A Financial Planner Wants to Compare the Yield of Income

question 65

Essay

A financial planner wants to compare the yield of income and growth mutual funds. Fifty thousand dollars is invested in each of a sample of 35 income and 40 growth funds. The mean increase for a two-year period for the income funds is $900. For the growth funds, the mean increase is $875. Income funds have a sample standard deviation of $35; growth funds have a sample standard deviation of $45. Assume that the population standard deviations are equal. At the 0.05 significance level, is there a difference in the mean yields of the two funds?
What decision is made about the null hypothesis using an α = 0.05?

---

Definitions:

Competitive Increasing-cost Industry

An industry where supply costs increase as output expands, often because resources become scarcer or harder to obtain as production grows.

Long-run Equilibrium

A state in which all firms in a perfectly competitive market earn zero economic profits, with no incentives for new firms to enter or existing firms to exit.

Decrease in Demand

A situation where consumers' willingness and ability to purchase a product at all price levels declines, represented by a leftward shift of the demand curve.

Constant-cost Industry

An industry in which the input prices and production costs remain stable even as the industry output changes.