Food Allergys Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Food Allergys - Essay Example Family background and age seem to be known causes of certain allergies. Hay fever, asthma, hives and eczema can be traced back to specific family backgrounds. While allergies such as milk, soy, wheat and eggs are considered to be more age related and occur mostly in children. In adults, food allergies are most commonly connected with the ingestion of peanuts, fish and shellfish. Recent studies also suggest that an immune system defect may also cause food allergies. Dr. Claudio Nicoletti of the Institute of Food Research in the United Kingdom believes that an allergy happens in 2 stages. He explains that "There are two stages to food allergy. The first is sensitisation, when the immune system starts producing an antibody in response to eating a food. The second is when that food is eaten for a second time, triggering an allergic reaction. We have identified an immune response malfunction that occurs in the sensitisation stage, which could provide a target for future therapies," (qtd. in FoodQuality news.com) Food Allergies are estimated to occur in 6 to 8 percent of infants and young children. A number of these children outgrow their Food Allergies over the first three to five years of life.

Half The Sky Essay Example for Free

Half The Sky Essay With Pulitzer Prize winners Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn are great authors who give us true stories of girls and woman from Africa and Asia and their extraordinary struggles. We view the Cambodian teenager sold into sex slavery and an Ethiopian woman who suffered devastating injuries in childbirth. Drawing on the breadth of their combined reporting experience, Kristof and WuDunn view our world with anger, sadness, clarity, and, ultimately, hope. Through these stories, Kristof and WuDunn help us see that the key to economic progress lies in unleashing women’s potential. They make clear how so many people have helped to do just that, and how we can each do our part. In much of the world, the greatest unemployed economic resource is the female half of the population. Countries such as China have prospered precisely because they emancipated women and brought them into the formal economy. Realistic, and inspirational, this book is essential reading for everyone. They tell of an attempt to help a woman dying in childbirth in an African hospital, and the institutional, social, and financial problems that block efforts. They discuss how their support for legalization of prostitution was undercut by the more sordid reality they discovered behind the apparent success of just such a legal zone in India (in Kolkata), and examine how legalization of prostitution in the Netherlands compares as an anti-trafficking technique with the criminalization of sex-service purchases in Sweden. They point out how the campaign against female circumcision has been set back by the campaigners’ use of terminology (â€Å"female genital mutilation†) that turned the people they wanted to help against them. Kristof and WuDunn emphasis how important it is for individuals speaking up and resisting—but it’s here that their proposals (or, at least, their exhortations) seem questionable. (Mukhtar Mai) name we have heard before, Usha Narayane, and Sunitha Krishnan are clearly remarkable women, and deserve every support, but it is also true that they are very brave, and driven individuals—and lucky, because of their risk.

The Miller And Modigliani Capital Structure Irrelevance Theorem Finance Essay

The Miller And Modigliani Capital Structure Irrelevance Theorem Finance Essay Contrary to Modigliani and Miller (1958, MM hereafter), Capital Structure is not irrelevant when we consider a firm with a dividend payout policy. This article extends the MM capital structure theorem by relaxing the full payout assumption and introducing retention policy. The theoretical contribution shows that it is possible to verify the theorem when we suppose an investor who exchanges his initial holding for another portfolio composed of consumption and investment. The empirical analysis of this new approach is based on a data set of the USA Electric Utilities and Oil companies for the period 1990-1998. The results show that the relationships between leverage and firm value are significantly affected by the firms payout ratio. 1. Introduction Miller and Modiglianis (1958) irrelevance theorem is one of the important and puzzling issues in modern corporate finance theory [1], which has challenged the traditional view[2], that an optimum leverage exists. The main source of the puzzle stems from the fact that financial research dont seem to explain the firm financing behaviour as we attempt to reconcile the MM theory with the evidence(Myers 1984, Gordon1994, Rajan and Zingales1995). The MM theorem(proposition I) has shown that under a perfect market hypothesis the market value of any firm is independent of its capital structure (Stulz2006). This fundamental proposition explicitly indicates that the aptitude of investors to engage in personal or homemade leverage is sufficient to ensure that corporate leverage in itself cannot modify the total market value of the firm [3]. In other words, the theorem provides conditions under which arbitrage by individuals keeps the value of the firm depend only on cash flow generated by the i nvestment policy. Literature about the validity of the MM-proposition is discussed about whether investors can really accomplish the required conditions of the arbitrage method without changing the overall value of the company. In this context, many authors have shown the inadequacy of the theorem when variables that deal with the real world are introduced. Following the seminal paper of MM (1958), most theories have been put forward in corporate finance to reconcile the shortcomings of the irrelevance theorem with variables that explain the firms choice of capital structure. According to the previous debate, criticism against this theorem can be grouped in two types of arguments: on the one hand, there are papers which deal with the limitations of the arbitrage conditions; on the other hand, there are studies which analyze the effect of market imperfections on the firms choice of capital structure. Despite the importance of these interventions, we note that all of the limitations deal with the explicit assumptions used by MM, but none deals with the critiques of the MMs implicit assumptions. More recently, DeAngelo and DeAngelo (2006, DD hereafter) have challenged MMs irrelevance dividend policy. Dealing with this alternative of earnings as fully distributed, these authors have showed the irrelevance of the MM dividend irrelevance theo rem when MMs assumptions are relaxed to allow retention. As DeAngelo and DeAngelo(2006, page 294) wrote When MMs assumptions are modified to allow