2005AUG13/to 513.179

RE: TOPIC GUIDELINES FOR GROUP PROJECT

If you have any other questions,please send me an e-mail.

GENERAL

LENGTH

The total length of the text of your paper should not exceed eight (8) pages. If you can do it with less, do it. The limit does not apply to any charts, graphics or similar material you may choose to include. If you use something you have downloaded or read elsewhere it should be footnotes and included in the bibliography.

FORMAT

Be sure to run some sort of spell-check and grammar-check before the final printing. If you don’t you are throwing points away.

NUMBER OF COPIES

If you want a MARKED-UP copy returned to you you should turn in two copies to me. If you turn in one copy all you will get back is a comment page.

TOPICS

PERFORMANCE

The most important statistic for a firm is not earnings per share, or sales, or market share, although they are all important. Management lives and dies (or at least gets fired) on the basis of the performance of the stock. Therefore, you want to talk about the 5 –Year track record and how it compares to both the other major firms in the industry and the DOW, NASDAQ, or STANDARD AND POORS. If a member of your group has a brokerage account, this will be readily available online, but be sure to footnote your source.

PRODUCTS

What are the major products of the firm? Are they produced in the United States or elsewhere? Does the firm have ECONOMIES OF SCALE or SCOPE or both?

RESOURCES

Are there any important labor issues? Is the company unionized? Do they use mostly skilled or unskilled labor? Do they import any resources, such as raw materials, from other countries? Do they have environmental challenges or do they try to advertise as a “green” company? (Some companies file an ISO as a green company.)

COMPETITION AND MARKET STRUCTURE

Who are the major competitors? Is there a dominant player in the market? Which one? Can you get market share data, or 4 or 8 digit concentration ratios, for the firm or the inductry? Based on what you found out, how would you classify the industry, Competitive, Monopolistically Competitive? Oligopolistic? Or Monopolized? Explain your logic. Has the Justice Department sent its attack dogs on any anti-trust issues?

MARKET DYNAMICS

Is Demand elastic or inelastic? (You probably won’t have access to the data so you’ll need to explain the logic behind your educated guess.) What are the dominant changes in the industry at the moment? Is it that Demand is increasing or decreasing or that Supply (or cost) is increasing or decreasing? Explain how you got to that conclusion.

CONCLUSION

Can you offer any criticism and/or analysis of the firm and its operations? What does the future of the company look like? Is the stock a BUY or a SELL? Explain how you got to that conclusion.