Income at the architectural firm spraggings and yunes for the period february to july was as follows: month february march april may june july income (in $ thousand) 70.0 68.5 64.8 71.7 71.3 72.8 use trend-adjusted exponential smoothing to forecast the firm’s august income. assume that the initial forecast average for february is $65,000 and the initial trend is 0. solve the problem with a) = 0.1 = 0.2. b) = 0.1 = 0.8. determine which smoothing constant provides a better forecast using mse.

Ajustification for job training programs is that they improve worker productivity. suppose that you are asked to evaluate whether more job training makes workers more productive. however, rather than having data on individual workers, you have access to data on manufacturing firms in ohio. in particu- lar, for each firm, you have information on hours of job training per worker (training) and number of nondefective items produced per worker hour (output). (i) carefully state the ceteris paribus thought experiment underlying this policy question. (ii) does it seem likely that a firm’s decision to train its workers will be independent of worker characteristics? what are some of those measurable and unmeasurable worker characteristics? (iii) name a factor other than worker characteristics that can affect worker productivity. (iv) if you find a positive correlation between output and training, would you have convincingly established that job training makes workers more productive? explain.

Suppose that hubert, an economist from an am talk radio program, and kate, an economist from a nonprofit organization on the west coast, are arguing over government bailouts. the following dialogue shows an excerpt from their debate: kate: to recent financial crises, the concept of bailouts is a hot topic for debate among everyone these days. hubert: indeed, it’s gotten crazy! a government bailout of severely distressed financial firms is unnecessary because free markets will properly price assets. kate: i don’t know about that. without a bailout of severely distressed financial firms, the economy will experience a deep recession. the disagreement between these economists is most likely due todifferences in scientific judgments . despite their differences, with which proposition are two economists chosen at random most likely to agree? business managers can raise profit more easily by reducing costs than by raising revenue. central banks should focus more on maintaining low unemployment than on maintaining low inflation. employers should not be restricted from outsourcing work to foreign nations

Electronics assembly inc. is a contract manufacturer that assembles consumer electronics for a number of companies. currently, the operations manager is assessing the capacity requirements as input into a bid for a job to assemble cell phones for a major global company. the company would assemble three models of cell phones in the same assembly cell. setup time between the phones is negligible. electronics assembly inc. operates two 8-hour shifts for 275 days per year. cell phone demand forecast (phones/year) processing time (minutes/phone) mars 47,000 19.8 saturn 35,000 20.7 neptune 7,500 16.2 a. calculate total capacity required by line. b. determine the total operating time available. c. calculate the total number of assembly cells. (round up your answer to the next whole number.)