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The literature of financial economics documents a causal relationship between the level of information asymmetry in the firm and its dividend policy. Nevertheless, this relationship suffers endogeneity problems arising from reverse causality and omitted variable bias. The purpose of this study is to examine how the dividend policy reacts to changes in asymmetric information in an exogenous research setting.

To overcome endogeneity concerns, the authors employ the enactment of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) in the US in 2002 as a source of an exogenous variation in the level of information asymmetry to study the potential effect that this variation might have on the dividend policy. In doing so, we utilize a difference-in-differences research design, in which the treatment group is US publicly traded firms that were exposed to the policy and the control group is publicly traded companies in the UK where SOX was not enacted. Both countries have similar institutional settings and enforcement of laws, which makes them comparable in this research context.

The authors’ findings show that, compared to UK companies, US firms increase their dividend payments following a reduction in asymmetric information as a result of the SOX enactment.

The study contributes to the literature of financial economics by showing that policy makers can mitigate agency conflicts and protect shareholders by improving the corporate information environment and reducing asymmetric information.

This study aims to examine the impact of local air pollution on housing prices in Lebanon.

The authors apply a hedonic pricing approach using a unique data set from Lebanon. To account for non-linearities in pricing, the authors use three different functional regression forms for the hedonic model approach. The authors also deal with potential omitted variable bias by estimating a hedonic frontier specification.

The authors find that, in all specifications, air pollution negatively and significantly affects housing prices. The estimated marginal willingness to pay for a one microgram per cubic meter change in particulate matter (PM10) concentration ranges between 2.88% and 3.18% of mean housing prices. The authors also provide evidence of a negative pricing gradient away from the city center, landing support for the monocentric urban development hypothesis.

Given the lack of a data set linking household socioeconomic characteristics with housing data, the authors only consider the first-stage hedonic model.

The proposed hedonic pricing regression approximates a housing pricing equation that can be used by policymakers.

The findings suggest that pollution is a significant factor in household behavior in Lebanon.

This paper adds to the scant literature studying the effects of air pollution on housing prices in developing countries. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to study the impact of pollution on housing prices in a country in the Middle East and North Africa Region.

This paper presents the applied research and design work on innovative and sustainable building products developed by an undergraduate architecture seminar course. It presents the case for innovative uses of cement-based products, while framing the proposals within a global shift toward environmentally responsive and bio-integrated materials.

The methodology utilizes a process of hybridization between digital fabrication and analog making methods that is framed within the larger design discourse and that intersects the digital design process with material know-how. The approach engages local problematics and applies advanced technology and the integration of natural behaviors to develop a rich applied design method.

Through the presented work and proposed building products, critical findings and outcomes emerge, ones that relate to the design process itself and others to the designed products.

The research presented here proposes novel approaches to cement-based building systems utilizing digital and analog fabrication, and original design solutions that engage with their context and provide active and crucial environmental performance.