retention with the NPV of Investment policy fixed, a firm can reduce its value by paying out less than the full present value of FCF, and so Payout policy matters and Investment policy is not the sole determinant of value . According to DD(2006), the MMs irrelevance theorem forces firms to choose only among dividend policies that distribute the full present value of free cash flow(FCF) to shareholders. Distributions below the totality of earnings are ruled out by the implicit hypothesis. Dealing with this alternative of fully-distributed earnings, MM(1958) used the same hypothesis in the development of the irrelevance of capital structure.. As pointed by the authors à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦.as will become clear later, as long as management is presumed to be acting in the best interests of the stockholders, retained earnings can be regarded as equivalent to a fully subscribed, pre-emptive issue of common stock. Hence, for present purposes, the division of the stream between cash dividends and retained earnings in any period is a mere detail. MM, 1958 p266. However, MM(1958) failed to recognize that proposition I implies that firms distribute all their cash flow to shareholders without paying any attention to their retention policy. This paper constitutes a new extended proof of the MM theorem by not considering the hypothesis of earnings as fully distributed. We will show that it is possible to verify the theorem when we suppose an investor who exchanges his initial holding fo r a mix of consumption and investment. The rest of the paper is organized as follows: in the next section, we demonstrate the irrelevance of the MMs capital structure irrelevance when earnings are not fully distributed. We propose the possibility of extending of the MM theorem. Furthermore, we show that the two firms are not forced to distribute their full earnings; and the irrelevance is hold in the presence of the mix of investment and consumption. Section III describes the data set, introduces the methodology, examines the hypothesis of the variables and investigates whether the empirical Modigliani-Miller capital structure irrelevance is influenced by dividend payout ratio. Section IV provides some concluding remarks. 2. How do we reconcile MMs capital structure irrelevant theorem with the firms payout choice? 2.1 The failure of the MM theorem when earnings are not fully distributed. As indicated by Rubinstein (2003), the law of the conservation of investment value of MM(1958) was anticipated by many studies (Fisher (1930), Williams[5] (1938), Durand (1952); Morton (1954) for examples) but none of these authors have used arbitrage mechanism to prove the invariance of the cost of capital under changes in leverage. The MMs theorem demonstrates that under certain hypothesis of market conditions, the value of the firm is independent of its debt-equity ratio and is given by capitalizing the expected return generated by its assets. This model can be expressed as: for any firm j in class k (1) Where V stands for the market value of the firm, S for the market value of its common shares, D for the market value of its debts, X for its expected earnings before interest on its assets, for the capitalization rate appropriate to its class. The analysis of the MMs arbitrage steps shows the implicit hypothesis of full payout ratio which plays a crucial role in the model. The MMs capital structure irrelevance theorem constrains firms to distribute all of their earnings. In particular, we note that the validity of the proof developed by MM is based on this implicit assumption. MM(1958) consider (see MM(1958) pages 269-270 ) the return of the investor Y as a fraction of the net income available (X-rD for levered firm and X for unlevered firm) for the stockholders. (2) Where: is the return of the investor before arbitrage process, L is levered firm and U is Unlevred firm and is fraction of the total outstanding shares owned by the investor. Obviously, MM(1958) confuse artificially return of the investor(dividend return) and net income which should be distributed between dividend and retention. MM(1958 page 266) assert that the division of the stream between cash dividends and retained earnings in any period is a mere detail. When we derive the MM capital structure theorem for firms that are not distributing all their earnings as dividends, it follows a non-adequacy of the arbitrage operations, a non-proof of the irrelevance model. Table I shows the two cases used by MM(1958) when we introduce a level of payout different from 100%. Therefore, when we use the same arbitrage as MM(1958), we must then admit that the two firms distribute all the available income to verify the leverage irrelevance proposition. As will be shown later, this assumption can modify the validity of the MM theorem. To justify this thesis, we suppose the same steps of the MM first proposition but with a slight difference: here we suppose that firms are not constrained to distribute all of their earnings. This means that we introduce in the arbitrage reasoning the payout ratio (PR) as a new variable. Table I below shows that MM theorem is not verified. The difference between returns (before and after arbitrage operations) is not the sa me as showed by MM (1958). Table I. The irrelevance of the MM capital structure irrelevance when payout ratio is different from 100% First possibility  : VL > VU Second possibility  : VU > VL First stage  : the initial return of the investor YL Second Stage: Arbitrage process Sold his initial worth of the firm L Borrows an additional amount dL with the same interest rate r Acquired new shares of the firm u sold his initial worth of the firm U Acquired new shares of the firm L Acquired new bonds b of the firm L Third stage: the return of the investor YU Final stage: Difference of earnings à ¢Ã‹â€ Ã¢â‚¬  Y= YU -YL Interpretations It is not possible to verify the MM results when we introduce the hypothesis of payout ratio different from 100%, the difference of returns will depend on the all components of the equation. When we pose PRL=PRU=1, it is easy to obtain the same difference of returns as MM(1958): or Notes: Using the MM formulation, we consider two firms L and U, for which the expected return is the same XL = XU = X. Company U is financed entirely by stock SU and company L by stock SL and debt D. The market value of each firm is then VU = SU and VL = SL + D, We denote PRL and PRU the payout ratios of the levered and unlevered firms (MM 1958 suppose PRL = PRU = 100% all expected return is distributed).sL =SL, sU =SU denote the value of shares owned respectively by an investor in the levered and unlevered firm with a fraction 2.2 The possibility of extension;The two firms are not obliged to distribute all their income: the mix of investment and consumption solution. The object of this section is to show