Normal Forms of Hypersurface Singularities in Positive Characteristic

The main purpose of this article is to lay the foundations for a classification of isolated hypersurface singularities in positive characteristic. Although our article is in the spirit of Arnol'd who classified real an complex hypersurfaces in the 1970's with respect to right equivalence, several new phenomena occur in positive characteristic. Already the notion of isolated singularity is different for right resp. contact equivalence over fields of characteristic other than zero. The heart of this paper consists of the study of different notions of non-degeneracy and the associated piecewise filtrations induced by the Newton diagram of a power series f. We introduce the conditions AC and AAC which modify and generalise the conditions A and AA of Arnol'd resp. Wall and which allow the classification with respect to contact equivalence in any characteristic. Using this we deduce normal forms and rather sharp determinacy bounds for f with respect to right and contact equivalence. We apply this to classify hypersurface singularities of low modality in positive characteristic.Comment: 26 pages; the exposition has been clarified at some place

Liberalization, Corporate Governance, and the Performance of Newly Privatized Firms

This paper seeks to provide an answer to the following question, namely when and how does privatization work? Using a unique sample of 201 firms headquartered in 32 developing countries, we document a significant increase in profitability, efficiency, investment and output. Next, using univariate tests, we show that corporate governance mechanisms and economic reforms and environment have an effect on the changes in operating performance. For example, we find that privatization yields better results when stock market and trade liberalizations precede it. The results of a regression analysis, across a number of specifications, indicate that economic reforms and environment as well as corporate governance variables explain the post-privatization performance changes. In particular, economic growth, control relinquishment by the government and foreign ownership are key determinants of profitability changes. We also find higher improvements in efficiency and output for firms in countries in which stock markets are more developed and where property rights are better protected and enforced. Finally, our results suggest that trade openness is an important determinant of the post-privatization increase in investment.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39803/3/wp419.pd

Consolidation and Value Creation in the Insurance Industry: the Role of Governance

We examine the long run performance of M&A transactions in the property-liability insurance industry. We specifically investigate whether such transactions create value for the bidders' shareholders and assess how corporate governance mechanisms affect such performance. Our results show that M&A create value in the long run as buy and hold abnormal returns are positive and significant after three years. While tender offers appear to be more profitable than mergers, our evidence does not support the conjecture that domestic transactions create more value than cross border transactions. Furthermore, positive returns are significantly higher for frequent acquirers and in countries where investor protection is better. Internal corporate governance mechanisms are also significant determinants of the performance of bidders.Merger and acquisition, property-liability insurance, governance, value creation, performance of bidders

The ORKG R Package and Its Use in Data Science

Research infrastructures and services provide access to (meta)data via user interfaces and APIs. The more advanced services also support access through (Python, R, etc.) packages that users can use in computational environments. For scientific information as a particular kind of research data, the Open Research Knowledge Graph (ORKG) is an example of an advanced service that also supports accessing data from Python scripts. Since many research communities use R as the statistical language of choice, we have developed the ORKG R package to support accessing and processing ORKG data directly from R scripts. Inspired by the Python library, the ORKG R package supports a comparable set of features through a similar programmatic interface. Having developed the ORKG R package, we demonstrate its use in various applications grounded in life science and soil science research fields. As an additional key contribution of this work, we show how the ORKG R package can be used in combination with ORKG templates to support the pre-publication production and publication of machine-readable scientific information, during the data analysis phase of the research life cycle and directly in the scripts that produce scientific information. This new mode of machine-readable scientific information production complements the post-publication Crowdsourcing-based manual and NLP-based automated approaches with the major advantages of unmatched high accuracy and fine granularity

Postprivatization Corporate Governance: the Role of Ownership Structure and Investor Protection

We investigate the role of ownership structure and investor protection in postprivatization corporate governance. We find that the government relinquishes control over time, mainly to the benefit of local institutions and foreign investors. We also show that private ownership tends to concentrate over time. In addition to firm-level variables, investor protection, political and social stability explain the cross-firm differences in ownership concentration. We find that the positive effect of ownership concentration on firm performance matters more in countries with weak investor protection and that private domestic ownership leads to higher performance.Corporate governance, privatization, performance

Foreign Investor Participation in Privatizations: does the Institutional Environment Matter?

Using a two-stage estimation procedure, we examine the determinants of foreign investors' participation in the privatization process of developing countries, with a particular emphasis on the role of the institutional environment. First, we estimate the probability that foreign investors target privatized firms in a given country. We show that an investor-friendly institutional environment which protects shareholders' rights favors foreign investors' participation. Foreigners also prefer large firms from high growth economies and socially stable countries with low political risk. Second, we restrict our analysis to those firms that foreign investors actually choose. We show that the use of private sales is a key determinant of foreign investors' stake in a privatized firm.Privatization, Foreign participation, Institutions

La privatisation tient-elle ses promesses? Le cas des pays en développement

La littérature sur la privatisation a récemment proliféré à la suite de l’essor considérable qu’a connu ce phénomène de par le monde. Cependant, la plupart des études ont porté sur l’expérience des pays industrialisés. Tout en passant brièvement en revue ces études, cet article met l’accent sur celles qui se sont intéressées aux pays en développement. Plus précisément, l’article décrit le phénomène de privatisation, les objectifs poursuivis par les gouvernements qui ont privatisé, les caractéristiques des programmes de privatisation et résume l’évidence empirique sur la performance financière et d’opération des entreprises nouvellement privatisées.Privatization has turned into a major phenomenon for the developed world as well as the developing world. However, few studies have examined the privatization phenomenon in developing countries. This paper surveys the literature on privatization with a particular emphasis on the developing world experience. It also describes the way privatization is implemented, the objectives followed by governments launching privatization programs as well as the observed patterns of these programs. Finally, the paper summarizes the empirical evidence on the financial and operating performance of newly privatized firms

La privatisation tient-elle ses promesses?

Privatization has turned into a major phenomenon for the developed world as well as the developing world. However, few studies have examined the privatization phenomenon in developing countries. This paper surveys the literature on privatization with a particular emphasis on the developing world experience. It also describes the way privatization is implemented, the objectives followed by governments launching privatization programs as well as the observed patterns of these programs. Finally, the paper summarizes the empirical evidence on the financial and operating performance of newly privatized firms. La littérature sur la privatisation a récemment proliféré à la suite de l’essor considérable qu’a connu ce phénomène de par le monde. Cependant, la plupart des études ont porté sur l’expérience des pays industrialisés. Tout en passant brièvement en revue ces études, cet article met l’accent sur celles qui se sont intéressées aux pays en développement. Plus précisément, l’article décrit le phénomène de privatisation, les objectifs poursuivis par les gouvernements qui ont privatisé, les caractéristiques des programmes de privatisation et résume l’évidence empirique sur la performance financière et d’opération des entreprises nouvellement privatisées.