and Abbreviation. You don’t need to do all the states or provinces, just a few to make sure your code works. (3 OF EACH)

When the user selects either US or Canada, populate the drop down using the array of object. The first, default option should be “Please Select State” or “Please Select Province” depending on the selected country.

On Submitting the form, validate all form fields. Validate the Postal Code according to the rules for the selected country… US or Canada. You should do JavaScript Validation even if you use HTML5 controls

Follow good practices for JavaScript

Use the appropriate form controls from all the available form controls – HTML and HTML5.

Make the form accessible by using labels.

THIS IS TO DONE USING HTML/HTML5 AND JAVASCRIPT

How far away is a star that has a parallax of 0.03 seconds of arc? 0.3 parsecs/333.3 parsecs/33.3 parsecs/3.3 parsecs

If you took a measuremnt for a stars position in March, using parallex when is the optimum month for the next measurement? Sept /Oct/ April/ any month

The nearest stars have been catalogued using parallax what is the range of the stars found in this catalogue? 4 to 100 parsecs/ 2 to 1000 parsecs/ 10 to 50 parsecs/ all stars out to 500 parsecs

Compared to close stars, the parallax angle is ________________ for more distant stars. Smaller/ larger/ the same as/ unrelated to distance of stars

Why are astronomers much more interested in the luminosity of a star than its apparent brightness? because the luminosity tells us how bright a star really is, while apparent brightness only tells us how bright it happens to look from Earth/because luminosity can be measured exactly, but apparent brightness can only be roughly estimated/because the luminosity also tells us what elements the star is made of, while apparent brightness cannot tell us a star's chemical make

Comcast is the largest cable provider in the United States. This activity is important because despite its impressive power, influence, and politics, Comcast failed to effectively influence stakeholders including customers, employees, regulators, networks, and other content providers.

The goal of this activity is to apply the knowledge of OB in order to understand why Comcast failed in its bid to acquire Time Warner, and allow you to provide realistic solutions for future acquisition attempts.

Read the case about Comcast’s failure to influence key stakeholders. Then, using the 3-step problem-solving approach, answer the questions that follow.

Like many companies in the telecom industry, Comcast has chosen to grow by buying competitors. After acquiring AT&T’s Internet business in 2001, the company has remained on the acquisition train ever since. Its largest purchase to date was NBC Universal in 2011 for $18 billion, but its most notable was its thwarted 2015 attempt to buy Time Warner for $45 billion. Despite its impressive power, influence, and politics, Comcast failed to effectively influence stakeholders including customers, employees, regulators, networks, and other content providers. More than 300,000 comments were filed with the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) by customers who opposed the merger. For perspective, the merger between AT&T and T-Mobile drew just over 40,000 comments.¹

Why Bother in the First Place?

Comcast is the largest cable provider in the United States despite having the worst customer satisfaction ratings in its industry. It has twice earned the dubious distinction of being the “Worst Company in America,” according to Consumer Reports’ customer satisfaction arm. Comcast’s customer service was so poor as to be considered legendary. And its reputation with various networks and cable channels such as Discovery, Disney, 20th Century Fox, and the NFL Network had been declining for years.² These partners are in effect customers, and Comcast has pressured them to pay higher fees to distribute their content through its cables.³

Industry trends were affecting Comcast’s current performance and its future prospects. Consumers have been cutting the cable and instead accessing their content via streaming alternatives such as Netflix and Amazon Prime. Netflix alone accounts for one-third of all Internet traffic. But apparently believing that being No. 1 was not enough, Comcast’s leaders decided that acquiring Time Warner would enable them to better serve existing and new customers, as well as to defend against increasingly diverse competition from Google, Dish Network, and others.⁴