that it is possible to demonstrate MMs proposition I without the hypothesis of earnings are fully distributed. In other words, we present an extension of the MM capital structure theorem for the case in which firms are allowed to have a payout policy. To prove this new proposition, we suppose the same hypothesis used by MM (1958), except that earnings are not fully distributed. Using the MM formulation, we consider two firms U, L for which the expected return is the same XL = XU = X. Company U is financed entirely by stock SU and company L by stock SL and debt D. The market value of each firm is then VU = SU and VL = SL + D. * Case 1: we suppose the value of the levered firm VL , to be greater than that of the Unlevered firm VU ( ). We denote respectively, PRL and PRU the payout ratios of the levered and unlevered firms (MM 1958 page 269) suppose PRL = PRU = 100% all expected return is distributed). First stage (initial return): consider an investor who owns sL dollars worth of the stock in the company L representing a fraction of the total outstanding shares SL, where sL= SL. His return YL can be written as: (3) The return from this portfolio, denoted by YL, will be a fraction of the income distributed for the stockholders of company L, which equals the multiplication of the payout ratio PRL by the difference between to total return X and the interest charge r DL. Where, r is the interest rate which the firm pays on its debt D. Second Stage (Arbitrage process): now suppose that an individual investor who adjusts his own personal leverage in order to increase his profits. He makes the following operations: (a ) Sold his worth sL of the company L and he divided it as follows: (i) he partially invested an amount IU = PRL.sL (which equals: IU=PRLSL) in acquiring shares (ii) he consumes the remainder CL= (1-PRL)SL. where sL= IU + CL . (b) Borrowed an additional amount . (c) Acquired an amount of the shares of the company U. He could so by using the amount IU from the sales of his initial holding and the amount d from borrowing. Third Stage (the new return): the income of the investor ((i) who holds sU dollars worth of the shares of the company U (ii) and who must pay interest of personal debt d would be: (4) Last Stage: Arbitrage profit: Comparing (4) with (3) we obtain: (5) Thus, under this approach we can distinguish two situations: First situation: If PRU= PRL = 1 then we find the same result as obtained by MM (1958 page 270). (6) Second situation: We can also verify the same result of MM(1958 page 270) without the hypothesis of PRU = PRL = 1, we can simply assume PRU = 1, while the payout ratio of the levered firm PRL is likely to vary between 0% and 100%, we get then: (7) From equation (7), we conclude that as long we must verify, so that it pays shareholders of corporation L to sell their investments, by this means decreasing SL and hence VL, and replace them with a mix of consumption and portfolio investment, which contains shares of the unlevered firm and personal debt, thereby growing SU and thus VU. This arbitrage process will be finished when equilibrium restores the stated equalities between the values of the two firms. * Case 2: we suppose the value of the unlevered firm VU , to be larger than that of the Levered one VL ( ). First stage: The return of the investor who holds sU dollars of shares of company U representing a fractionof the total outstanding stock SU . Where (8) The return from this portfolio denoted by YU will be a fraction of the income distributed to shareholders of the unlevered firm U. Second stage: suppose that the investor exchanges his initial holding in U by another portfolio in the levered firm L. The arbitrage process with consumption behaviour will take the following form: the investor sold his worth of company U: and divided it as follows: (i) He invested partially of the shares of the company L (ii) He invested also of bonds of the company L (iii) The remainder will be consumed. From IL and IB , we can write respectively: Third stage: The return of the investor (i) who holds IL dollars worth of the shares of the company L (ii) and who holds IB dollars worth of bonds of the company L. (9) Last stage: Arbitrage profit: comparing YL (from 9) with YU (from 8) we obtain: (10) In order to get a profitable arbitrage opportunity for the investor, we must consider a positive difference of returns. Analysing equation (10), we can easily formulate two possibility of payout ratio: In the first, if we suppose a full earning model for the two firms (PRL = PRU = 1), therefore we will obtain the same results as showed by MM(1958) (page 270). According to this situation, equation (10) can be written as: (11) In the second, the MMs results can also be obtained if we just assume a full earnings for levered firm PRL= 1 while the payout ratio of the unlevered firm PRU is likely to vary between 0% and 100% implying that the firm can use a payout policy, which is not restricted to full earnings. Such a representation is written as: (12) In this context, it is also important to show that as we must obtain , hence it pays the shareholders of company U to sell their holdings and substitute them with a mix of consumption and portfolio investment, which contains shares and bonds. If, all investors in firm U will accomplish the three stages below, decrease the value of the unlevered firm U and increase the price of the levered firm L. This switching process will be over when equilibrium restores the stated equalities between the values of the two firms. From these demonstrations (case 1 and case 2) we can conclude that we are not compelled to suppose that the two firms distribute all of their returns. In other words we can make arbitrage process merely by considering that the overpriced firm (levered firm L in the first case and unlevered firm U in the second case) has a payout ratio PR which is not restricted to be 100% of the earnings. The table below summarizes the theoretical findings. Table II: the MMs arbitrage and the payout hypothesis Conditions Conclusions MMs arbitrage conditions without dividend payout MMs(1958) irrelevance theorem MMs arbitrage conditions with a payout ratio Failure of the MMs proof MMs arbitrage conditions with a payout ratio and consumption hypothesis Proof of the MMs irrelevance theorem(Extension) 3. The Empirical Analysis The previous part of this paper provides a new extension of the relationship between firm value and capital structure when the firm has a payout policy. In this section, we attempt some possible empirical tests. The central issue is, whether or not the leverage ratio affects firm value when earnings are not fully distributed?. Modigliani and Miller (1958) have taken two samples of 43 electric utilities during 1947-1948 and 42 oil companies during 1953. The data are provided respectively by two studies conducted by Allen (1954) and Smith (1955); and they estimated the weighted average cost of capital (wacc) according to the financial leverage of the firm. The regression form of the model was: (13) Where wacc is the weight cost of capital approximated by X /V , here X is the expected return net of taxes, V is the market value of all securities and the financial leverage of the firm measured by the ratio D/V, where D is the market value of Bonds and preferred stock. The results of the tests (as shown MM(1958page 282) are favourable to Modigliani and Miller (1958)s hypothesis. The values of the correlations coefficients are small and not statistically significant. Weston (1963) criticizes Modigliani-Miller empirical result. In particular, he assumes that the lack of effect of capital structure on the overall value of the firm is due to deficiency of the approach to take account of other factors that may be influencing the firms cost of capital. Contrary to MM, the author shows in the empirical tests that leverage is correlated negatively with firm value in the presence of the hypothesis of earnings growth. 3.1 Data and Methodology In order to conduct an empirical analysis similar to MMs, we have collected data on the same sectors from the same country as done by Modigliani and Miller 1958. The data we use are annual standardized financial information of US firms observed in the period 1990-1998. Our sample is formed by two sub samples: from the Electric sector we use 256 companies, and from the oil sector we take 223 companies. These data were obtained from the Worldscope Database (SIC Code 13 and 49). Contrary to Weston(1963), we consider the hypothesis of risk-class can be verified in the oil industry and the electric sector (as supposed by MM 1958). According to MM(1958), a linear model was constructed to explain the relationship between leverage and the firm value. The variables used in our regressions are constructed (see table III) as the same way as presented by these authors. The corresponding models used by MM(1958) are: For Model 1 :see MM(1958) page284 (note 38), for model 2,see MM(1958) page282; For Model 3,see MM(1958) page284 (note 39); For. With regard to the basic capital structure irrelevance theorem to be estimated; we propose three regression models as follows: Model 1: (14) Model 2: (15) Model 3: (16) Where wacc is the weighted average cost of capital; Leverage 1: first measure of leverage; ML1: modified leverage 1; Value: the ratio of the firm value; , ER: earnings ratio; DR debt ratio. The purpose of model 1 is to test the effect of leverage (as measured by Debt ratio DR) on firm value, while the Model 2 and model 3 test the effect of leverage (measured by Leverage1) on the cost of capital (measured by WACC). The variable ML1(modified leverage 1) is included in model3 to test the U-shaped hypothesis that the coefficient e of this variable should be significant and positive to confirm the traditional view, and not significantly different from zero to confirm the irrelevance theorem.. Note also that according to our approach the correlation between these variables should be different from zero. To test the validity of the MMs proposition when earnings are not fully distributed, we alternatively estimate all the above regressions in the absence (model MM58 and the model MM58supp) and the presence of the payout ratio. We validate this last alternative in two steps: In the first step, we test the models for all firms (model MMExt). In the second step, we test the models for subsamples: First Quartile sample (Firms Payout ratio is less than 25%), Second Quartile sample (firms payout ratio is between 25% and 50%), Third Quartile sample (firms payout ratio is between 50% and 75%), and Fourth Quartile sample (firms payout ratio is more than 75%). The tableIII below reports the different measures of variables and their predicted effects. Table III. Measures of variables and predicted signs Variables Symbol Measure MM Hypothesis Our Hypothesis Dependants variables Weighted average cost of capital WACC X/V Firm value ratio Value V/A The explanatory variables First measure of leverage Leverage 1 D/V Zero effect Significant effect Modified Leverage 1 measure ML1 D.D/V.S Zero effect Significant effect Earnings ratio ER X/A Debt ratio DR D/A Zero effect Significant effect Payout ratio Payout Div/NI Not tested Significant effect Notes: the table reports the different measures of variables where V: firm value= market value of equity S +market value of debt D, X: Earnings before interest and Taxes (EBIT), A: is the value of the total assets, NI net income. ML1 modified leverage 1 measure = (D/V) ²/(1-D/V). We measure the value of the Debt D by the amount of total liabilities. 3.2 Descriptive statistics As indicated in Table IV, the descriptive statistics shows that the average value of cost of capital is 5.92% for electric utilities and 4.48% for oil companies[6]. On average, we have a leverage ratio of 51.79%(37.85%), this measure is 62% (50.2%) when we use total assets as deflator . The average firm has a value ratio of 1,38 for electric utilities which is much weaker than those of oil companies (1,99). For these firms, earnings ratio ranges from 0% to 2.7% for electric utilities (0% to 66% for oil companies). In terms of net income, the average value of payout is more important for electric utilities (45%) ranging from 0% to 99,9%, than those of oil companies (16%). These results show that the division of the stream between cash dividend and retained earnings in any period is not a mere detail as supposed by Modigliani and Miller (1958 page 266). None of firms in the two samples and during the whole period (1990-1998) has distributed the totality of its income. For the normal di stribution of the series around the mean (see table IV), all of the distributions of the variables are not symmetric since their skewness values are different from zero. This conclusion is also verified by the values of the Kurtosis which are quite different from 3. Table IV. Descriptive Statistics of Variables (256 Electric Utilities and 223 Oil Companies) Variables Sample Mean Minimum Maximum Std. Dev Skewness Kurtosis Obs WACC Elect 0.05924 0.00000 0.29090 0.03188 0.292328 6.376099 2304 Oil 0.04481 0.00000 0.69582 0.05448 4.75993 42.0526 2007 Leverage1 Elect 0.51796 0.01573 0.99416 0.17873 -0.46925 3.36365 2304 Oil 0.37857 0.0000 0.98237 0.21714 0.20952 2.36431 2007 Value Elect 1.38155 0.09087 9.77112 0.82268 5.51989 45.7871 2304 Oil 1.99172 0.14447 138.56 5.40308 18.7716 397.615 2006 ER Elect 0.07353 0.0000 0.027612 0.04158 0.77790 7.94274 2304 Oil 0.06418 0.0000 0.664303 0.06683 2.104262 11.546 2007 DR Elect 0.62322 0.02761 0.995066 0.14891 -0.9991 4.78983 2304 Oil 0.50220 0.0000 0.9978 0.22065 -0.2593 2.4847 2006 ML1 Elect 1.34913 0.000252 169.346 6.6480 17.3645 344.950 2304 Oil 0.61298 0.0000 23.2454 1.5346 8.6309 103.96 2006 Payout Elect 0.45169 