How do Corporate Social Responsibility announcements affect firm value?

Master's thesis in Economic analysisTaking previous research on this topic into consideration, this thesis sets out to give some insights as to why there seems to be increasing focus on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives by firms. Using theory from business ethics, CSR, investor behaviour and finance as a base, we try to answer how CSR announcements made by listed firms in the U.S. affect its firm value, hereunder stock returns. After conducting an event study, similar to the approach of Elton, Gruber, Brown and Goetzmann (2014), we find no overall significant evidence that CSR announcements affect stock returns. However, when expanding the analysis by adding business sectors, our results view firms in the financial, services and basic materials sector to experience a significantly negative effect on firm value when announcing CSR initiatives

A trial to evaluate the effect of the sodium–glucose co‐transporter 2 inhibitor dapagliflozin on morbidity and mortality in patients with heart failure and reduced left ventricular ejection fraction (DAPA‐HF)

Background: Sodium–glucose co‐transporter 2 (SGLT2) inhibitors have been shown to reduce the risk of incident heart failure hospitalization in individuals with type 2 diabetes who have, or are at high risk of, cardiovascular disease. Most patients in these trials did not have heart failure at baseline and the effect of SGLT2 inhibitors on outcomes in individuals with established heart failure (with or without diabetes) is unknown. Design and methods: The Dapagliflozin And Prevention of Adverse‐outcomes in Heart Failure trial (DAPA‐HF) is an international, multicentre, parallel group, randomized, double‐blind, study in patients with chronic heart failure, evaluating the effect of dapagliflozin 10 mg, compared with placebo, given once daily, in addition to standard care, on the primary composite outcome of a worsening heart failure event (hospitalization or equivalent event, i.e. an urgent heart failure visit) or cardiovascular death. Patients with and without diabetes are eligible and must have a left ventricular ejection fraction ≤ 40%, a moderately elevated N‐terminal pro B‐type natriuretic peptide level, and an estimated glomerular filtration rate ≥ 30 mL/min/1.73 m2. The trial is event‐driven, with a target of 844 primary outcomes. Secondary outcomes include the composite of total heart failure hospitalizations (including repeat episodes), and cardiovascular death and patient‐reported outcomes. A total of 4744 patients have been randomized. Conclusions: DAPA‐HF will determine the efficacy and safety of the SGLT2 inhibitor dapagliflozin, added to conventional therapy, in a broad spectrum of patients with heart failure and reduced ejection fraction

Pool boiling heat transfer enhancement of water by gold nanoparticles with an electrophoretic deposition method

Saturated pool boiling heat transfer of water is investigated experimentally on copper surfaces with nanoparticle coatings at atmospheric pressure. The coatings are generated by an electrophoretic deposition method (EPD). Three modified surfaces are prepared with gold nanoparticles of 0.20 mg, 0.25 mg and 0.30 mg, respectively. During the deposition, ethanol works as the solvent while the electrical potential and deposition time are controlled as 9.5 V and 30 min, respectively. The experimental results show that heat transfer coefficients (HTC) and critical heat fluxes (CHF) are enhanced on the modified surfaces. HTC increases with decreasing thickness of the coating, while CHF increases with increasing thickness of the coating. CHFs of EPD-0.20 mg, EPD-0.25 mg and EPD-0.30 mg are 93 W/cm 2 , 123 W/cm 2 and 142 W/cm 2 , respectively, which are increased by 7%, 41% and 63% compared with the smooth surface. EPD-0.20 mg performs the best on heat transfer, with a maximum enhancement of around 60%. At the end, a brief review about mechanistic models of heat transfer at low and moderate heat fluxes is provided, based on which, the reasons why heat transfer is enhanced are discussed

Pool boiling heat transfer of n-pentane and acetone on nanostructured surfaces by electrophoretic deposition

This work aims to investigate pool boiling heat transfer enhancement by using nanostructured surfaces. Two types of nanostructured surfaces were employed, gold nanoparticle-coated surfaces and alumina nanoparticle-coated surfaces. The nanostructured surfaces were fabricated by an electrophoretic deposition technique, depositing nanoparticles in a nanofluid onto smooth copper surfaces under an electric field. N-pentane and acetone were tested as working fluids. Compared to the smooth surface, the pool boiling heat transfer coefficient has been increased by 80% for n-pentane and acetone. Possible mechanisms for the enhancement in heat transfer are qualitatively provided. The increase in active nucleation site density due to multiple micro/nanopores on nanoparticle-coated surfaces is likely the main contributor. The critical heat flux on nanostructured surfaces are approximately the same as that on the smooth surface because both smooth and modified surfaces show similar wickability for the two working fluids

Enhancement of HFE-7200 pool boiling heat transfer on copper surfaces with nanoparticle coatings

Saturated pool boiling heat transfer of HFE-7200 is investigated experimentally on copper surfaces with nanoparticle coatings at atmospheric pressure. The coatings are generated by an electrophoretic deposition method. Two modified surfaces are prepared with Cu-Zinc nanoparticles of 0.3 mg and 0.6 mg, respectively. During the deposition, ethanol works as the solvent while the electrical potential and deposition time are controlled as 9.5 V and 30 min, respectively. The experimental results show heat transfer is considerably enhanced by the nanoparticle coatings. The surface with 0.6 mg nanoparticles (EDS-2) performs better than the surface with 0.3 mg nanoparticles (EDS-1), and a maximum 140% heat transfer enhancement is achieved on the surface EDS-2 compared with the SS. However, the critical heat flux is not enhanced by the coatings but even slightly decreased. A high speed visualization is employed to capture bubble behavior. It is found that bubbles on EDS-1 and EDS-2 have smaller sizes and higher departure frequency than those on the SS before reaching the critical heat flux. However, at critical heat fluxes, a vapor blanket appears on all surfaces

Pool boiling of HFE-7200 on nanoparticle-coating surfaces: Experiments and heat transfer analysis

In the present study, an electrophoretic deposition method was employed to modify copper surfaces withCu-Zn (100 nm) nanoparticles. Pool boiling heat transfer of HFE-7200 on the modified surfaces was experimentally studied. The results showed that the heat transfer coefficient on the modified surfaces was significantly enhanced compared with that on a smooth surface, e.g., a maximum 100% enhancement,while the maximum superheat on the modified surfaces was around 20 K lower than that on the smooth surface. However, the critical heat flux (CHF) was not improved considerably, and supplementary tests indicated that the wickability of HFE-7200 was almost the same on the modified surfaces and the smooth surface. The departure diameters of bubbles were recorded by a high speed camera, which were compared with several models in literature. Active nucleation site sizes were evaluated by the Hsu nucleation theory and active nucleation site densities were estimated by appropriate correlations.In addition, a heat transfer model, considering natural convection, re-formation of thermal boundary layer and microlayer evaporation, was formulated to predict the heat transfer on the modified surfaces and the smooth surface. A relatively good prediction was achieved