U. S. durable goods orders slump most in three years The Commerce Department reported that orders for U. S. durable goods fell in January by the most in three years. Orders for commercial aircraft and business equipment fell most. Machinery orders dropped 10.4 percent. Source: Bloomberg, February 29, 2012 What determines the decrease in aggregate demand resulting from a decrease in durable goods orders?

The rybczynski theorem describes: (a) how commodity price changes influence real factor rewards (b) how commodity price changes influence relative factor rewards. (c) how changes in factor endowments cause changes in commodity outputs. (d) how trade leads to factor price equalization.

The state in which the manufacturing company you work for is located regulates the presence of a particular substance in the environment to concentrations ≤ x. recently-released, reliable research endorsed by the responsible federal agency conclusively demonstrates that the substance poses no risks at concentrations up to 5x. your company has asked you to consider designing a new process with a waste discharge stream containing up to 2x of the substance. based on the stated conditions, describe this possible.

Activity-based costing (abc) is not truly a cost collection mechanism as much as it is an inventory valuation method. the main purpose for implementing an activity-based cost system is to try to overcome some of the cost distortions that occur in traditional costing from product differences when there are variations in size and complexity. however, one of the disadvantages of utilizing abc is that the additional information gathering necessary to implement costing with that level of detail might be beyond the reach of some companies with resource or financial constraints. with this in mind, what kinds of industries or companies do you think would benefit most from using activity-based costing and why? in designing or modifying an accounting system to capture appropriate costs for abc, what considerations do you think would need to be made?