Attempts to Influence the Players

Comcast was determined and resourceful in its attempt to make things go its way. A major part of its efforts focused on Washington, D.C., since no merger of that size goes through without regulatory approval. Comcast employs a force of more than 100 lobbyists, and its $17 million annual lobbying budget is second only to Google’s.⁵ Lobbying efforts were largely intended to influence officials in the FCC and Department of Justice (DOJ), the regulators who would ultimately decide how the merger would affect competition and consumer choice, and who would either block it or allow it to proceed. Members of these government departments were buried in data, wined and dined, and presented with dazzling arguments highlighting the potential benefits of the merger. But Comcast did not stop there. CEO Brian Roberts courted President Obama, golfing with him on Martha’s Vineyard. And Comcast Executive Vice President David Cohen hosted three fund-raisers for the president at his home, raising more than $10 million for the Democratic party.⁶ Roberts and Cohen presumably thought that associating with key players in the government would win them favor with regulators and members of Congress who might influence the merger and other policies favorable to Comcast.

For its part, the company argued that a merger of the two largest players wouldn’t stifle competition but instead allow them to provide more services to more customers. For instance, it currently provides Internet services to low-income and rural residents. Combining with Time Warner, the company claimed, would enable it to serve even more of these customers.⁷

The Other Side and Ultimate Outcome

Ultimately, the money, the relationships, the lobbyists’ arguments, and the pressure failed to work. Its opponents used many of the same bases of power, influence, and political tactics to argue against the merger that Comcast used to promote it, and the company withdrew its bid for Time Warner. It didn’t help that Comcast already had such a poor reputation with many of the parties from whom it needed support. It is noteworthy that in mid-2016 Charter Communications successfully acquired Time Warner in a merger worth $79 billion.⁸

Assume you are CEO Roberts, and you want to successfully acquire a large competitor in the future. Drawing on what you learned from the Time Warner experience, what would you do now to improve your chances?

Apply the 3-Step Problem-Solving Approach to OB

Step 1: Define the problem.Step 2: Identify causes of the problem by using material from this chapter, which has been summarized in the Organizing Framework for Chapter 12 and is shown in Figure 12.9. Causes will tend to show up in either the Inputs box or the Processes box.Step 3: Make your recommendations for solving the problem. Consider whether you want to resolve it, solve it, or dissolve it (see Section 1.5). Which recommendation is desirable and feasible?

According to the Institute for Students in Shackles, 70% of all college students in a recent year graduated with student loan debt.  The University of Florida reports that only 52% of its graduates from a random sample of 500 students have student loan debt. Use a hypothesis test to determine if there is enough evidence to support UF’s claim that student loan debt is less.

a) State your null and alternative hypothesis.

b) Find p-hat, SD, Z, and the P-value

Suppose you wanted to estimate the average household income of all Grand Canyon University (GCU) students. To expedite the process, you only gather household income data from all your friends who major in business at GCU. You then calculate the average income among your friends and report that it represents the average income of all GCU students. Is this a good approach? If not, how would you gather data to derive a better estimate? Explain your answer.

Richard Thaler, (Professor, The University of Chicago Booth School of Business) said: “We failed to learn from the hedge fund failures of the late ’90s.” His message (Links to an external site.)to overconfident risk managers: There’s more risk out there than you think.

a) What do you think of Wall Street (or any financial markets)? Do we need Wall Street? Why or Why not?

b) What is "The Paradox of Thrift"? How does that apply to our current situation?

In 2015, the student body of a Lock Haven University consisted of 30% freshmen, 24% sophomores, 26% juniors, and 20% seniors. A sample of 300 students taken from this year's student body showed the following number of students in each classification.

We are interested in determining whether or not there has been a significant change in the classifications between the last school year and this school year. At 95% confidence, the null hypothesis

Government of Afghanistan has called on a conference on “Strategies to reduce Trade Deficit via discouraging Imports”. Kardan University got invitation too from the Ministry and the BBA and BSc Economics Departments has selected you to make a presentation suggesting how currency value can be used to reduce imports. Develop a numerical example explaining if the value of local currency going up how it can effect imports of Afghanistan. Also analyze the long term impact of currency appreciation on the Economy.