The essence of the Relay Assembly Test Room Experiments at the Hawthorne Works was that expected correlations between productivity and physical factors such as rest periods were not demonstrated. What other factors could explain the regular productivity increases observed in these experiments?

Benton company (bc), a calendar year entity, has one owner, who is in the 37% federal income tax bracket (any net capital gains or dividends would be taxed at a 20% rate). bc's gross income is $395,000, and its ordinary trade or business deductions are $245,000. ignore the standard deduction (or itemized deductions) and the deduction for qualified business income. if required, round computations to the nearest dollar. a. bc is operated as a proprietorship, and the owner withdraws $100,000 for personal use. bc's taxable income for the current year is $ , and the tax liability associated with the income from the sole proprietorship is $ . b. bc is operated as a c corporation, pays out $100,000 as salary, and pays no dividends to its shareholder. bc's taxable income for the current year is $ , and bc's tax liability is $ . the shareholder's tax liability is $ . c. bc is operated as a c corporation and pays out no salary or dividends to its shareholder. bc's taxable income for the current year is $ , and bc's tax liability is $ . d. bc is operated as a c corporation, pays out $100,000 as salary, and pays out the remainder of its earnings as dividends. bc's taxable income for the current year is $ , and bc's tax liability is $ .

Afirm's before-tax cost of debt, rd, is the interest rate that the firm must pay on debt. because interest is tax deductible, the relevant cost of debt used to calculate a firm's wacc is the cost of debt, rd (1 – t). the cost of debt is used in calculating the wacc because we are interested in maximizing the value of the firm's stock, and the stock price depends on cash flows. it is important to emphasize that the cost of debt is the interest rate on debt, not debt because our primary concern with the cost of capital is its use in capital budgeting decisions. the rate at which the firm has borrowed in the past is because we need to know the cost of capital. for these reasons, the on outstanding debt (which reflects current market conditions) is a better measure of the cost of debt than the . the on the company's -term debt is generally used to calculate the cost of debt because more often than not, the capital is being raised to fund -term projects. quantitative problem: 5 years ago, barton industries issued 25-year noncallable, semiannual bonds with a $1,600 face value and a 8% coupon, semiannual payment ($64 payment every 6 months). the bonds currently sell for $845.87. if the firm's marginal tax rate is 40%, what is the firm's after-tax cost of debt? round your answer to 2 decimal places. do not round intermediate calcu

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?