According to the International Monetary Fund, a perennial challenge facing all of the world's countries, regardless of their level of economic development, is achieving financial stability, economic growth, and higher living standards. True or False?

Aldrich and co. sold goods to donovan on credit. the amount owed grew steadily, and finally aldrich refused to sell any more to donovan unless donovan signed a promissory note for the amount due. donovan did not want to but signed the note because he had no money and needed more goods. when aldrich brought an action to enforce the note, donovan claimed that the note was not binding because it had been obtained by economic duress. was he correct? [aldrich & co. v. donovan, 778 p.2d 397 (mont.)]

Ajustification for job training programs is that they improve worker productivity. suppose that you are asked to evaluate whether more job training makes workers more productive. however, rather than having data on individual workers, you have access to data on manufacturing firms in ohio. in particu- lar, for each firm, you have information on hours of job training per worker (training) and number of nondefective items produced per worker hour (output). (i) carefully state the ceteris paribus thought experiment underlying this policy question. (ii) does it seem likely that a firm’s decision to train its workers will be independent of worker characteristics? what are some of those measurable and unmeasurable worker characteristics? (iii) name a factor other than worker characteristics that can affect worker productivity. (iv) if you find a positive correlation between output and training, would you have convincingly established that job training makes workers more productive? explain.

Aproduction line has three machines a, b, and c, with reliabilities of .96, .86, and .85, respectively. the machines are arranged so that if one breaks down, the others must shut down. engineers are weighing two alternative designs for increasing the line’s reliability. plan 1 involves adding an identical backup line, and plan 2 involves providing a backup for each machine. in either case, three machines (a, b, and c) would be used with reliabilities equal to the original three. a. compute overall system reliability under plan 1. (round your intermediate calculations and final answer to 4 decimal places.) reliability b. compute overall system reliability under plan 2. (round your intermediate calculations and final answer to 4 decimal places.) reliability c. which plan will provide the higher reliability? plan2plan1