0.00000 0.99980 0.35978 -0.15569 1.40417 2304 Oil 0.16381 0.0000 0.9991 0.27721 1.50967 3.90646 2006 3.3 The effect of Leverage on the firm value (model 1) The MM(1958)s theorem is confronted with our hypothesis in order to know the crucial effect of payout ratio on the sensitivity of firm value to leverage. If our prediction is true, we should find a significant coefficient of leverage ratio, otherwise the MMs view should be confirmed. As indicated in table V, estimates result shows that coefficients of earning ratio (ER) and debt ratio (DR) are significantly different from zero, which fails to support the MMs view. Since our results, as presented below, demonstrate that the coefficient of debt ratio is significantly negative and contrary to the traditional view. We prefer to give more explanations of this relationship based on the presence of the payout policy. The latter has a negative influence on the two samples (see Model MMExt , table V) which is in the opposite direction as obtained by the cost of capital regressions (see tableVI). There are two main explanations for this result: According to Brigham and Gordon(1968), the relationship between stock price and leverage depends on the association between R (return on assets and investment) and i ( the rate of interest which the firm pays on its debt), not on the level of Leverage L. This can be written as: (16) Where E is the book value of the common equity per share, k is the rate at which dividend is discounted. It is evident, when R is less than i, the leverage effect on stock price P will be negative. Furthermore, the negative influence of the dividend ratio on the firm value confirms the leverage impact when the return on investment is less than the cost of debt. This means that firms experiencing lower rate of investment tend to use funds from internal and external resources to display higher payout ratio. The leverage measure is not the same: in Wacc regression, this variable is measured by debt on firm value (D/V), while in firm value regression (Value), the debt ratio is measured by debt on total Assets (D/A). The fact that both variables are divided by different deflators may be affected by a random disturbances of the market value of the firm. This bias correlation is not observed in the firm value regression. According to Modigliani and Miller (1958), the constant term in the previous regression should give more information on the value of the unlevered firm. As shown in table IV below, the estimated coefficient of this variable is not only significantly different from zero, but is quite positive and greatly relative to the coefficient of the debt ratio. This conclusion is confirmed for the two samples with large values for the oil companies. Table IV. Directs Pooled Least-Squares Estimates of the effects of leverage on the firm value Coefficients of Regressions Sample Constant ER DR Payout AdR ² Obs MM 58 Elect 1.893a -0.158a -0.805a 0.025 2304 Oil 2.464a -6.730a -0.668 0.048 2007 MM Ext Elect 1.963a -0.131a -0.466a -0.625a 0.095 2304 Oil 2.465a -6.703a -0.642 -0.086 0.048 2007 First Quartile Elect 1.969a -0.133b -0.412c 0.005 801 Oil 2.342a -7.490a -0.286 0.052 1440 Second Quartile Elect 1.465a 2.650a -0.554a 0.187 216 Oil 1.659a -0.197 -0.501a 0.033 279 Third Quartile Elect 1.206a 1.823a -0.249a 0.096 738 Oil 1.224a 3.229a -0.055 0.113 207 Fourth Quartile Elect 1.080a 1.809a -0.105 0.102 549 Oil 7.197a 0.983 -9.064a 0.676 72 Notes: a, b and c indicate significance at the 1%, 5%, and 10% levels respectively. 3.4 The effect of leverage on the cost of capital (model 2 and Model 3) According to Modigliani and Millers proposition I: the average cost of capital Wacc (Xt/V) should tend to have the same value independently of the degree of leverage MM (1958, page281). In other words, the leverages coefficient parameter in the Wacc regression should be insignificant and statistically equal to zero. The results of the MM model tests are shown in table V (models: MM58 and MM58supp). According to this table, the MM hypothesis is only verified in the oil sample, while leverage in the electric utilities has a negative and significant effect (coefficient is equal -0, 1162) on the cost

Affirmative Action Essay -- Race Racism

Affirmative Action The Webster dictionary defines affirmative action as an â€Å"active effort to improve the employment or educational opportunities of members of minority groups†¦Ã¢â‚¬  This paper will discuss the history of affirmative action and its effects on education and the work force in our society. I will argue why affirmative action is necessary for minorities to gain equal opportunities educationally and economically and how affirmative action is morally required as reparation for past discrimination. I will also discuss why many people believe that affirmative action is a step in the wrong direction and point out several arguments as to why we should get rid of affirmative action and try to validate their claims. Affirmative action requires that supervisors in charge of economic and educational opportunities take into consideration a candidate’s sex, disabilities, and ethnic background when accepting positions, especially if the candidate’s ethnic affiliation has had a history of racial discrimination. These minority groups are entitled to special considerations, typically viewed as payments made by the government to settle past discrimination. The effects of affirmative action have been well seen in economic and educational systems where educators and employers have long been pressured into giving preference to minorities even if they lesser qualifications, to help write off past discrimination. Affirmative action was established on the basis that because of the past discrimination of races, our nation was unable to flourish into what it should have become- a nation which provided equal opportunity regardless of a person’s race. It is in my opinion that had our country n ever oppressed colored people to such a great exten... ...nathan. Long Way to Go: Black and White in America. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1998. Thomas D. Boston, Affirmative Action and Black Entrepreneurship. New York: Routledge, 1999. Geiger, H Jack. "Race and Health Care-An American Dilemma?" New England Journal of Medicine 335(11):815-816 (1996) Gould, Stephen Jay. The Mismeasure of Man. New York: Norton & Co., 1981. Curry, George. The Affirmative Action Debate. Massachusetts: Addison Wesley, 1996. Wise, A.E., Darling-Hammond. Effective teacher selection: From recruitment to retention. R-3462-NIE/CSTP, Washington, DC: RAND Corporation., 1987 Rosenfeld, Michel. Affirmative Action and Justice: A Philosophical and Constitutional Inquiry. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991. Rothman, Stanley; Lipset, Seymour Martin & Nevitte, Neil, "Racial Diversity Reconsidered," The Public Interest Spring 2003.

