Corporate Governance and Incentive Contracts: Historical Evidence from a Legal Reform

This paper proposes to exploit a reform in legal rules of corporate governance to identify contractual incentives from the correlation of executive pay and firm performance. In particular, we refer to a major shift in the legal and institutional environment, the reform of the German joint-stock companies act in 1884. We analyze a sample of executive pay for 46 firms for the years 1870 to 1911. In 1884, a law reform substantially enhanced corporate control, strengthened the monitoring incentives of shareholders, and reduced the discretionary power of executives in Germany. Pay-performance sensitivity decreased significantly after this reform. While executives received a bonus of about three to five per cent in profits before 1884, after the reform this parameter decreased to a profit share of about two per cent. At least the profit share that is eliminated by the reform must have been incentive pay before. This incentive mechanism was replaced by other elements of corporate governance.pay-performance sensitivity, natural experiment, legal reform, corporate governance

A Corporate Governance Reform as a Natural Experiment for Incentive Contracts

The present paper proposes to employ a major shift in the legal and institutional environment to identify contractual incentives from the correlation of executive pay and firm performance. We use the reform of the German stock companies act in 1884 as such a major shift and estimate the sensitivity of the pay to firm performance between 1870 and 1910 for executives of nine large banks. The reform substantially enhanced corporate control and strengthened monitoring incentives. Accordingly, we find the pay-performance sensitivity to decrease significantly after the reform. While executives received a bonus of 39 M per 1000 M increase in profits before 1884, after the reform the sensitivity decreased by two-thirds.pay-performance sensitivity, natural experiment, legal reform, corporate governance

If only I could sack you! Management turnover and performance in large German Banks between 1874 and 1913

We analyze the relation of firm performance and managerial turnover in 19th century German banking by probit estimation. This period covers a major reform of corporate governance. Before the reform performance and turnover are unrelated, wheras after the reform more succesfull managers leave firms more seldom. However, only short run performance matters.Management turnover, Performance, Banking, late 19th century Germany

Identifying the need for specialized palliative care in adult cancer patients – development and validation of a screening procedure based on proxy assessment by physicians and filter questions

Background One challenge in caring for cancer patients with incurable disease is the adequate identification of those in need for specialized palliative care (SPC). The study’s aim was to validate an easy to use phenomenological screening tool. Methods The German tool is based on the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) Palliative Care guidelines and contains ten items in five domains that focus e.g. on diagnosis, functional status, complications, comorbidities, and palliative care relevant problems such as symptom management, distress, and support of family and team members. Sum score ranges from 0 to 14 (no need to great need). Assessment to identify SPC needs was done in university hospital wards between 1 and 08/2017 by health care professionals on admission of the patient if the disease was incurable and expected prognosis < 12 months. The Integrated Palliative Outcome Scale (IPOS, staff version), an outcome assessment instrument for palliative care that consists of ten items, served as external criterion; in sub samples inter-rater/test-retest were performed. Results Data from 208 patients with incurable disease and life expectancy < 12 months (54.8% female; average age 63.5 years, range 21–96) were assessed using the tool. The tool has good convergent validity; the correlation between the sum scores of IPOS and our tool showed a significant and substantial effect. The sum score was independent of the patient’s age, gender and primary diagnosis. Patients who already were in contact with SPC had significantly higher screening scores than patients without. With a cut point of  ≥ 5, 80.8% of the screened patients were in need for SPC. Cronbach’s alpha was α = .600. Rater agreement (inter-rater, test-retest) varied between single items. Correlation coefficients showed significant substantial effects. Conclusions This is the first validation of a screening procedure in German language identifying SPC needs of adult patients with advanced cancer and the first using filter questions as a pre-screening. Proxy assessment of SPC needs by physicians in cancer care settings is feasible and the suggested tool presents a valid instrument to trigger a PC consultation. Trial registration The study was not registered

The Origin and Development of the Geometrical Ideas in Arabic Mathematics : The Synopsis of the Geometrical Works of al-Quhi

