Bare Escentuals supplies major department stores; more than a thousand spa salons; more than 230 company-owned boutiques; and individual consumers directly through its website, infomercials, and catalogs. Consolidating its warehouse operations and using a software package has helped the company ship the right product to the right people through all these different channels.

An office manager is concerned with declining productivity. despite the fact that she regularly monitors her clerical staff four times each day—at 9: 00 am, 11: 00 am, 1: 00 pm, and again at 3: 00 pm—office productivity has declined 30 percent since she assumed the helm one year ago. would you recommend that the office manager invest more time monitoring the productivity of her clerical staff? explain.

Afinancial institution, the thriftem bank, is in the process of formulating its loan policy for the next quarter. a total of $12 million is allocated for that purpose. being a full-service facility, the bank is obligated to grant loans to different clientele. the following table provides the types of loans, the interest rate charged by the bank, and the possibility of bad debt as estimated from past experience.type of loaninterest rateprobability of bad debtpersonal.140.10car.130.07home.120.03farm.125.05commercial.100.02 bad debts are assumed unrecoverable and hence produce no interest revenue either. competition with other financial institutions in the area requires that the bank allocate at least 40% of the total funds to farm and commercial loans. to assist the housing industry in the region, home loans must equal at least 50% of the personal, car, and home loans. the bank also has a stated policy specifying that the overall ratio for bad debts on all loans may not exceed .04. formulate this problem as a linear program. define your variables clearly and write all the constraints explaining the significance of each.

Two assets have the following expected returns and standard deviations when the risk-free rate is 5%: asset a e(ra) = 18.5% σa = 20% asset b e(rb) = 15% σb = 27% an investor with a risk aversion of a = 3 would find that on a risk-return basis. a. only asset a is acceptable b. only asset b is acceptable c. neither asset a nor asset b is acceptable d. both asset a and asset b are acceptable