As the manager of smith construction, you need to make a decision on the number of homes to build in a new residential area where you are the only builder. unfortunately, you must build the homes before you learn how strong demand is for homes in this large neighborhood. there is a 60 percent chance of low demand and a 40 percent chance of high demand. the corresponding (inverse) demand functions for these two scenarios are p = 300,000 – 400 q and p = 500,000 – 275q, respectively. your cost function is c(q) = 140,000 + 240,000q. how many new homes should you build, and what profits can you expect?

Goals that are overly ambitious can discourage employees and decrease motivation, yet the idea of stretch goals is proposed as a way to get people fired up and motivated. as a manager, how might you decide where to draw the line between a “good” stretch goal and a “bad” one that is unrealistic?

1. descriptive statistics quickly describe large amounts of data can predict future stock returns with surprising accuracy statisticians understand non-numeric information, like colors refer mainly to patterns that can be found in data 2. a 15% return on a stock means that 15% of the original purchase price of the stock returns to the seller at the end of the year 15% of the people who purchased the stock will see a return the stock is worth 15% more at the end of the year than at the beginning the stock has lost 15% of its value since it was originally sold 3. a stock purchased on january 1 cost $4.35 per share. the same stock, sold on december 31 of the same year, brought in $4.75 per share. what was the approximate return on this stock? 0.09% 109% 1.09% 9% 4. a stock sells for $6.99 on december 31, providing the seller with a 6% annual return. what was the price of the stock at the beginning of the year? $6.59 $1.16 $7.42 $5.84

The common stock and debt of northern sludge are valued at $65 million and $35 million, respectively. investors currently require a return of 15.9% on the common stock and a return of 7.8% on the debt. if northern sludge issues an additional $14 million of common stock and uses this money to retire debt, what happens to the expected return on the stock? assume that the change in capital structure does not affect the interest rate on northern’s debt and that there are no taxes.