Computing materials variances: D-List Calendar Company specializes in manufacturing calendars that depict obscure comedians. The company uses a standard cost system to control its costs. During one month of operations, the direct materials costs and the quantities of paper used showed the following:
Actual purchase price
$0175 per page
Standard quantity allowed for production
170,000 pages
Actual quantity purchased during month
200,000 pages
Actual quantity used during month
185,000 pages
Standard price per page
$0.17 per page
1. Total cost of purchases for the month
2. Materials price variance
3. Materials quantity variance
4. Net materials variance

Suppose that hubert, an economist from an am talk radio program, and kate, an economist from a nonprofit organization on the west coast, are arguing over government bailouts. the following dialogue shows an excerpt from their debate: kate: to recent financial crises, the concept of bailouts is a hot topic for debate among everyone these days. hubert: indeed, it’s gotten crazy! a government bailout of severely distressed financial firms is unnecessary because free markets will properly price assets. kate: i don’t know about that. without a bailout of severely distressed financial firms, the economy will experience a deep recession. the disagreement between these economists is most likely due todifferences in scientific judgments . despite their differences, with which proposition are two economists chosen at random most likely to agree? business managers can raise profit more easily by reducing costs than by raising revenue. central banks should focus more on maintaining low unemployment than on maintaining low inflation. employers should not be restricted from outsourcing work to foreign nations

In december of 2004, the company you own entered into a 20-year contract with a grain supplier for daily deliveries of grain to its hot dog bun manufacturing facility. the contract called for "10,000 pounds of grain" to be delivered to the facility at the price of $100,000 per day. until february 2017, the supplier provided processed grain which could easily be used in your manufacturing process. however, no longer wanting to absorb the cost of having the grain processed, the supplier began delivering whole grain. the supplier is arguing that the contract does not specify the type of grain that would be supplied and that it has not breached the contract. your company is arguing that the supplier has an onsite processing plant and processed grain was implicit to the terms of the contract. over the remaining term of the contract, reshipping and having the grain processed would cost your company approximately $10,000,000, opposed to a cost of around $1,000,000 to the supplier. after speaking with in-house counsel, it was estimated that litigation would cost the company several million dollars and last for years. weighing the costs of litigation, along with possible ambiguity in the contract, what are three options you could take to resolve the dispute? which would be the best option for your business and why?

On analyzing her company’s goods transport route, simone found that they could reduce transport costs by a quarter if they merged different transport routes. what role (job) does simone play at her company? simone is at her company.