The Response of Firms' Leverage to Uncertainty: Evidence from UK Public versus Non-Public Firms

This paper empirically investigates the effects of uncertainty on firms' leverage. The analysis is carried out for a large panel of public and non-public UK manufacturing rms over 1999-2008. The empirical results provide evidence that firms use less short-term debt as they go through periods of high uncertainty. The leverage of non-public firms is more sensitive to idiosyncratic uncertainty in comparison to their public counterparts, yet macroeconomic uncertainty a ects both types of firms similarly. We finally end our investigation showing that the total impact of either type of uncertainty on firms' leverage is related to the amount of the cash buffer each firm carries

Improving water resource management in Bangladesh

As populations expand and make various uses of water, its growing scarcity becomes a serious issue in developing countries such as Bangladesh. Water can no longer be considered a totally free resource and plans must be developed for its efficient use through better management and rules that preserve everybody's access to it and interest in its development. Because it is a common resource, its development and management should involve all beneficiaries. The government's role in this process is to establish the ground rules for water use and conservation through a policy and legal framework and a monitoring system that ensure its continued safety of supply to--and responsible water use by--every sector and user in the economy. National water policy must set the ground rules for allocation to different users, water rights, pricing, and environmental safety. Bangladesh's water strategy should start with a national water policy that spells out key objectives such as priority of use by critical economic sectors, approaches to water pricing and cost recovery for development, and shared public- and private-sector water management. An apex public planning organization is needed to perform overall planning for water resources and to advise the National Water Counsel on policy and legislation. Also needed are agencies to implement public water plans for the development of infrastructure, the monitoring of water regimes, and the enforcement of regulations.Water Conservation,Water Resources Law,Water and Industry,Environmental Economics&Policies,Decentralization,Water Supply and Sanitation Governance and Institutions,Town Water Supply and Sanitation,Water and Industry,Water Conservation,Environmental Economics&Policies

Analytical and finite-element study of optimal strain distribution in various beam shapes for energy harvesting applications

Due to the increasing demand for harvesting energy from environmental vibration, for use in self-powered electronic applications, cantilever-based vibration energy harvesting has attracted great interest from various parties and become one of the most common approaches to convert redundant mechanical energy into electrical energy. As the output voltage produces from a piezoelectric material depends greatly on the geometric shape and the size of the beam, there is a need to model and compare the performance of cantilever beams of differing geometries. This paper presents the study of strain distribution in various shapes of cantilever beams, including a convex and concave edge profile elliptical beams that have been overseen in most of the prior literature. Both analytical and finite element models are derived and the resultant strain distributions in the beam are computed based on MATLAB solver and ANSYS finite element analysis tools. An optimum geometry for a vibration-based energy harvester system is verified. Lastly, experimental results comparing the power density for a triangular and rectangular piezoelectric beams are also presented to validate the finding of the study and the claim as suggested in the literature is verified