Businesses are structured to make money. that's part of what defines success for a business. company leaders strive to generate as much profit as possible by increasing revenue while decreasing costs.

it costs the company money to provide benefits to employees, such as insurance. and yet companies often provide health and dental insurance for their employees. they also pay for insurance to employees who become injured or disabled.

given the costs associated with insurance, why do companies provide insurance plans to employees?

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?

Bridge building company estimates that it will incur $1,200,000 in overhead costs for the year. additionally, the company estimates 50,000 direct labor hours will be spent building custom walking bridges for the year at a total direct labor cost of $600,000. what is the predetermined overhead rate for bridge building company if direct labor costs are to be used as an allocation base?

Last year ann arbor corp had $155,000 of assets, $305,000 of sales, $20,000 of net income, and a debt-to-total-assets ratio of 37.5%. the new cfo believes a new computer program will enable it to reduce costs and thus raise net income to $33,000. assets, sales, and the debt ratio would not be affected. by how much would the cost reduction improve the roe? a. 11.51%b. 12.11%c. 12.75%d. 13.42%e. 14.09%