1,609 research outputs found
Payout Policy in the 21st Century
We survey 384 CFOs and Treasurers, and conduct in-depth interviews with an additional two dozen, to determine the key factors that drive dividend and share repurchase policies. We find that managers are very reluctant to cut dividends, that dividends are smoothed through time, and that dividend increases are tied to long-run sustainable earnings but much less so than in the past. Rather than increasing dividends, many firms now use repurchases as an alternative. Paying out with repurchases is viewed by managers as being more flexible than using dividends, permitting a better opportunity to optimize investment. Managers like to repurchase shares when they feel their stock is undervalued and in an effort to affect EPS. Dividend increases and the level of share repurchases are generally paid out of residual cash flow, after investment and liquidity needs are met. Financial executives believe that retail investors have a strong preference for dividends, in spite of the tax disadvantage relative to repurchases. In contrast, executives believe that institutional investors as a class have no strong preference between dividends and repurchases. In general, management views provide at most moderate support for agency, signaling, and clientele hypotheses of payout policy. Tax considerations play only a secondary role. By highlighting where the theory and practice of corporate payout policy are consistent and where they are not, we attempt to shed new light on important unresolved issues related to payout policy in the 21st century.
Effective Confinement as Origin of the Equivalence of Kinetic Temperature and Fluctuation-Dissipation Ratio in a Dense Shear Driven Suspension
We study response and velocity autocorrelation functions for a tagged
particle in a shear driven suspension governed by underdamped stochastic
dynamics. We follow the idea of an effective confinement in dense suspensions
and exploit a time-scale separation between particle reorganization and
vibrational motion. This allows us to approximately derive the
fluctuation-dissipation theorem in a "hybrid" form involving the kinetic
temperature as an effective temperature and an additive correction term. We
show numerically that even in a moderately dense suspension the latter is
negligible. We discuss similarities and differences with a simple toy model, a
single trapped particle in shear flow
On the attractors of two-dimensional Rayleigh oscillators including noise
We study sustained oscillations in two-dimensional oscillator systems driven
by Rayleigh-type negative friction. In particular we investigate the influence
of mismatch of the two frequencies. Further we study the influence of external
noise and nonlinearity of the conservative forces. Our consideration is
restricted to the case that the driving is rather weak and that the forces show
only weak deviations from radial symmetry. For this case we provide results for
the attractors and the bifurcations of the system. We show that for rational
relations of the frequencies the system develops several rotational excitations
with right/left symmetry, corresponding to limit cycles in the four-dimensional
phase space. The corresponding noisy distributions have the form of hoops or
tires in the four-dimensional space. For irrational frequency relations, as
well as for increasing strength of driving or noise the periodic excitations
are replaced by chaotic oscillations.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figure
Effects of ethanolic and aqueous leaf extracts of Bryophyllum pinnatum on haematological parameters of normal and streptozotocin–induced diabetic rats
The effect of the oral administration of both ethanolic and aqueous leaf extracts from Bryophyllum pinnatum (BP) on haematological parameters of normal and streptozotocin - induced (STZ) diabetic rat was investigated. Twenty-five male Wister rats were used and divided into five groups of five rats each. They were designated as (Normal Control – NC, Diabetic Control – DC, Diabetic Ethanolic Extract – DEE, Diabetic Aqueous Extract – DAE, and Normal Aqueous Extract – NAE). Groups NC and DC served as ‘control’ animals receiving food and water only. Groups DC, DEE and DAE were injected intraperitoneally with 65mg/kg body weight streptozotocin. Induction of diabetes mellitus was confirmed after 48 hours using glucose test strips. The test rats were all treated with 100mg/kgbwt ethanolic and aqueous leaf extracts of Bryophyllum pinnatum for 28days. At the end of the 28days, the rats were sacrificed and whole blood collected for Haematological assay. Results obtained showed a significant difference(P<0.05) in White Blood Cell (WBC), Red Blood Cell (RBC), Platelet (PLT), Haemoglobin (HBG), Packed Cell Volume (PCV), Mean Cell Volume (MCV), Mean Cell Haemoglobin (MCH), Mean Cell Haemoglobin Concentration (MCHC) and Lymphocytes (LYM) in treated rats with BP leaf extracts when compared to the diabetic and normal control groups
Hybrid simulations of lateral diffusion in fluctuating membranes
In this paper we introduce a novel method to simulate lateral diffusion of
inclusions in a fluctuating membrane. The regarded systems are governed by two
dynamic processes: the height fluctuations of the membrane and the diffusion of
the inclusion along the membrane. While membrane fluctuations can be expressed
in terms of a dynamic equation which follows from the Helfrich Hamiltonian, the
dynamics of the diffusing particle is described by a Langevin or Smoluchowski
equation. In the latter equations, the curvature of the surface needs to be
accounted for, which makes particle diffusion a function of membrane
fluctuations. In our scheme these coupled dynamic equations, the membrane
equation and the Langevin equation for the particle, are numerically integrated
to simulate diffusion in a membrane. The simulations are used to study the
ratio of the diffusion coefficient projected on a flat plane and the
intramembrane diffusion coefficient for the case of free diffusion. We compare
our results with recent analytical results that employ a preaveraging
approximation and analyze the validity of this approximation. A detailed
simulation study of the relevant correlation functions reveals a surprisingly
large range where the approximation is applicable.Comment: 12 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.
Escape from a metastable well under a time-ramped force
Thermally activated escape of an over-damped particle from a metastable well
under the action of a time-ramped force is studied. We express the mean first
passage time (MFPT) as the solution to a partial differential equation, which
we solve numerically for a model case. We discuss two approximations of the
MFPT, one of which works remarkably well over a wide range of loading rates,
while the second is easy to calculate and can provide a valuable first
estimate.Comment: 9 pages, including 2 figure
Hydrodynamic lift on bound vesicles
Bound vesicles subject to lateral forces such as arising from shear flow are
investigated theoretically by combining a lubrication analysis of the bound
part with a scaling approach to the global motion. A minor inclination of the
bound part leads to significant lift due to the additive effects of lateral and
tank-treading motions. With increasing shear rate, the vesicle unbinds from the
substrate at a critical value. Estimates are in agreement with recent
experimental data.Comment: 9 pages, one figur
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