Analysis †Mein Kampf Essay

Hitler’s contemporaries – Baldwin, Chamberlain, Herbert Hoover – seem pathetically fusty figures, with their frock coats and wing collars, closer to the world of Edison, Carnegie and the hansom cab than to the first fully evolved modern societies over which they presided, areas of national consciousness formed by mass-produced newspapers and consumer goods, advertising and tele-communications. By comparison Hitler is completely up-to-date, and would be equally at home in the sixties (and probably even more so in the seventies) as in the twenties. The whole apparatus of the Nazi super-state, its nightmare uniforms and propaganda, seems weirdly turned-on, providing just that element of manifest insanity to which we all respond in the H-Bomb or Viet Nam – perhaps one reason why the American and Russian space programmes have failed to catch our imaginations is that this quality of explicit psychopathology is missing. Certainly, Nazi society seems strangely prophetic of our own – the same maximising of violence and sensation, the same alphabets of unreason and the fictionalising of experience. Goebbels in his diaries remarks that he and the Nazi leaders had merely done in the realm of reality what Dostoevski had done in fiction. Interestingly, both Goebbels and Mussolini had written novels, in the days before they were able to get to grips with their real subject matter – one wonders if they would have bothered now, with the fiction waiting to be manipulated all around them. Hitler’s ‘novel’, Mein Kampf (Hutchinson, 1939) was written in 1924, nearly a decade before he came to power, but is a remarkably accurate prospectus of his intentions, not so much in terms of finite political and social aims as of the precise psychology he intended to impose on the German people and its European vassals. For this reason alone it is one of the most important books of the 20th century, and well worth reprinting, despite the grisly pleasures its anti-semitic ravings will give to the present generation of racists. How far does Hitler the man come through the pages of this book? In the newsreels Hitler tends to appear in two roles – one, the demagogic orator, ranting away in a state apparently close to neurotic hysteria, and two, a benevolent and slightly eccentric kapellmeister sentimentally reviewing his SS bodyguard, or beaming down at a picked chorus of blond-haired German infants. Both these strands are present in Mein Kampf – the hectoring, rhetorical style, shaking with hate and violence, interspersed with passages of deep sentimentality as the author rhapsodises to himself about the mystical beauty of the German landscape and its noble, simple-hearted peoples. Apart from its autobiographical sections, the discovery by a small Austrian boy of his ‘Germanism’, Mein Kampf contains three principal elements, the foundation stones, walls and pediment of a remarkably strong paranoid structure. First, there are Hitler’s views on history and race, a quasi-biological system which under-pins the whole basis of his political thought and explains almost every action he ever committed. Second, there are his views on the strict practicalities of politics and the seizure of power, methods of political organisation and propaganda. Third, there are his views on the political future of the united Germanies, its expansionist foreign policy and general attitude to the world around it. The overall tone of Mein Kampf can be seen from Hitler’s original title for the testament: A Four and a Half Years Struggle Against Lies, Stupidity and Cowardice: A Reckoning with the Destroyers of the Nazi Party Movement. It was the publisher, Max Amann, who suggested the shorter and far less revealing Mein Kampf, and what a sigh he must have breathed when Hitler agreed. Hitler’s own title would have been far too much of a giveaway, reminding the readers of the real sources of Hitler’s anti-semitic and racialist notions. Reading Hitler’s paranoid rantings against the Jews, one is constantly struck by the biological rather than political basis of his entire thought and personality. His revulsion against the Jews was physical, like his reaction against any peoples, such as the Slavs and Negroes, whose physique, posture, morphology and pigmentation alerted some screaming switchboard of insecurity within his own mind. What is interesting is the language in which he chose to describe these obsessions – primarily faecal, one assumes, from his endless preoccupa-tion with ‘cleanliness’. Rather than use economic, social or political arguments against the Jews, Hitler concentrated almost solely on this inflated biological rhetoric. By dispensing with any need to rationalise his prejudices, he was able to tap an area of far deeper unease and uncertainty, and one more-over which his followers would never care to expose too fully to the light of day. In the unanswerable logic of psychopathology, the Jews became the scapegoats for all the terrors of toilet-training and weaning. The constant repetition of the words ‘filth’, ‘vileness’, ‘abscess’, ‘hostile’, ‘shudder’, endlessly reinforce these long- repressed feelings of guilt and desire. In passing, it is curious to notice that Hitler’s biological interpretations of history have a number of striking resemblances to those of Desmond Morris. In both writers one finds the same reliance on the analogy of the lower mammals, on a few basic formulas of behaviour such as ‘struggle’, ‘competition’, ‘defence of territory’. There is the same simple schematic view of social relationships, the same highly generalised assertions about human behaviour that are presented as proven facts. Hitler talks without definition of ‘lower races’ in the same way that Morris refers to ‘primitive societies’ and ‘simple communities’. Both are writing for half-educated people whose ideas about biology and history come from popular newspaper and encyclopaedia articles, and whose interest in these subjects is a barely transparent cover for uneasy fantasies about their own bodies and emotions. In this preface, the translator of Mein Kampf describes it as written in the style of a self-educated modern South German with a talent for oratory. In this respect Hitler was one of the rightful inheritors of the 20th century – the epitome of the half-educated man. Wandering about the streets of Vienna shortly before the first World War, his head full of vague artistic yearnings and clap-trap picked up from popular magazines, whom does he most closely resemble? Above all, Leopold Bloom, his ostensible arch-enemy, wandering around Joyce’s Dublin at about the same time, his head filled with the same clap-trap and the same yearnings. Both are the children of the reference library and the self-improvement manual, of mass newspapers creating a new vocabulary of violence and sensation. Hitler was the half-educated psychopath inheriting the lavish communications systems of the 20th century. Forty years after his first abortive seizure of power he was followed by another unhappy misfit, Lee Harvey Oswald, in whose Historic Diary we see the same attempt by the half-educated to grapple with the information overflow that threatened to drown him.

