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Excessive fat intake is a problem in the UK and other European countries. Looks at the relationship between dietary fat and body fat and the body′s physiological responses to fatty food. Discusses experimental studies on fat and satiety and high fat hyperphagia.

This paper presents new insights into the growth of small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) engaged in vertical inter‐firm relationships. It adopts a processual and resource‐based perspective and focuses on the experiences of fresh produce businesses which have achieved high rates of growth while supplying the UK’s large multiple food retailers. The context in which these suppliers operate is shown to be a complex and dynamic supply chain, characterised by increasing structural concentration and close vertical linkages. The primary research investigates how certain SMEs have prospered in an apparently “hostile” environment. It includes a programme of matched‐depth interviews, conducted across the retailer‐supplier dyad. Content analysis of transcripts reveals six factors which appear to be strongly associated with the formation of “successful” relationships. In subsequent interactions, securing “developmental” supplier status appears to open the way to a self‐reinforcing cycle of Penrosian learning and reinvestment. This cycle contributes to growth in the supplier firm. The authors argue that, with certain crucial caveats, growth‐oriented SMEs can develop mutually beneficial relationships with much larger “customer” firms. The paper concludes by drawing out wider policy implications and indicating how this contextualised approach might be used in other contexts.

The British government takes equity issues formally into account in its appraisal of social projects and policies. However, evidence on which the measured distributional welfare weights are based is neither broad enough nor sufficiently reliable. This paper seeks to address these issues by considering a wider body of evidence.

An important component of the welfare weight measure advocated by HM Treasury is the elasticity of marginal utility of consumption (e). A critical review of existing evidence on e is provided with a view to establishing priority areas for further research. New measures of e are presented based on revealed social values as indicated in specific government policies relating to both foreign aid and proposed income‐related fines for offences. Behavioural evidence based on demand analysis using a co‐integration approach is also presented.

The results for e are sensitive to the estimation approach adopted. While the evidence based on a revealed social values approach including modified tax‐based results suggests that e is close to unity, the measure currently used by HM Treasury, demand analysis suggests an e value close to 1.5. The evidence based on lifetime consumption behaviour is sensitive to model specification and needs updating.

Modified tax‐based findings on e are presented along with new evidence based on alternative revealed social values approaches. The new evidence from demand analysis is based on an Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) approach to co‐integration. This paper will be of interest to academics specialising in welfare economics and to practitioners involved in social project appraisal.

In the previous monograph, a discussion took place on what constitutes dismissal and when the termination of the contract of employment takes effect. These two aspects treat the first of the statutory qualifications necessary to enable the employee to exercise his right not to be unfairly dismissed, namely that he must first be dismissed.

The purpose of this paper is to assist bank regulators in Africa who are currently considering the implementation of Basel III countercyclical capital buffer (CCB) requirement.

Using a panel data set of 129 commercial banks operating in 14 African countries over the period 2004–2014, this paper estimates the system generalized method of moments regression to examine the impact of business cycle on banks’ regulatory capital buffers and attempts to identify the influence of bank revenue diversification, market power and cost of funding (CF) on bank regulatory capital buffers. It further carries out some robustness analyses using a panel data set of 257 commercial banks in 23 African countries over the period 2004–2014.

The results show that higher regulatory capital buffers are associated with higher market power, higher revenue diversification and higher CF. Additionally, the results show significant evidence of procyclical behavior of bank capital buffers (BUFs) in the sampled countries.

The results of this study suggest that African banking systems are not exposed to contagion and systemic risks arising from countercyclical movements of BUFs to the real economy. Therefore, this study does not support the implementation of the Basel III CCB requirement in the sampled African countries.

Considering that the results of existing studies on the cyclical behavior of BUFs are inconclusive, there is value in studying the cyclical movements of bank regulatory capital buffers in a set of countries that has not been analyzed before. Toward this direction, this is the first empirical study focusing on the cyclical behavior of bank regulatory capital buffers in Africa. Besides examining the cyclical behavior of bank regulatory capital buffers, this paper further investigates the effects of bank revenue diversification, market power and CF on bank regulatory capital buffers.

Our aim is to analyze the type of lender and the debt maturity of Chilean firms as a function of their ownership structure and their growth opportunities. We perform the empirical analysis using an unbalanced panel data of 169 firms from 1990 to 2001. Our results show that Chilean firms with growth opportunities, ownership concentration, and a need for external funds issue short‐term bank debt to finance their new investments. This financing source is an efficient mechanism in Chile to alleviate agency and asymmetric information problems. The Chilean institutional environment influences firms’ decisions on banking debt.

This study explores whether a firm's environmental and social (E&S) transparency affects corporate payout policies having two forms of dividend payout and stock repurchase payout.

Focusing on a large sample of S&P 500 firms, and utilizing Tobit estimators, the author examines whether a firm's environmental transparency and social transparency affect the levels of each dividend payout and stock repurchase payout. Transparency reflects comprehensive scores compiled by Bloomberg, capturing both the quantity (in terms of the number of data points) and the quality (with respect to objective and industry-relevant data points) of verified E&S information attributed to a firm's E&S practices.

