When interpreting measures from financial statement analysis, we need to decide whether the measures indicate good, bad, or average performance. To make such judgments, we need (benchmarks) for comparisons that include the following:

1. Intracompany
2. Competitor
3. Industry
4. Guidelines (rules of thumb)

True or false: on january 1, year one, the epstein corporation buys a plot of land with a four-story office building. the company believes the building is worth $1.9 million and has an estimated life of twenty years (with no anticipated residual value). the straight-line method is used. the land has an assessed value of $100,000. because the seller was interested in a quick sale, epstein was able to buy this land and building for $1.7 million. depreciation expense to be recognized in year one is $80,750.

The wall street journal reported that walmart stores inc. is planning to lay off 2,300 employees at its sam's club warehouse unit. approximately half of the layoffs will be hourly employees (the wall street journal, january 25-26, 2014). suppose the following data represent the percentage of hourly employees laid off for 15 sam's club stores. 55 56 44 43 44 56 60 62 57 45 36 38 50 69 65 (a) compute the mean and median percentage of hourly employees being laid off at these stores. (b) compute the first and third quartiles. (c) compute the range and interquartile range. (d) compute the variance and standard deviation. (e) do the data contain any outliers? (f) based on the sample data, does it appear that walmart is meeting its goal for reducing the number of hourly employees?

Which of the following is not an example of one of the four mail advantages of prices on a free market economy