The Impact of Hedging on Stock Return and Firm Value: New Evidence from Canadian Oil and Gas Companies

This paper analyzes the impact of hedging activities of large Canadian oil and gas companies on their stock returns and firm value. Differing from the existing literature this research finds that some of these relationships are nonlinear based on the framework of nonlinear generalized additive models. The research based on this more general methodology reveals some interesting findings on oil and gas hedging activities. The large Canadian oil and gas firms are able to use hedging to protect downside risk against the unfavorable oil and gas price changes. But oil hedging appears to be more effective in protecting stock returns than gas hedging is when downside risk presents. In addition, oil and gas reserves are more likely to play a positive (negative) role when the oil and gas prices are increasing (decreasing). Finally, hedging, in particular hedging on gas, together with profitability, investment and leverage, has certain impacts on firm value.oil; gas; hedging; return; firm value; general additive models ; Canada

Industry partnership for graduation stage of higher vocational education

Vocational education has been developing rapidly in China these years’ Zhejiang University of Technology formulated a flowchart of industry partnership for the graduation stage in the light of characteristics and objectives of vocational education. After three years’ experiment in industry partnership, the college has been successful not only in the training of students’ ability of comprehensively applying what they learn into their work and in the training of their skill, but also in the preparation for their future employment. In this paper, the author makes a comparison between the traditional practice and the industry partnership in the graduation stage and, after analyzing their characteristics, concludes that the latter can achieve better results through strict management

Orientation and Motion of Water Molecules at Air/Water Interface

Analysis of SFG vibrational spectra of OH stretching bands in four experimental configurations shows that orientational motion of water molecule at air/water interface is libratory within a limited angular range. This picture is significantly different from the previous conclusion that the interfacial water molecule orientation varies over a broad range within the vibrational relaxation time, the only direct experimental evidence for ultrafast and broad orientational motion of a liquid interface by Wei et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 86, 4799, (2001)] using single SFG experimental configuration