Summarise discussions on the main challenges and consequent changes in policy and ideology over 60 years of the NHS. The WritePass Journal

Summarise discussions on the main challenges and consequent changes in policy and ideology over 60 years of the NHS. Introduction Summarise discussions on the main challenges and consequent changes in policy and ideology over 60 years of the NHS. IntroductionScenario 4: Health Trainers.Scenario 5: Sure Start. ReferencesRelated Introduction In the 1940s new legislation aimed to remove Beveridge’s five ‘giant evils’ of Want, Disease, Idleness, Ignorance and Squalor (NICE 2010). This was due to a shift in political ideology from the individualistic to the collective because the Labour government at this time believed in ‘democratic socialism’ partly as a result of societal change due to the Second World War. Another key example of this shift was the NHS which was established by Aneurin Bevan in 1948. The NHS had three key principles of the service being free at the point of delivery, being comprehensive in covering all individuals in Britain and that access would be based on need (NHS 2009). In 1951 Labour pioneered the dental and eye service charge and prescription charges were only just avoided. However the Conservatives increased dental and eye charges and also introduced the prescription charge in 1952 which had two increases in 1956 and in 1961 which was the biggest policy change in the financing of the NHS (Webster, 1998:39). This shifted the political ideology away from collectivism because prescription charges meant that health care was no longer free for all. Thatcherism was another shift away from collectivism as the government needed to meet the challenge of saving money due to a global recession and the NHS’s budget was a major use of resources. According to Taylor-Gooby (1988:2), In the early and mid-1980s existing social divisions deepened: provision aimed specifically at poor minorities was tightly constrained, whereas services used by the mass of the population were little affected by spending cut-backs. This was linked to the new policy where managers of NHS Trusts were given limited budgets and had to ensure that they remained within them which meant that some services had to be cut in order to ensure that they could balance the books at the end of the financial year (Walsh et al., 2000). This was a clear of example of health and social care managers needing to interpret government legislation and policies in order to ensure that they could meet targets needed to gain funding for the next financial year. This was carried out through the use of internal markets which were created by Thatcher’s government in order to streamline the NHS’s use of services and ensure that prices were competitive. The next challenge to the NHS was New Labour’s election in 1997. According to Driver and Martell (1998) this led to a post-Thatcherite shift in political and social ideology where collectivism and the Welfare State began to be rebuilt. Their approach was to offer a diverse range of services, because of the wide diversity in individuals living in modern Britain. Who now had a longer life expectancy and to promote freedom of choice, with an emphasis placed on meeting the needs of their service users which was similar to the original NHS mandate (Driver and Martell, 1998). For example, in 2002, Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) were created to improve administration and delivery of healthcare services at the local level (NHS Choices, 2008). According to NHS Choices (2008), PCTs control over eighty percent of the budget and contract out services but that because they are local they can best understand the needs of their community. PCTs moved away from Thatcherite management which had led to too many priorities being set, challenging the NHS’s ability to provide a healthcare service (West, 1997). PCTS were created with a â€Å"single management structure†, which meant that budgets and equipment was shared to provide an integrated service without wasting money, for the reason being that management was no longer spread among multiple people (Clouston, 2005:9). Social policy and political ideology is once again challenging the NHS from 2010, as another global recession has led to the need to cut public services. This also shows a shift back towards the individualistic ideology of Thatcher. The White Paper Liberating the NHS (2011:3) aims to â€Å"putting patients at the heart of the NHS, focusing on improving outcomes† and â€Å"empowering local organisations and professionals†. This will be done by giving managerial power to GPs and those who are in direct contact with patients on a local level, which is similar to Blair’s plans although there will be a Central Commissioning Board in charge of ensuring financial targets are met. However, health inequalities revealed in the Black Report (1980), the Acheson Report (1998) and the Marmot Report (2010) show that the NHS is still being challenged by Beveridge’s giants today. Scenario 4: Health Trainers. Choosing Health (2004) was put in place to help tackle health inequalities and to improve health by providing a new service that could help individuals to achieve a healthier lifestyle. The latest Department of Health (DoH) White Paper, Our Health, Our Care, Our Say (2006) mentioned the health trainers in the latest NHS ‘Life Checks’ and that the service’s ethos was to provide ‘support from next door’ (DoH, 2006:236). This new service brought in individuals who had experience in health inequalities and were from the local community (DoH, 2006).   However Marmot (2009) states that inequalities exist because of â€Å"social inequalities in society, not simply because of inequalities in healthcare†, and that the solutions to those inequalities should reflect their causes and covers the â€Å"social, economic, cultural and political† (DoH, 2009:2).    