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In early 2016, stock markets around the world plummeted, raising the threat of another major depression enveloping the world. In their struggle to recover from the post-2008 global recession, many nations had expanded their money supply and lowered interest rates, with the aim of stimulating both consumer spending and corporate investment. While some of this monetary expansion increased production and employment, much of it created bubbles in asset prices, especially in the prices of equities. Investors faced such low returns from bonds and other fixed-income assets that they poured their funds into equities, which increased price-earnings ratios to exceptional levels. This bubble in stock prices amplified the risks of a severe crash. What could-and should-governments do to avoid a significant stock market crash and a global depression?

In March 2016, an investor wanted to evaluate the strategy and stability of Cisco Systems, Inc. by using historical income statements to predict future cash flows. He knew that he might be able to use time series analysis to evaluate the company's performance in the near future, but he was unsure how to proceed if the historical data would not be predictive of the future performance. In particular, the investor wondered, how would he determine the likelihood that the company's next quarter would yield similar net income to the previous quarter?

Student spreadsheet for case W16428.

Curling was officially included in the Winter Olympic Games in 1998. Since then, it spread beyond its home in Canada and northern Europe to many other countries, including China. As a new player, the Chinese Curling Association managed to elevate its national teams to achieve world elite status and be widely admired by its international counterparts for being so successful with fewer than 300 curlers and only a 10-year history. In 2014, the Chinese Curling Association needed to develop a strategic approach to grow curling in China in a healthy and sustainable way.

During the Holi festival in March 2012, the managing director of Ramcides, a family-run agrochemical business, was considering the path of the company that his eldest brother had started in 1973. Ramcides had a goal to achieve US$50 million in revenues by March 2014 and $130 million in the following five years. The managing director reflected on whether the company was on the right path towards achieving that objective. Much had changed since an infusion of private equity from a venture capital firm in 2008, but there was still much to be done. There was also the matter of the venture capital firm's planned exit, and where the company would then secure additional funding. All the stakeholders were clear on promoting the future growth and success of Ramcides, but the next three to five years were a critical time of transition. What needed to be done to ensure continued success? The current manager viewed himself as the managing director in transition-the bridge between Ramcides's history as a family-run firm and its future as a professionalized agrochemical company.

The owner and manager of a small garden shop that opened on January 1 needs to analyze and record transactions, prepare financial statements, and assess the company's performance during its first year of operations. She also needs to provide a set of financial statements for her bank, as she is required to do annually based on her loan agreement. Students will prepare journal entries, post this information to T-accounts, record the necessary adjusting entries and post to T-accounts, prepare an income statement that summarizes results of operations for the year, and prepare a balance sheet as of December 31.

Supplement to case UV7159. The owner and manager of a small garden shop needs to prepare the financial statements for the shop's second year of operation. These financial statements will assess the financial performance of her company during the year, as well as take stock of its financial position at the end of the year and will be important to loan officers at her bank where the company had obtained two loans, and to an equity investor in the company. Students will prepare journal entries, post this information to T-accounts, record the necessary adjusting entries and post to T-accounts, and prepare an income statement that summarizes results of operations for the year.

Oracle's proposed acquisition of Sun was on a fast track until the EC's antitrust concerns about open-source MySQL ignited a translantic war of words delaying the deal. Sun's performance suffered and its customers were approached by competitors while regulatory objections were debated and tensions rose between U.S. and EC regulators.

Histograms are graphs that provide a large amount of useful information for all types of data and display the frequency of observations in a data set. The purpose of this note is to introduce histograms for several types of data, provide examples of insights that can be gained and calculations that can be performed using histograms, and demonstrate how to build histograms in Microsoft Excel. In addition, this note reviews the Normal distribution, which can be used to approximate many empirical distributions. The note includes practice exercises and their solutions, and a supporting Excel workbook for students.

The purpose of this note is to illustrate the use of Data Tables in Microsoft Excel. Data Tables are commonly used for performing sensitivity analyses, sometimes called "What If?" analyses, and for preparing data for graphs. Data Tables can also be used to enable a Monte Carlo simulation in a spreadsheet in more advanced models. The technical note includes practice exercises and their solutions, and a supporting Excel workbook for students.

Reckitt Benckiser was the world's largest manufacturer of household products and a major marketer of health-care and personal-care products. The company was at a threshold of opportunities provided by a growing market of Indian consumers who were becoming health conscious and buying antibacterial products to make their homes germ-free. At a time when more and more Indians were looking for antibacterial products to protect their health, the company wondered if it should launch an antibacterial laundry detergent powder as part of its brand expansion strategy. Would the company benefit from a first-mover advantage by launching the first antibacterial laundry detergent in India? If the company were to consider entering this market, what strategic and branding objectives should it adopt? Should this new detergent be an extension of the company's famous Dettol brand or a new brand name?

Kim Fuller is planning to start a business. The case discusses the kinds of information she needs to run it successfully.

A physician is thinking about starting a new business. Students must translate her ideas into a beginning balance sheet.

Supplement to case TCG037. This is a follow-on to the Narcolarm (A) case. It begins with the balance sheet developed in the (A) case and adds some events for the first year of operations. The case helps to bring the accounting information together.

This case gives students the opportunity to examine the operating cycle. They see how a manager's decisions can affect both the cycle, and, perhaps most importantly, how to manage the amount of cash that an entity needs to operate.

Supplement to case TCG041. This case builds on the J. Prep (A) case but adds a couple of twists, including the need for students to identify and record three adjusting entries. They also must include the effect of accumulated depreciation in the accounts.

This is a relatively simple introductory case, designed to give students practice in constructing a balance sheet and to begin to think about the meaning of assets, liabilities and equity.

Supplement to case TCG046. This is a follow-on case to the Carson Realty Company (A) case. It adds some complications to the situation. It requires students to use T accounts and to prepare a full ste of financial statements, including a statement of cash flows.

Discusses the linkages among seven different activities that take place in organizations, and that must be coordinated if an organization is to be successful. The activities comprise strategy formulation, authority and influence, conflict management, culture management, customer management, motivation, and management control.

Discusses several contentious issues involved in the development of theory in the social sciences: (1) description versus prescription, (2) deduction versus induction, (3) quantitative versus qualitative, (4) reflection versus action orientation, (5) verifiability versus falsifiability, and (6) case method versus statistical.