make reasonable, logical, and coherent arguments in the context of the issues at hand

Note that since this is an open-book take-home exam, all of the questions are deliberately open ended. For some of these questions, I am not so much looking for a specific “correct” answer, as much as I am looking for you to make reasonable, logical, and coherent arguments in the context of the issues at hand.

Let me also stress that since you do have more time to finish this than you would with a more time-restricted exam, I am expecting you to read each question very carefully and respond to all the key aspects of each of the questions as written.

These questions will call on you to apply what we have reviewed over this semester to different situations that were not necessarily covered directly during the term.

You are free to use all the resources at your command in answering these questions, with the caveat that everything that you turn in must be written in your own words (no copying directly from any source without proper citations, attributions and quotation marks, etc.). If and when you use internet sources, please make sure that you identify these, along with the proper URLs, in your answers.

Question 1:

A number of moral psychologists and behavioral economists (for example Dan Ariely and Jonathan Haidt) have argued that most people’s real-world ethical decision making is neither properly described by mainstream moral philosophy (consequentialism, deontology, or virtue ethics) nor by the purely hedonic approach suggested by Gary Becker’s simple model of rational crime (labeled SMORC by Ariely).In this context, Dan Ariely has conducted wide-ranging research on how dishonesty and cheating take place in the real world. In view of this research, write a short essay outlining and critically evaluating what you see as the key practical applications of Ariely’s investigations into this issue. As part of your essay, in the context of Ariely’s research, make sure that you outline what you see as the most important steps that businesses can take to minimize dishonesty in the workplace.

Question 2:

Different economic systems provide dissimilar kinds of incentives for economic behavior. Most pre-industrial organized economies relied heavily on enforced class hierarchies based on strength, conquest, coercion and enforced obligations. Similarly, various utopian schemes (regardless of whether they are based on fascism, communism or religious authority) that were supposed to be based on respect for human dignity and equality, instead usually ended up relying on brute force when people did not act in the way that the utopian planners wanted.In this context, Niskanen, in his essay on “The Undemanding Ethics of Capitalism,” argues that through free exchange, capitalistic economies tend to provide us with direct monetary rewards for activities that

benefit other people. As a result, according to Niskanen, capitalistic systems are less reliant than other economic systems on the existence of benevolence, or general good will towards our fellow humans, for overall decency and behavior that benefits everyone. Niskanen’s point is that, since these other systems are less likely to provide direct rewards for simply providing others with the things that they want and value, those systems are also less likely to see behavior specifically designed to provide others with such things. Adam Smith famously put it thus: “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.” Others, for example Marx, Proudhon, Engels, and Polanyi, have argued that capitalism reduces some human interactions to formal exchange and that in the process something of value has been lost.In this context, your assignment is to write a short essay critically evaluating Niskanen’s arguments on this issue.

Question 3:

Last year Deloitte Insights published an article which argued that increases in “contract, freelance, and gig employment,” along with a rise in various forms of freelancing and self-employment, are changing the relationship between employers and employees in a variety of different ways and that this has important implications for business and for society.(see https://www2.deloitte.com/insights/us/en/focus/human-capital-trends/2019/alternative-workforce-gig-economy.html )In this context, your assignment is to write a short essay on how and why the aftermath of the corona virus pandemic is likely to affect the trends that are discussed in that report.

Question 4:

Luckin Coffee was founded in Beijing in 2017 as an aggressive Chinese competitor of Starbucks. Up until recently, the company’s growth and expansion made it look like an exceptional success story. According to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luckin_Coffee ), by January of this year the company was managing 4,507 stores and thus had overtaken Starbucks in terms of the total number of locations. Along the way, the company did not just raise funds in China, but was also able to raise significant funds in the US first through bond offerings and later through sales of stock.According to an article in that was published in Quartz online (https://qz.com/1616270/luckin-ipo-what-you-can-eat-and-drink-at-chinas-starbucks-rival/ ) the day before the company went public on Nasdaq, one reason for the company’s phenomenal growth was its aggressive investment in its marketing and set-up expenditures, which “were three times its net revenue”!!! Of course, this number alone should have made everyone very skeptical and suspicious, but even that did not tell the whole story. It turns out that the company had seriously exaggerated its receipts, to the point “that fabricated sales from the second quarter of last year to the fourth quarter amounted to about 40% of its estimated annual sales.”(See this BBC story: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-52438399 ).

In the aftermath of all of this, trading of the company’s stock was halted on Nasdaq, and on April 26thChinese regulators raided the offices of the company and seized company records for further investigations. Even so, some people actually still believe that Luckin Coffee will eventually survive all of this, albeit others are far more skeptical (see https://investorplace.com/2020/04/turn-out-the-lights-on-luckin-coffee-lk-stock/ )In this context, your assignment is to write a short essay about what you see as the incentives and ethical issues associated with the rise and fall of this company. As part of your answer, also make sure you also discuss what you believe the long term consequences of this story may, not just for the future of Luckin Coffee, but also for other companies who might attempt to use similar growth and financing strategies in the future.