A 55 year-old supervisor at a private company, who has always received good performance appraisals, is nevertheless fired. Two younger supervisors (37 and 42 years old, respectively) from the same department and whose performance appraisals have been lower than the 55 year old’s were nonetheless retained by the company. The employer says that it had to save money and that older supervisor earned considerably more money than the younger supervisors, which he did. If the termination is legally challenged, a court would most likely decide:. a. For the employer because employee could not establish a prime facie case of age discrimination under the ADEA.
b. For the employer because one of the employers retained was also over 40 years of age.
c. For the employer because it had a lawful, non-discriminatory motive for the termination.
d. For the employer because the employer had engaged in disparate treatment based on age.

3. saving two consumers, larry and jeff, have utility functions defined over the two periods of their lives: middle age (period zero) and retirement (period 1). they have the same income in period 0 of m dollars and they will not earn income in period 1. the interest rate they face is r. larry’s and jeff’s utility functions are as follow. = 0.5 + 0.5 and = 0.5 + 0.5 for each person is between zero and one and represents each consumer’s temporal discount econ 340: intermediate microeconomics. ben van kammen: purdue university. rate. a. write the budget constraint that applies to both jeff and larry in terms of consumption in each period and ), interest rate, and m. b. what is larry’s and what is jeff’s marginal rate of intertemporal substitution? c. what is the slope of the budget constraint? d. write each consumer’s condition for lifetime utility maximization. e. re-arrange the conditions from part (d) to solve for the ratio, . f. if > which consumer will save more of his middle age income? g. if > 1 1+ , in which period will larry consume more: = 0 or = 1?