Share Repurchases and Acquisitions: An Analysis of Which Firms Participate

Firms can transmit cash to shareholders either by paying dividends or by purchasing shares. The share purchases can be either the firm's own securities or those of another firm. Recent evidence suggests that there has been a dramatic increase in the use of these nondividend payments to shareholders. This paper reviews the theories which have been offered regarding the motivation of nondividend payments. These include taxation advantages, adjustment towards optimal debt-equity ratios, anti-takeover strategies, free cash flow (agency) considerations, signaling, and habit formation or learning. From these theories, we derive and investigate econometrically potential characteristics which predict participation in the above actions for roughly 2.000 firms in 1976 and 1984. We find the variables suggested by the various hypotheses collectively have substantial power in predicting participation in share repurchase and acquisitions. The free cash flow and habit forming arguments prove most consistent with our findings. Tests for structural change across time confirm an intercept shift consistent with dramatic increases in these activities, and fail to reject that the characteristic determinants of these actions are unchanged.

Conspicuous Consumption, Pure Profits, and the Luxury Tax

We examine a model of conspicuous consumption and explore the nature of competition in markets for conspicuous goods. We assume that, in addition to intrinsic utility, individuals seek status, and that perceptions of wealth affect status. Under identifiable conditions, the model generates Veblen effects: utility is positively related to the price of the good consumed. Equilibria are then characterized by the existence of "budget' brands (which are sold at a price equal to marginal cost), as well as 'luxury" brands (which are sold at a price above marginal cost, despite the fact that producers are perfectly competitive). Luxury brands are not intrinsically superior to budget brands but are purchased by consumers who seek to signal high levels of wealth. Within the context of this model, an appropriately designed luxury tax is a non-distortionary tax on pure profits.

Visualising text co-occurrence networks

We present a tool for automatically generating a visual summary of unstructured text data retrieved from documents, web sites or social media feeds. Unlike tools such as word clouds, we are able to visualise structures and topic relationships occurring in a document. These relationships are determined by a unique approach to co-occurrence analysis. The algorithm applies a decaying function to the distance between word pairs found in the original text such that words regularly occurring close to each other score highly, but even words occurring some distance apart will make a small contribution to the overall co-occurrence score. This is in contrast to other algorithms which simply count adjacent words or use a sliding window of fixed size. We show, with examples, how the network generated can be presented in tree or graph format. The tree format allows for the user to interact with the visualisation and expand or contract the data to a preferred level of detail. The tool is available as a web application and can be viewed using any modern web browse

Steel column response to thermal and long duration blast loads inside an air blast tunnel

This paper is closed access until 11 July 2020.All explosions emit both thermal and blast energy. In recent years there have been several accidental explosive events that have emitted high thermal loads with the potential to cause thermo-mechanical damage to structures. Attempts to experimentally simulate these thermal loads and observe the response of structures to combined thermal and blast loads have not proven successful. This paper focuses on the design of, and results from a series of experimental trials investigating the response of steel columns to combined thermal loads from ceramic heating elements and long-duration blast loads within an Air Blast Tunnel (ABT). The combined effect of compressive loads from heavy-duty springs is also shown. The trials concluded that the ceramic heating elements were suitable to heat steel columns to levels initiating thermo-mechanical damage. Results from the tests showed an increased structural response in the columns subject to high thermal, compressive and blast loads compared to the isolated blast load. Numerical modelling of the columns is detailed and compared to trial results, providing validation for the computational methods. The experimental trials set a benchmark for future trials and provided results to validate the synergistic response of steel structures to combined blast and thermal loads from explosive events

Stress corrosion of Ni-based superalloys

The development of gas turbines to increase fuel efficiency is resulting in progressively higher operating temperatures in the under platform regions of the blades. These regions have traditionally been considered low risk areas. However, higher metal temperatures combined with stresses and the deposition of contaminants from the cooling air system may result in complex degradation mechanisms. Static stress corrosion testing has been conducted on C-ring specimens at a range of stresses in a hot corrosion environment. Cracks were observed in C-rings after exposure times greater than 100 h. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) systems were used to image cracks and characterise deposits to improve understanding of the mechanism. Finite element analysis (FEA) has been used to model the stress intensity under test conditions. CMSX-4 specimens subject to static stresses combined with hot corrosion demonstrated significant material degradation (crack initiation and propagation) suggesting a combined stress corrosion mechanism resulting in cracking

Controversies Revisited : A Systematic Review of the Comorbidity of Depression and Anxiety with Inflammatory Bowel Diseases.

