Influence of the C/N/P ratio on nitrate removal in a denitrifying biofilm fluidized bed reactor

IV Iberian Congress on Biotechnology; I Ibero-American Meeting on Biotechnolog

Signalling with dividends? new evidence from Europe

According to the dividend signalling hypothesis, dividend change announcements trigger share returns because they convey information about management’s assessment on firms’ future prospects. We analyse the classical assumptions of the dividend signalling hypothesis, using data from three European countries. The evidence gives no support to a positive relation between dividend change announcements and the market reaction for French firms, and only weak support for the Portuguese and UK firms. After accounting for non-linearity in the mean reversion process, the global results do not give support to the assumption that dividend change announcements are positively related with future earnings changes. We also formulate two hypotheses in order to explore the window dressing phenomenon and the maturity hypothesis, finding some evidence in favour of both, especially in the UK market

Self-Similarity of Friction Laws

The change of the friction law from a mesoscopic level to a macroscopic level is studied in the spring-block models introduced by Burridge-Knopoff. We find that the Coulomb law is always scale invariant. Other proposed scaling laws are only invariant under certain conditions.}Comment: Plain TEX. Figures not include

Lower propensity to pay dividends? new evidence from Europe

Recently, some empirical studies reported the phenomenon of the low propensity of firms to dividend payment, concluding that companies have become less likely to pay dividends. In addition, the major parts of these studies sustain the investors’ expectations regarding dividend payments also decreased. We analyse the propensity to pay dividends in three European markets: Portugal, France and the UK. Although they are all European markets, they are different from each other for several reasons. Firstly, the UK is one of the most important European capital markets, whereas the French and Portuguese markets are smaller, specially Portugal, that is a very small market compared to other Western European markets. Additionally, these two markets are less intensively researched. Secondly, we have differences in these countries associated with the ownership of equity. In Portugal and France ownership tends to be more concentrated than in the UK. Thirdly, Portugal and France are bank-based system, whereas the UK is a market-based system. Finally, the legal rules covering protection of corporate shareholders is different in the three countries. While the UK is a country of Anglo-Saxon influence, the other two countries are characterised by a continental influence. We find evidence of the decline of firms paying dividends, except for the French market. Moreover, we find evidence suggesting that the Portuguese market does not have such a smoothing dividend policy like the US or the UK markets, but it has a more volatile dividend policy, such as the case of the German market

The phenomenon of the adverse market reaction to dividend change announcements: new Eeidence from Europe

The dividend policy is one of the most debated topics in the finance literature. According to the dividend signalling hypothesis, which has motivated a significant amount of theoretical and empirical research, dividend change announcements trigger share returns because they convey information about management’s assessment on firms’ future prospects. Consequently, a dividend increase (decrease) should be followed by an improvement (reduction) in a firm’s value. Although there are empirical evidence supporting the positive relationship between dividend change announcements and the subsequent share price reactions, some studies have not supported this idea. Furthermore, several studies found evidence of a significant percentage of cases where share prices reactions are opposite to the dividend changes direction, like the works of Asquith and Mullins (1983), Benesh, Keown and Pinkerton (1984), Born, Mozer and Officer (1988), Dhillon and Johnson (1994) Healy, Hathorn and Kirch (1997), and, more recently, Vieira (2005). We introduce a new approach to investigate the relationship between the market reaction to dividend changes and future earnings changes with the purpose of understanding why the market sometimes reacts negatively (positively) to dividend increases (decreases). We find only weak evidence for the dividend information content hypothesis. The Portuguese results suggest that the adverse market reaction to dividendchange announcements is basically due to the fact that the market does not understand the signal given by firms though dividend change announcements. Moreover, we find no evidence of the inverse signalling effect, except for the UK market. The results suggest that the UK market investors have more capability to predict future earnings than the investors of the Portuguese and the French markets