step 3 draw a conclusion and interpret the decision

An economist studying inflation in electricity prices in 2018 and 2019 believes that th average price of electricity, even after adjusting for inflation, changed between these two years. To test his claim, he samples 9 different counties and records the average price of electricity in each county from each year. He then adjusts the prices for inflation. His results are given in the following table. Test the economist's claim at the 0.05 level of significance assuming that the population distribution of the paired differences is approximately normal. Let prices in 2018 be Population 1 and prices in 2019 be Population 2. 1Average Residential Retail Prices of Electricity ($/kWh) 2018 2019 12.64 13.86 14.22 12.45 14.45 12.85 17.58 15.69 13.42 11.64 15.07 14.72 15.12 14.53 11.20 10.51 18.15 16.70 Step 1. State the null and alternative hypotheses for the test. Fill in the blank below. Ho : Ha = 0 Ha : Ha