Assignment Questions

1. Directors of companies have an obligation to act in the best interests of the company. Elaborate on how the court approach this duty and explain whether the corporations law in Australia has made this duty onerous.

Resource

(a) Reading: Chapter 16 in the textbook.

(b) Journal articles

- Jason Harris, Anil Hargovan, Janet Austin, ‘Shareholder Primacy Revisited: Does the public interest have any role in statutory duty' (2008) 26 Company and Securities Law Journal 355;

- E Klein, J du Plessis, ‘Corporate donations, the best interest of the company and the proper purpose doctrine' (2005) 28 The University of New South Wales Law Journal 69;

- Rosemary T. Langford, ‘The distinction between the duty of care and the duties to act bona fide in the interests of the company and for proper purposes' (2013) 41(6) Australian Business Law Review 337;

- Rosemary T. Langford, Ian M. Ramsay, ‘Directors' duty to act in the interests of the company: Subjective or Objective? [2015] 43(2) Journal of Business Law 173.

2. What is the relevance of liquidated damages clause and how does it differ from contractual penalties? Do you think contractual penalties curbed contractual freedom? Why?

Resource
(a) Reading: Chapter 9 in the textbook.

(b) Journal articles

- Anthony Gray, ‘Contractual Penalties in Australian Law after Andrews: An Opportunity Missed' (2013) 18(1) Deakin Law Review 1;

- Andrew Ham, ‘The Rule Against Penalties in Contract: An Economic Perspective'

- Sirko Harder, ‘The Relevance of Breach to the Applicability of the Rule againstPenalties' (2013) 30 Journal of Contract Law 52.

(c) News Articles

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-08-12/bank-fees-class-action-lodged/5664382

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-04-08/anz-bank-wins-appeal-against-credit-card-fees-decision/6376834

Business Modelling and Analysis Assignment

Objectives

In this assignment you are expected to develop and present a business report to the senior manager of an energy provider company. The report should be informative but concise. It should follow a specific structure to allow the document to be easily read and understood. For this purpose, please ensure that you have studied supplementary material about the academic report writing available on e-activity 5.3 before you start the assignment. This assignment is worth 20% of your final mark.

This assignment provides students with opportunity to:

- combine statistical analysis and report writing skills to prepare a concise and non- technical business report,
- draw a random sample to complete statistical analysis,
- develop and enhance computing skills, specifically the use of MS Word and MS Excel built-in functions,
- apply statistical techniques to a data set, and
- reinforce taught concepts including descriptive statistics, sampling and estimation, hypothesis testing, correlation and regression.

Background

Margaret is the manager of an energy provider company. Recently she studied a report by Institute for Sustainable Futures Study in which the factors influencing households' electricity consumptions was investigated. She is surprised by some of the variables highlighted in the report and would like to further investigate the importance of those variables using her own company's data. For that purpose, Margaret asked Jason, a newly appointed research officer, to conduct a number of statistical tests (discussed in the following sections) using a dataset related to the total number of energy bills paid in three states of New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland in the first week of March 2016.

The excel file that contains these data is named FIN60003_Assingment Data_Sem1_2016.xls and is available on e-tivity 7.5. There are seven variables and 1000 cases in this data set. They are:

Home Ownership: The state of home ownership (O: Owned and R: Rented)

Average Age: Average age of occupants

State: Location of property (NSW: New South Wales, Vic: Victoria and Qld: Queensland)

No of Rooms: Number of rooms in a house

Energy Bill: Total cost of monthly energy bills (in AUD)

Language: Language spoken at home (1: English and 2: Other than English)

No of Occupants: Number of people live in a house

Weekly Income: Average weekly income of a household (in AUD)

Tasks

Most of your statistical calculations should be carried out using Excel only. You will use Microsoft Word and Excel to complete this assignment.

1. Select a Random Sample

Select a random sample of size 100 from the given 1000 cases (assume this data set is the population of interest and you are not allowed to calculate any parameters such as mean and standard deviation). You will use this sample data to complete tasks 2 to 6. Since repeat cases may occur when you draw random numbers and each case can be included only once in your sample, some of you may end up with a sample size less than 100. In this situation do not draw another sample to reach 100 values. You will continue to work on your originally drawn sample, even if the sample is smaller than 100.

2. Descriptive Statistics

Use appropriate data summary methods to describe each of the variables in your dataset. Use an appropriate graphical and/or summary statistical technique, chosen according to the type of variable. These techniques will be chosen from:

Tabular Techniques: Frequency tables and Grouped (joint) frequency tables.
Graphical Techniques: Pie chart, Bar graph, Histogram (avoid using 3D effects). Summary Statistics: Mode, Median, Mean, Standard Deviation, Range, Coefficient of
Variation and Interquartile Range (choose those you think are more appropriate for your report).

You will need to choose the most appropriate technique(s) for each variable being analysed. Less appropriate/inappropriate techniques will receive fewer/no marks.

For a nominal or an ordinal variable draw a graph and present a frequency table in percentages. For a ratio or an interval variable draw a graph and a summary statistics table.
Try to use varying visualisation techniques such as pie chart, bar chart, and histograms in drawing graphs. Do not draw two different graphs for the same variable.

3. Confidence intervals

Estimate the following quantities, using 95% confidence level. Interpret the meaning of your confidence intervals.

i. The average weekly income of households for the Home Owners only.
ii. The average total energy bills for all types of home ownership.

Compare both intervals with their respective true population means.

4. Hypothesis Testing

Margaret has some concerns about the findings of the above mentioned report and wants to investigate the validity of those findings. Investigate these contentions by carrying out appropriate hypothesis tests.
i. It is often felt that renters consume less energy on average than home owners.
ii. It is often felt that due to the milder weather, the average energy bills differs for New South Wales and two other states (consider Vic and Qld as one sample). For this hypothesis use STATE.
iii. It is often felt that the average number of occupants for properties in the age groups of 44 years and younger is more than those in age groups of older than 45 years.

In the main section of the report, only include the non-technical explanations of your methodology and findings. The immediate calculations and excel outputs should be presented in an appendix. Use 95% confidence level and assume the populations' variances are unknown but equal (use t-test from data analysis toolpack).

5. Correlation and Regression

In this section, first, Jason intends to investigate the relationship between the energy bills and weekly income of the households who speak English at home only. As the second test, he investigates the relationship between the number of rooms and energy bills.

Use these variables to develop two separate regression models and explore the relationship between average energy bills and weekly income (English Speaking only) on one hand, and

between average energy bills and number of rooms on the other hand. Make sure that you undertake full regression analyses, with appropriate discussions for each test. Please include:

- a scattergram coupled with a brief description of the output
- a full estimate of the linear regression model (stated on graph and in the discussion)
- the coefficients of correlation and the coefficients of determination
- test results of a hypothesis for whether or not there is a linear relationship between dependent and independent variables.

Assignment structure:

Presentation is an important feature of a business report. The guide to presentation that follows includes an Executive summary, Introduction, Analysis and Appendices (please refer to the instructions given in e-activity 5.3).

Attachment:- Assignment Data_Sem.rar