MARKET STRUCTURE AND GAME THEORY   Assignment Overview   As always, make sure to thoroughly review the required background materials before starting the assignments.  The assignment questions will require you to do some calculations and also apply the concepts from the module. Question 3 differs from previous assignments in that you have to use an […]

For Module 1, you did research on consumer demand and pricing for your business idea.  Continue with the same business idea that you wrote about for Module 1, but now look at the cost side of your business.   Do some research on various potential start-up expenses for your business based on research on wages, […]

PRODUCTION AND COSTS   Assignment Overview   Before beginning this assignment, make sure you have gone carefully through all of the required readings for this module.  It is very important to carefully absorb both the general concepts as well as the numerical examples in the background readings.  For this assignment, you will have to answer […]

Sampling Bias   Sampling is a major way to collect data, and there are different sampling methods.   Please identify one sampling method and discuss the sampling bias related to this method.   Also explain how the sampling bias could impact the validity and generalizability of data analysis results, as well as the business decision […]

SUPPLY AND DEMAND Assignment Overview   Before beginning this assignment, make sure you have gone carefully through all of the required readings for this module.  It is very important to carefully absorb the general concepts as well as the numerical examples in the background readings.  For this assignment, you will have to answer some purely […]

Freakonomics One of the few books about economics to hit the New York Times bestseller’s list was Freakonomics by Levitt and Dubner.   The book was so popular they even made a movie about it.  The specialty of the authors, Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, is applying economics to unconventional, controversial, or sometimes even downright bizarre […]

Identify one substantive topic in the course that you will use in your job in the future. Specify the topic, your job, and how you will use this knowledge to make better decisions.   Looking back at the analytical tools you used throughout the course, name one specific instance when you could use one of […]

Mergers One of the hottest topics in the business press are rumors of major corporations merging together. Just as the entertainment press likes to report on rumors of celebrities who are dating, the business press likes to speculate about “corporate match-making”. For example, Whole Foods was subject to rumors about several potential suitors including supermarket […]

Interactive Tools for Production and Costs For this discussion, we will be looking at interactive tutorials or quizzes that might help you and your classmates with any concepts or calculations that you are having difficulty with.   If you are having difficulty with the numerical calculations covered in this module, try this interactive tutorial: Baker, […]

Oligopoly and Game Theory You may have noticed the discussion in Taylor (2014) at the end of Chapter 10 about oligopoly and the prisoner’s dilemma.  The prisoner’s dilemma is an example of game theory.  A “game” is like a board game, as your optimal move depends on what your opponent does.  The same holds in […]