Arabic Mathematics has been characterized as algebra. Compared with this, Arabic geometry had not influence on the later mathematics, and has not been studied so much. However without this geometry, no solution of cubic equations has not completed in Arabic mathematics. We sketch here the synopsis of the geometrical works of Abu Sahl al-Quhl (second half of the tenth century), 'one of the most eminent mathematicians in Iraq', and investigate the origin and development of his geometrical ideas. Thirty three mathematical works are attributed to him, and almost of them are geometrical. His ideas were from Archimedes, Euclid and Apollonius. The opus magnum of the last one is indispensable for al-Quhl's works, and in the field of conic sections he contributed much. He completed the lacuna of the Greek mathematics, and developed it further. For showing this aspect four treatises are presented with partial translations. 'On Tangent Circles' investigated Apollonian circle problems further, and 'On the Trisection of Angle' solved the famous problem by Apollonian conic sections. 'On the Motion' was a unique treatise in Arabic mathematics, for it dealt with infinity which had been avoided in Greek mathematics. 'On the Perfect Compass (an instrument to draw conies by continuous moving)' gave an idea on the new classification of curves, which anticipates the seventeenth-century European mathematics. The problems and method which he used seems to be analytical and purely Greek, and he might be called as the last Greek-style mathematician. The atmosphere where he studied shows that Arabic science developed under a kind of patronage, and the manuscripts containing his treatises shows that Greek geometry was well established at his times. In conclusion, geometry flourished in Arabic world of the tenth century, and its results were over the Greek ones, and might be compared to the early modern mathematics in Europe

Upper limits on the strength of periodic gravitational waves from PSR J1939+2134

The first science run of the LIGO and GEO gravitational wave detectors presented the opportunity to test methods of searching for gravitational waves from known pulsars. Here we present new direct upper limits on the strength of waves from the pulsar PSR J1939+2134 using two independent analysis methods, one in the frequency domain using frequentist statistics and one in the time domain using Bayesian inference. Both methods show that the strain amplitude at Earth from this pulsar is less than a few times $10^{-22}$.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figure, to appear in the Proceedings of the 5th Edoardo Amaldi Conference on Gravitational Waves, Tirrenia, Pisa, Italy, 6-11 July 200

Improving the sensitivity to gravitational-wave sources by modifying the input-output optics of advanced interferometers

We study frequency dependent (FD) input-output schemes for signal-recycling interferometers, the baseline design of Advanced LIGO and the current configuration of GEO 600. Complementary to a recent proposal by Harms et al. to use FD input squeezing and ordinary homodyne detection, we explore a scheme which uses ordinary squeezed vacuum, but FD readout. Both schemes, which are sub-optimal among all possible input-output schemes, provide a global noise suppression by the power squeeze factor, while being realizable by using detuned Fabry-Perot cavities as input/output filters. At high frequencies, the two schemes are shown to be equivalent, while at low frequencies our scheme gives better performance than that of Harms et al., and is nearly fully optimal. We then study the sensitivity improvement achievable by these schemes in Advanced LIGO era (with 30-m filter cavities and current estimates of filter-mirror losses and thermal noise), for neutron star binary inspirals, and for narrowband GW sources such as low-mass X-ray binaries and known radio pulsars. Optical losses are shown to be a major obstacle for the actual implementation of these techniques in Advanced LIGO. On time scales of third-generation interferometers, like EURO/LIGO-III (~2012), with kilometer-scale filter cavities, a signal-recycling interferometer with the FD readout scheme explored in this paper can have performances comparable to existing proposals. [abridged]Comment: Figs. 9 and 12 corrected; Appendix added for narrowband data analysi

If only I could sack you! Management turnover and performance in Great German Banks between 1874 and 1913

We analyse the relation of firm performance and managerial turnover in 19th century German banking by probit estimation. This period covers a major reform of corporate governance. Before the reform performance and turnover were unrelated, whereas after the reform more successful managers left firms more seldom. However, only short-run performance matters in this turnover-success relationship.

Spatiotemporal Characterization of SPP Pulse Propagation in Two-Dimensional Plasmonic Focusing Devices

The spatiotemporal evolution of a SPP wave packet with femtosecond duration is experimentally investigated in two different plasmonic focusing structures. A two-dimensional reconstruction of the plasmonic field in space and time is possible by the numerical analysis of interferometric time-resolved photoemission electron microscopy data. We show that the time-integrated and time-resolved view onto the wave packet dynamics allow one to characterize and compare the capabilities of two-dimensional components for use in plasmonic devices operating with ultrafast pulses