We present a new approach to examining the dividend signalling hypothesis by investigating dividend resumptions by former payers. Evidence regarding the signalling hypothesis has been mixed to date. In support of previous work, we find that dividend policy is sticky, whereby the achievement of profitability does not necessarily lead to the resumption of dividend payment. We find no evidence of ...

The last twenty years have witnessed the rise of disaggregated “clusters” or “networks” of firms. In these clusters the activities of R&D, product design, production, logistics and selling may be split up among hundreds or even thousands of firms. Different firms will design and produce the different modules of a complex artifact (like the processor, peripherals, and software of a computer syst...

Hospitals have been merging with and acquiring nearby facilities, creating local and regional chains that potentially wield greater bargaining leverage than do stand-alone facilities.1 Concerns over the potential impact of health reform on hospital consolidation and pricing have been raised recently in Massachusetts and California, where hospital mergers and large hospital systems have been ass...

recovery of used products is receiving much attention recently due to growing environmental concerns.in this paper, we address the carbon footprint basedon problem arising in closed-loop supply chain where returned products are collected from customers. these returned products can either be disposed or be remanufactured to be sold as new ones again. here, we formulate a comprehensive closed-loo...

This paper utilizes unique survey data on labor union coverage at the firm level to examine union effects on the profitability of 705 U.S. companies during the 1970s. Market value and earnings are estimated to be about 10-15 percent lower in an average unionized company than in a nonunion company, following extensive control for firm and industry characteristics. Deleterious union effects on fi...

This paper unifies the growth and profit strands in the empirical banking literature. A model allowing for bi-directional causality between growth and profit is used to test for the law of proportionate effect (LPE) and persistence of profit (POP), using 1990s European banking data. Larger commercial banks grew faster than smaller ones. The LPE describes the growth of savings and co-operative b...

The economic interpretations of the slave economies of the New World, a s well a s those social interpretations which adopt the neoclassical economic model but leave the economics out, assume everything they must prove. By retreating from the political economy from which their own methods derive, they ignore the extent to which the economic process permeates the society. They ignore, that is, t...

Sow production indicators, including litter size, litter weight, and the length of time that sows remained in the herd (sow longevity), were used to characterize sow performance and profitability. Sow longevity and production records from 148,568 sows in 32 commercial herds from Central Illinois from January 1995 to May 2001 were analyzed using survival and repeatability models, respectively. T...

25 The taxi sector presents many challenges to adequately serve the demand while maximising 26 efficiency and profitability and minimising externalities. Many authors have dealt with the 27 ‘taxi industry’ by modelling and forecasting its activity, usually using limited, incomplete or 28 no trustable data to validate their model. The present paper tackles a different point of view. 29 The appli...