10.24 It is hypothesized that the total sales of a corporation should vary more in an industry with active price competition than in one with duopoly and tacit collusion.

In a study of the merchant ship production industry it was found that in 4 years of active price competition, the variance of company A’s total sales was 114.09. In the following 7 years, during which there was duopoly and tacit collusion, this variance was 16.08. Assume that the data can be regarded as an independent random sample from two normal distributions.

Test, at the 5% level, the null hypothesis that the two population variances are equal against the alternative that the variance of total sales is higher in years of active price competition.