Laura opened a new bank account and just deposited $5,000 into an account that promises to pay her an annual interest rate of 5.3 percent each year for the next 4 years. She will leave the money invested in the account and 10 years from today, she needs to have $7,990 in the account. What annual interest rate must she earn over the last 6 years to accomplish this goal?

You are chairman of the board of a successful technology firm. there is a nominal federal corporate tax rate of 35 percent, yet the effective tax rate of the typical corporation is about 12.6%. your firm has been clever with use of transfer pricing and keeping money abroad and has barely paid any taxes over the last 5 years; during this same time period, profits were $28 billion. one member of the board feels that it is un-american to use various accounting strategies in order to avoid paying taxes. others feel that these are legal loopholes and corporations have a fiduciary responsibility to minimize taxes. one board member quoted what the ceo of exxon once said: “i’m not a u.s. company and i don’t make decisions based on what’s good for the u.s.” what are the alternatives? what are your recommendations? why do you recommend this course of action?

Christopher kim, cfa, is a banker with batts brothers, an investment banking firm. kim follows the energy industry and has frequent contact with industry executives. kim is contacted by the ceo of a large oil and gas corporation who wants batts brothers to underwrite a secondary offering of the company's stock. the ceo offers kim the opportunity to fly on his private jet to his ranch in texas for an exotic game hunting expedition if kim's firm can complete the underwriting within 90 days. according to cfa institute standards of conduct, kim: a) may accept the offer as long as he discloses the offer to batts brothers.b) may not accept the offer because it is considered lavish entertainment.c) must obtain written consent from batts brothers before accepting the offer.

Reliability and validity reliability and validity are two important considerations that must be made with any type of data collection. reliability refers to the ability to consistently produce a given result. in the context of psychological research, this would mean that any instruments or tools used to collect data do so in consistent, reproducible ways. unfortunately, being consistent in measurement does not necessarily mean that you have measured something correctly. to illustrate this concept, consider a kitchen scale that would be used to measure the weight of cereal that you eat in the morning. if the scale is not properly calibrated, it may consistently under- or overestimate the amount of cereal that’s being measured. while the scale is highly reliable in producing consistent results (e.g., the same amount of cereal poured onto the scale produces the same reading each time), those results are incorrect. this is where validity comes into play. validity refers to the extent to which a given instrument or tool accurately measures what it’s supposed to measure. while any valid measure is by necessity reliable, the reverse is not necessarily true. researchers strive to use instruments that are both highly reliable and valid.