The findings demonstrate that transparency, both environmental and social, relates to higher corporate payouts (i.e. higher dividend payout and higher stock repurchase payout). These positive relationships are magnified for firms suffering from high information asymmetry, low financial reporting quality and for those with weak governance. Moreover, the author finds that dividend payout is more stable in high E&S transparent firms than in low E&S transparent firms. The study findings continue to hold after a battery of robustness and sensitivity checks such as alternative measures, specifications, estimators, use of the instrumental variable regression approach and mitigation of omitted variable bias

The study findings suggest that investors' interests (demanding for high corporate payouts) and other stakeholders' interests (demanding for high E&S transparency) are not necessarily in conflict, and investors' demands can be met while maintaining commitment to high E&S transparency. In addition, the study results imply that higher E&S transparency complements higher corporate payouts and signals to the market both a firm's commitment to E&S transparency and its ability to have high corporate payouts. In this line, the study findings clarify the high value of E&S transparency screening in investors' decision-making process as such transparency leads to higher corporate payouts for investors (i.e. facilitating wealth transfer to shareholders). Finally, the study findings are relevant to standard setters and regulators who emphasize the importance of E&S transparency.

By integrating two distinct streams of literature on corporate finance and corporate social responsibility (CSR), the author introduces E&S transparency as a novel nonfinancial driver of corporate payout policies. Finally, the study findings are in line with the notion that firm transparency (reflected in E&S transparency) can be a crucial element in justifying a firm's corporate payout policies and, in an overall view, firm policies.

This chapter discusses inspiration and innovation through social transformation taking place in Asia through leadership utilizing concepts of Buddhism. In India, values of the Buddhist dhamma are grounded in a permeating esthetic system dating back to early historical times. It was lost there and revitalized in 1956. For Taiwan, inspiration came in the name of humanistic Buddhism that developed in late 19th century China. It offered a moral and practical value system for society at large.

Buddhism became socially engaged as part of a cultural ethos for over a generation with underlying integrated roots in local beliefs, esthetics, and practices. The broader question to discuss is how Buddhist values influence policy leadership. Here, we feature engaged Buddhism that emphasizes awareness, compassion, and non-violence, while embracing modern ways of organizing and communication.

Cases are provided where Buddhism has shaped leaders’ roles and aims, as well as those of followers guiding reforms for best governance. In India Dr. Ambedkar (1891–1956) embraced Buddhism as a platform for deliverance and championed social equality. His life’s struggle concerned issues of caste, as he was born “untouchable.” The second example is about Dhamma Master Cheng Yen (b. 1937) who established Tzu Chi in eastern Taiwan as a relief agency that became international. Both leaders helped life’s embetterment through Buddhism based on modernity, science, advanced technology, leadership, and democracy. These examples of engaged Buddhism have made tremendous impact pertaining to the people of their nation and serve a model for world development.

The Sanitary Committee of a certain County Council, strong with the strength of recent creation, have lately been animated by a desire to distinguish themselves in some way, and, proceeding along the lines of least resistance, they appear to have selected the Public Analyst as the most suitable object for attack. The charge against this unfortunate official was not that he is incompetent, or that he had been in any way negligent of his duties as prescribed by Act of Parliament, but simply and solely that he has the temerity to reside in London, which city is distant by a certain number of miles from the much favoured district controlled by the County Council aforesaid. The committee were favoured in their deliberations by the assistance of no less an authority than the “Principal” of a local “Technical School”;—and who could be more capable than he to express an opinion upon so simple a matter? This eminent exponent of scientific truths, after due and proper consideration, is reported to have delivered himself of the opinion that “scientifically it would be desirable that the analyst should reside in the district, as the delay occasioned by the sending of samples of water to London is liable to produce a misleading effect upon an analysis.” Apparently appalled by the contemplation of such possibilities, and strengthened by another expression of opinion to the effect that there were as “good men” in the district as in London, the committee resolved to recommend the County Council to determine the existing arrangement with the Public Analyst, and to appoint a “local analyst for all purposes.” Thus, the only objection which could be urged to the employment of a Public Analyst resident in London was the ridiculous one that the composition of a sample of water was likely to seriously alter during the period of its transit to London, and this contention becomes still more absurd when it is remembered that the examination of water samples is no part of the official duty of a Public Analyst. The employment of local scientific talent may be very proper when the object to be attained is simply the more or less imperfect instruction of the rising generation in the rudiments of what passes in this country for “technical education”; but the work of the Public Analyst is serious and responsible, and cannot be lightly undertaken by every person who may be acquainted with some of the uses of a test‐tube. The worthy members of this committee may find to their cost, as other committees have found before them, that persons possessing the requisite knowledge and experience are not necessarily indigenous to their district. Supposing that the County Council adopts the recommendation, the aspirations of the committee may even then be strangled in their infancy, as the Local Government Board will want to know all about the matter, and the committee will have to give serious and valid reasons in support of their case.

IT was in February that we condemned the Finniston Report on the grounds that it had failed to tackle what was surely the first consideration: the definition of what an engineer is. Out of the dozens of recognised qualifications and the countless unqualified people who can and do call themselves engineers, albeit of one sort or another, it is surely impossible to set up one colossal Authority to control the lot, without that definition.