Physical activity in prevention of cancer and better prognosis

Cancer is a multifactorial disease with genetic and environmental risk factors. Environmental factors may also be termed as modifiable risk factors and these contribute towards 35% of cancer related mortalities as reported by World Health Organization. Obesity is the leading risk factor in this regard, causing not only deaths due to cancer but also to many other diseases. Among different factors causing obesity, a major contributor is lack of physical activity. In this era of modern technology and digitalization, sedentary mode of life has become a part of life and is mostly unavoidable. At the same time, there is a rise in the incidence of cancer. In the olden times, people used to do all manual work, a lot of walk, exercise and had healthy life style. Such healthy life style may have prevented them from various diseases.             Physical activity as a therapy on daily basis, is associated with a reduction in incidence of various carcinomas. It may improve overall wellbeing of healthy people as well as diseases persons from various ailments. As it is a common proverb that, “prevention is better than cure”, physical activity serves as a preventive measure for various diseases and also for fitness of normal healthy people. Although it is a known fact, yet planned population studies are required to provide evidence. Instead of unorganized physical activities, a structured physical activity may help in improvement of condition of cancer patients, prevention of cancer, cancer related deaths as well we quality of life. Healthcare providers should guide the patients in this regard.             There is lack of awareness among physicians and mostly they don’t refer them to physical therapists. There is also lack of information regarding the implementation of the programs and regimens of physical exercises for different diseases and cancers. Physical therapists may guide the patients in terms of frequency, intensity, duration of exercises which may serve as a betterment of their condition.

The Role of Credit Rating Agencies in the European Financial Markets

This thesis investigates the role of Credit Rating Agencies (CRAs) in European financial markets. Traditional activities of CRAs include information supply, certification, and monitoring services for corporations and rating sovereign debt. Any change in the opinion of CRAs on the sovereign debt has strong implications on the financial markets and the real economy. This thesis contributes to literature by investigating: (i) the effect of sovereign rating and outlook changes on the shape of the sovereign yield curve; (ii) the impact of sovereign rating and outlook changes on stock markets at different levels of business cycle; (iii) the effect of financial liberalization on the growth in sovereign ratings; and (iv) the impact of sovereign rating and outlook instability on the access to credit by firms. In order to properly investigate these research questions, we employ a variety of pertinent statistical and econometric tools as required in every chapter. These techniques include but are not limited to state space modelling, vector autoregressions, maximum likelihood estimations, Kalman filter approach, generalized method of moments, and limited dependent variable methods. Findings of this thesis reveal, inter alia, that sovereign rating and outlook announcements play an important “confirmation role” in the financial markets; however, the extent of the effect depends on the announcement type, CRA specificity, kind of market and country characteristics. Specifically, the second chapter shows a significant effect of rating downgrades and an insignificant effect of rating upgrades on the sovereign yield curve; however, we observe mixed results for the effect of changes in outlook status of a sovereign country. The third chapter identifies that stock markets react more negatively to rating downgrades in recovery phases and more positively to rating upgrades in the contractionary period. However, we do not find any evidence of a pro-cyclical effect of sovereign rating and outlook change on stock returns. The fourth chapter indicates a positive impact of financial liberalization on sovereign ratings, and we show that we cannot reject the hypothesis that financial stability is independent of financial liberalization. Moreover, we show in this chapter that sovereign ratings tend to be stable and persistent, otherwise. The fifth chapter suggests a significant negative effect of sovereign rating and outlook instability on the access to credit by firms. The last chapter concludes the thesis with implications of these findings for understanding the role of rating agencies in financial markets, policymaking, designing regulations and for investors and firm owners, both in developing and developed economies.