Dow chemical had accrued obligations of $386 million for environmental remediation and restoration costs, including $45 million for the remediation of superfund sites. this is management’s best estimate of the costs for remediation and restoration with respect to environmental matters for which the company has accrued liabilities, although the ultimate cost with respect to these particular matters could range up to twice that amount. inherent uncertainties exist in these estimates primarily due to unknown conditions, changing governmental regulations and legal standards regarding liability, and evolving technologies for handling site remediation and restoration. required : 1. does the excerpt decsribe a loss contingency? 2. under what conditions would dow record such a contingency?

Consider the local telephone company, a natural monopoly. the following graph shows the monthly demand curve for phone services and the company’s marginal revenue (mr), marginal cost (mc), and average total cost (atc) curves. 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 price (dollars per subscription) quantity (thousands of subscriptions) d mr mc atc 8, 60 suppose that the government has decided not to regulate this industry, and the firm is free to maximize profits, without constraints. complete the first row of the following table. pricing mechanism short run long-run decision quantity price profit (subscriptions) (dollars per subscription) profit maximization marginal-cost pricing average-cost pricing suppose that the government forces the monopolist to set the price equal to marginal cost. complete the second row of the previous table. suppose that the government forces the monopolist to set the price equal to average total cost. complete the third row of the previous table. under average-cost pricing, the government will raise the price of output whenever a firm’s costs increase, and lower the price whenever a firm’s costs decrease. over time, under the average-cost pricing policy, what will the local telephone company most likely do

Stocks a, b, and c are similar in some respects: each has an expected return of 10% and a standard deviation of 25%. stocks a and b have returns that are independent of one another; i.e., their correlation coefficient, r, equals zero. stocks a and c have returns that are negatively correlated with one another; i.e., r is less than 0. portfolio ab is a portfolio with half of its money invested in stock a and half in stock b. portfolio ac is a portfolio with half of its money invested in stock a and half invested in stock c. which of the following statements is correct? a. portfolio ab has a standard deviation that is greater than 25%.b. portfolio ac has an expected return that is less than 10%.c. portfolio ac has a standard deviation that is less than 25%.d. portfolio ab has a standard deviation that is equal to 25%.e. portfolio ac has an expected return that is greater than 25%.

Three pounds of material a are required for each unit produced. the company has a policy of maintaining a stock of material a on hand at the end of each quarter equal to 30% of the next quarter's production needs for material a. a total of 35,000 pounds of material a are on hand to start the year. budgeted purchases of material a for the second quarter would be: