Chapter 18.3, Problem 22E

Each year Bloomberg Businessweek publishes statistics on the world’s 1000 largest companies. A company’s price/earnings (P/E) ratio is the company’s current stock price divided by the latest 12 months’ earnings per share. The following table shows the P/E ratios for a sample of 10 Japanese companies and 12 U.S. companies. Is the difference between the P/E ratios for the two countries significant? Use the MWW test and α = .01 to support your conclusion.