We examine the cross-sectional variation in the marginal value of corporate cash holdings that arises from differences in corporate financial policy. We begin by providing semi-quantitative predictions for the value of an extra dollar of cash depending upon the likely use of that dollar, and derive a set of intuitive hypotheses to test empirically. By examining the variation in excess stock returns over the fiscal year, we find that the marginal value of cash declines with larger cash holdings, higher leverage, better access to capital markets, and as firms choose greater cash distribution via dividends rather than repurchases. Copyright 2006 by The American Finance Association.

Glass surfaces coated with polycrystalline titanium dioxide (TiO2) films were found to exhibit a 0° water contact angle when the surfaces were illuminated with UV light in the air. This highly hydrophilic surface was maintained for more than 1 week in the dark in air. However, ultrasonic treatment in pure water decreased the degree of surface hydrophilicity, yielding a contact angle of approximately 11°. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopic measurements indicated that hydroxyl groups and molecular water adsorption, which govern the surface wettability, were partially removed from the surface by the ultrasonic treatment. The effect of ultrasonic treatment was ascribed to the generation of OH radicals that reoxidized the photoreduced surface, accompanied by the removal of surface-adsorbed water. This has been confirmed by adding acrylamide, a typical OH radical scavenger, to pure water to effectively suppress the hydrophilic-to-hydrophobic reconversion on the TiO2 surface.

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The amount and geographic distribution of N2O emissions over China remain largely uncertain. In this study, county-level and 0.1° × 0.1° gridded anthropogenic N2O emission inventories for China (PKU-N2O) in 2008 are developed based on high-resolution activity data and regional emission factors (EFs) and parameters. These new estimates are compared with previous inventories, and with two sensitivity tests: one that uses high-resolution activity data but the default IPCC methodology (S1) and the other that uses regional EFs and parameters but starts from coarser-resolution activity data. The total N2O emissions are 2150 GgN2O/yr (interquartile range from 1174 to 2787 GgN2O/yr). Agriculture contributes 64% of the total, followed by energy (17%), indirect emissions (12%), wastes (5%), industry (2.8%), and wildfires (0.2%). Our national emission total is 17% greater than that of the EDGAR v4.2 global product sampled over China and is also greater than the GAINS-China, NDRC, and S1 estimates by 10%, 50%, and 17%, respectively. We also found that using uniform EFs and parameters or starting from national/provincial data causes systematic spatial biases compared to PKU-N2O. Spatial analysis shows nonlinear relationships between N2O emission intensities and urbanization. Per-capita and per-GDP N2O emissions increase gradually with an increase in the urban population fraction from 0.3 to 0.9 among 2884 counties, and N2O emission density increases with urban expansion.