1. Currently in many states, some products (such as food and newspapers) are not subjected to sales tax, and other products (such as automobiles and business equipment) have a lower sales tax rate. Do you agree that all businesses should be treated equally in the amount of taxes they are required to collect? Why or why not? 2. If e-businesses are required to collect sales taxes, what do you believe the effect will be on Internet sales? Justify your answer. 3. Use the Internet to find recent information on the status of taxation of e-commerce sales by the federal government as well as by your state and city.

Consumer surplus is: the difference between the price of a product and what consumers were willing to pay for the product. the difference between the discounted price of a product and its retail price. the difference between the price paid by consumers and the price required of producers. the difference between the price of a product and consumers' valuation of the last unit of the product purchased.

Suppose a stock had an initial price of $65 per share, paid a dividend of $1.45 per share during the year, and had an ending share price of $58. a, compute the percentage total return. (a negative answer should be indicated by a minus sign. do not round intermediate calculations and enter your answer as a percent rounded to 2 decimal places, e.g., 32.16.) b. what was the dividend yield and the capital gains yield? (a negative answer should be indicated by a minus sign. do not round intermediate calculations and enter your answers as a percent rounded to 2 decimal places, e.g., 32.16.)

Suppose that two firms produce differentiated products and compete in prices. as in class, the two firms are located at two ends of a line one mile apart. consumers are evenly distributed along the line. the firms have identical marginal cost, $60. firm b produces a product with value $110 to consumers.firm a (located at 0 on the unit line) produces a higher quality product with value $120 to consumers. the cost of travel are directly related to the distance a consumer travels to purchase a good. if a consumerhas to travel a mile to purchase a good, the incur a cost of $20. if they have to travel x fraction of a mile, they incur a cost of $20x. (a) write down the expressions for how much a consumer at location d would value the products sold by firms a and b, if they set prices p_{a} and p_{b} ? (b) based on your expressions in (a), how much will be demanded from each firm if prices p_{a} and p_{b} are set? (c) what are the nash equilibrium prices?