Dividend policy has long been an issue of interest in the financial literature. To date, a number of studies published on agency costs and dividend policy but most of them are on developed markets, It is well known that the emerging markets are quite different from developed markets in all respects. So, the existing published evidence is of limited relevance in identifying the influence of agen...

We investigate conditions in which more accurate metacognition may lead to greater susceptibility to illusion and thus conditions under which mindfulness meditation may lead to less accurate perceptions. Specifically, greater awareness of intentions may lead to an illusory compression of time between a voluntary action and its outcome ("intentional binding"). Here, we report that experienced Bu...

A Symposium on Lead Remediation Effectiveness, sponsored by the US Environmental Protection Agency, was held at Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, USA from 22-25 May, 2000. International participants from various levels of government, educational institutions, industry, and community representatives presented papers and posters on themes that ranged from engineering practices through community participation...

In this paper, I use Anthony Giddens’ theory of structuration to examine the issue of human agency in the economic reform in China. As part of my preliminary dissertation research, interviews and archival research are conducted in order to explore the roles played by human agency of laobaixing (common people) in the historic era of structural change in China since 1978. I conclude that the agen...

In the European Union, the Committee for Advanced Therapies of the European Medicines Agency takes the lead in the scientific assessment for marketing authorization applications for advanced therapy medicinal products, which include gene therapy medicinal products, somatic cell therapy medicinal products, and tissue-engineered products. The Committee for Advanced Therapies also takes the lead i...

This paper gives an example of how predictive models of the deterioration of reinforced concrete pipes and the consequences of failure can be used to develop risk-based replacement strategies for redundant reinforced concrete pipe networks. It also shows how an accurate deterioration prediction can lead to a reduction of agency costs, and illustrates the limitation of the incremental interventi...

In an e!ort to standardize evaluations of agency communications with stakeholders, a recent NASA report outlined the need to consider metrics that could be used to measure e!ectiveness over time by monitoring communications output and examining the outcome of communication activities. While evaluating agency communications in this way seems straightforward, actually carrying out such an evaluat...