A General Practitioner (GP) can encourage individuals that would seem unlikely to take part in any other health support schemes, to engage in this service as health trainers support individuals in Healthy Eating and Physical Activity, Diet Weight Loss, Drugs Alcohol, Sexual Health, Smoking Cessation, Smoking during pregnancy, Mental Health, Depression and Anxiety, Cancer Screening and Health Checks (DoH, 2004). Health trainers aim to inspire individuals in the community to change their lives which in return would help the individuals to have higher self-esteem, help them to become fitter and fulfil the primary objective- to lower costs for the NHS by reducing their burden on services due to an unhealthy lifestyle. The Yorkshire and the Humber Primary Care Trust (YHPCT) (2009) suggested that clients that used this service, 99% changed their lifestyle and improved their health by effectively helping them to control their existing conditions. This was mainly because they felt that the health trainers were local individuals, and could communicate with the community on their level, by empowering clients to think of solutions and helping them to maintain their choices (YHPCT, 2009). However in some cases individuals would be signposted to other organisations to help them with their lifestyle choices like Slimming World, where they would receive free vouchers every week, explaining how to access services where they would get extra help. This is just one of many ideas, which would also help with the equal allocation of health care equity. However the NHS geographical plan for health equity resource allocation is being denied with a wide range of variables in socio-demographic and socio-economic health care utilisation known as the postcode lottery (DoH, 2005b). Policies need to evolve each year for the health trainers otherwise this could have an impact on the programmes. Health trainers should also be put into place in all health centres at a national level, which would support all individuals with inequality in their communities. According to the DoH (2011), their vision is for the financial strain on the NHS to be significantly reduced by the distribution of health promotion funds. In 2005 there were twelve sites for health trainers with each allocated  £200,000 to empower clients to transform their health and the DoH suggested there will be funding nationally until 2011 (NHS 2009). This is a significant shift in direction of public health policy from treating ill-health towards prevention by reducing inequalities as focused on by The Black Report (1980), the Acheson Report (1998), the Darzi Review (2008) and the Marmot Report (2010). Prime Minister Tony Blair stated that individuals who want to improve their lifestyle have to make the decision themselves and that the government â€Å"cannot and should not pretend it can make the population healthy† but instead offer them the support necessary for them to do so (DoH, 2004:207). The health trainers program was a key tool for this strategy, although it took five years to put into practice and is still not present in all areas. As a result, Tony Blair said small changes can make a big difference to people’s lives this service is not yet available as â€Å"support from next door† to all individuals (DoH, 2004). Scenario 5: Sure Start. The Government has introduced detailed policies to tackle social determinants of health inequalities; which included the ten-year health inequalities targets and community-based initiatives including Health Action Zones, Sure Start and Healthy Towns. Health Action Zones (HAZs) were the New Labour government’s first important policy, using a multi-agency group to try to diminish health inequalities. Acheson stressed how important the quality of life is in a child’s early years. (Acheson et al 1998). The New Labour government suggested that they want to radically reduce child poverty by 2010 and eliminate it by 2020. However these targets were missed in 2004-5, furthermore they are not on target for 2010-2011(Parliamentary Business, 2009). The New Labour Government poured three billion pounds into Sure Start when it was introduced in 1998, to try to provide help to disadvantaged families in the fundamental early years of a childs life (Wilce, 2008). This would be done by trying to attain enhanced results for families and the community by increasing childcare, improving a childs health and emotional growth and also supporting the child’s parents and encouraging them to strive towards employment (ET, 2007). However this vision for helping deprived families was an optimistic one as the government said that out of the 14 outcomes measured that related to health and chil d development, Sure Start only impacted on five; there was no positive impact taking place within language development, accidents, father’s involvement, maternal Body Mass Index, maternal smoking or childrens immunisations (Parliament UK, 2009). In 2007 Education Today (ET) reported that Hull University conducted research about Sure Start which suggested that even though Sure Start was aimed at underprivileged areas, underprivileged and marginalised people were not gaining any benefits. The report also argued that Sure Start were generally taken up by middle-class families, and was not creating contact with minority groups such as travellers, vagrant workers and families of Bangladeshi origin and Sure Start was criticised for not employing any translators or staff from ethnic and minority communities (Bagley and Ackerley, 2006). There was also some apprehension over the deliverance and performance of a Third Way multi-agency programme (ET, 2007). It has been suggested that Sure Start has moved away from its first focal point on disadvantaged children and become a universal choice. Burkard (2010) argues that the government should fund disadvantaged children instead of the Sure Start centres, and that any nursery involvement that has money thrown into it, is more than unlikely to improve the life chances of children from deprived areas. The centres could be beneficial in other areas for mothers and children because children could have early gains in acquiring knowledge and social development, but they seem to almost immediately fade when children enter into full- time education (Burkard, 2010). New Labour tried to implement strategies to prevent health inequalities through the early years of a childs life with Sure Start, and national assessments have shown that Sure Start has been successful in some parts of eradicating health inequalities but only achieving five out of the fourteen assessments (Education Today, 2007). There needs to be a considerable amount of improvement when it comes to reaching minority groups and getting better health results for parents and their children. Furthermore, there are some fears that broadening this policy through children’s centres nationally would divert their main goal of helping reduce inequalities for the underprivileged families that need the support most. 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