BACKGROUND: Although mental health concerns are known to occur commonly for those with inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), the nature of this comorbid relationship has not been systematically reviewed to date. A review in 2007 identified 5 controversies regarding anxiety/depression rates and various comparators between and within IBD. We aimed to systematically analyze and critique the current evidence regarding this comorbidity, providing an update to the 5 controversies. METHODS: Ebscohost Medline, CINAHL, Embase, and PsychINFO were searched between 2005 and 2014 using systematic review methodology. Controlled quantitative studies examining either symptoms or diagnoses of anxiety and depression in IBD were included in the review, with study quality assessed using a scale developed a priori to evaluate observational research. RESULTS: (1) IBD versus healthy controls (pooled mean proportions) (n = 13 studies): anxiety 19.1% versus 9.6%, depression 21.2% versus 13.4%; (2) IBD inactive versus IBD active disease (n = 26): anxiety 28.2% versus 66.4%, depression 19.9% versus 34.7%; (3) ulcerative colitis versus Crohn's disease (n = 28): anxiety 31% versus 37%, depression 22% versus 24.4%; (4) IBD versus other chronic medical conditions (n = 17): anxiety 41.9% versus 48.2%, depression 14.5% versus 28.4%; (5) onset of anxiety/depression before or after IBD onset (n = 2): adults more likely to develop anxiety/depression before IBD onset, but a substantial proportion develops depression after onset; an increased risk for children of developing anxiety/depression after IBD onset. CONCLUSIONS: The high rates of anxiety and depression for those with IBD, particularly when disease is active, warrant a systemic approach to screening and treatmen

Corrosion fatigue testing: the combined effect of stress and high temperature corrosion

A corrosive environment can have a detrimental effect on the fatigue life of a material due to a change in failure mechanism. Attempts have been made to replicate this change on nickel-base superalloy CMSX-4 cast in the orientation. Fatigue testing in air, of this material typically produces a fracture on an angle of approximately 55° which is consistent with the fracture having propagated on a {111} slip plane. The aim of the research was to fatigue test in a corrosive environment with the purpose of producing a crack/fracture which deviated from the typical angle and thus confirm that the corrosive environment had affected the fatigue mechanism. It was concluded that the change in mechanism to high temperature corrosion fatigue was associated with a reduced load application rate together with precorroding the test specimens to trigger the initiation of the corrosion fatigue mechanism

Effect of recycled manure solids as bedding on bulk tank milk and implications for cheese microbiological quality

The dairy farm environment influences the raw milk microbiota and consequently affects milk processing. Therefore, it is crucial to investigate farm management practices such as the bedding materials. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of recycled manure sol-ids (RMS) as bedding material on bulk tank milk and microbiological implications for cheese quality. Bulk tank samples were collected from 84 dairy farms using RMS or straw bedding. The use of RMS did not influ-ence thermophilic and mesophilic aerobic viable counts from spores. However, straw-milk samples gave higher values for mesophilic anaerobic spore-forming bacteria (0.44 log cfu/mL) than RMS-milk samples (0.17 log cfu/mL). The presence of thermoresistant lactic acid bacteria was not increased in milk from farms using RMS. Nevertheless, taxonomic profiles of thermoresis-tant bacteria isolated were different between the 2 types of milk. More Enterococcus faecalis and Streptococcusspp. were identified in RMS-milk samples. Thermore-sistant enterococci and streptococci could easily end up in cheese. Therefore, milk proteolytic activities of these isolates were tested. Neither Streptococcus spp. nor Enterococcus faecium isolates exhibited proteolytic ac-tivities, whereas 53% of E. faecalis showed some. Also, only 1 vancomycin-resistant enterococcus was detected. Survival of selected RMS-milk samples isolates (3 E. faecalis and 1 Streptococcus thermophilus) was evalu-ated during a model Cheddar cheese manufacture. Al-though those strains survived well, they did not modify the acidification curve of milk. However, they might cause organoleptic defects during cheese maturing

Interaction of hot corrosion fatigue and load dwell periods on a nickel-base single crystal superalloy

The effects of type II hot corrosion on the fatigue resistance of turbine blade superalloys is of growing interest as gas turbine (GT) original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) strive to optimise the operational efficiencies and versatilities of GT systems. Hot corrosion fatigue has been observed in the under platform regions of first stage GT blades, this location is subject to both relatively high principal stresses and stress gradients, combined with temperatures up to those associated with type II hot corrosion (500–700 °C). The effect of the deposition flux of corrosive salt species and the tensile stress dwell period on the fatigue performance and resultant crack morphologies of single crystal (SC) superalloy CMSX-4 has been studied at 550 °C. Deposit recoat methodologies were applied to specimens that were cyclically fatigued with a load-controlled trapezoidal waveform. It was observed that introducing a longer dwell period increased the number of {1 0 0} crack initiations and reduced the fatigue life (load cycles to failure). Optical and SEM microscopy and EDX techniques were used to examine specimen fractography, and mechanisms of crack advance and propagation discussed