Does Diversification Destroy Value? Evidence From Industry Shocks

Does corporate diversification reduce shareholder value? Since firms endogenously choose to diversify, exogenous variation in diversification is necessary in order to draw inferences about the causal effect. We examine changes in the within-firm dispersion of industry investment, or diversity.' We find that exogenous changes in diversity, due to changes in industry investment, are negatively related to firm value. Thus diversification destroys value, consistent with the inefficient internal capital markets hypothesis. This finding is not caused by measurement error. We also find that exogenous changes in industry cash flow diversity are negative related to firm value.

The Diversification Discount: Cash Flows vs. Returns

Diversified firms have different values than comparable portfolios of single-segment firms. These value differences must be due to differences in either future cash flows or future returns. Expected security returns on diversified firms vary systematically with relative value. Discount firms have significantly higher subsequent returns than premium firms. Slightly more than half of the cross-sectional variation in excess values is due to variation in expected future cash flows, with the remainder due to variation in expected future returns and to covariation between cash flow and returns.

Implementation of the frequency-modulated sideband search method for gravitational waves from low mass X-ray binaries

We describe the practical implementation of the sideband search, a search for periodic gravitational waves from neutron stars in binary systems. The orbital motion of the source in its binary system causes frequency-modulation in the combination of matched filters known as the $\mathcal{F}$-statistic. The sideband search is based on the incoherent summation of these frequency-modulated $\mathcal{F}$-statistic sidebands. It provides a new detection statistic for sources in binary systems, called the $\mathcal{C}$-statistic. The search is well suited to low-mass X-ray binaries, the brightest of which, called Sco X-1, is an ideal target candidate. For sources like Sco X-1, with well constrained orbital parameters, a slight variation on the search is possible. The extra orbital information can be used to approximately demodulate the data from the binary orbital motion in the coherent stage, before incoherently summing the now reduced number of sidebands. We investigate this approach and show that it improves the sensitivity of the standard Sco X-1 directed sideband search. Prior information on the neutron star inclination and gravitational wave polarization can also be used to improve upper limit sensitivity. We estimate the sensitivity of a Sco X-1 directed sideband search on 10 days of LIGO data and show that it can beat previous upper limits in current LIGO data, with a possibility of constraining theoretical upper limits using future advanced instruments.Comment: 20 pages, 5 figure

Radial evolution of sunward strahl electrons in the inner heliosphere

The heliospheric magnetic field (HMF) exhibits local inversions, in which the field apparently “bends back” upon itself. Candidate mechanisms to produce these inversions include various configurations of upstream interchange reconnection; either in the heliosphere, or in the corona where the solar wind is formed. Explaining the source of these inversions, and how they evolve in time and space, is thus an important step towards explaining the origins of the solar wind. Inverted heliospheric magnetic field lines can be identified by the anomalous sunward (i.e. inward) streaming of the typically anti-sunward propagating, field aligned (or anti-aligned), beam of electrons known as the “strahl”. We test if the pitch angle distribution (PAD) properties of sunward-propagating strahl are different from those of outward strahl.We perform a statistical study of strahl observed by the Helios spacecraft, over heliocentric distances spanning ≈ 0.3 – 1 AU. We find that sunward strahl PADs are broader and less intense than their outward directed counterparts; particularly at distances 0.3 – 0.75 AU. This is consistent with sunward strahl being subject to additional, path-length dependent, scattering in comparison to outward strahl.We conclude that the longer and more variable path from the Sun to the spacecraft, along inverted magnetic field, leads to this additional scattering. The results also suggest that the relative importance of scattering along this additional path length drops off with heliocentric distance. These results can be explained by a relatively simple, constant-rate, scattering process

SUPPLY AND DEMAND RISKS IN LABORATORY FORWARD AND SPOT MARKETS: IMPLICATIONS FOR AGRICULTURE

Laboratory experimental methods are used to investigate the impacts of supply and/or demand risks on prices, quantities traded, and earnings within forward and spot market institutions. Random demand and/or supply shifts can be as much as 25 percent of the expected equilibrium outcome. Nevertheless, results suggest that the spot or forward trading institution itself has a greater influence on market outcomes than the presence of risk within the trading institutions. Sellers tend to have relatively higher earnings in a spot market than buyers, regardless of the risk. Total surplus, however, generally is greater in a forward market.laboratory markets, forward market, spot market, supply and/or demand risks, Demand and Price Analysis, Marketing,

Datasets related to in-land water for limnology and remote sensing applications: distance-to-land, distance-to-water, water-body identifier and lake-centre co-ordinates

Datasets containing information to locate and identify water bodies have been generated from data locating static-water-bodies with resolution of about 300 m (1/360 deg) recently released by the Land Cover Climate Change Initiative (LC CCI) of the European Space Agency. The LC CCI water-bodies dataset has been obtained from multi-temporal metrics based on time series of the backscattered intensity recorded by ASAR on Envisat between 2005 and 2010. The new derived datasets provide coherently: distance to land, distance to water, water-body identifiers and lake-centre locations. The water-body identifier dataset locates the water bodies assigning the identifiers of the Global Lakes and Wetlands Database (GLWD), and lake centres are defined for in-land waters for which GLWD IDs were determined. The new datasets therefore link recent lake/reservoir/wetlands extent to the GLWD, together with a set of coordinates which locates unambiguously the water bodies in the database. Information on distance-to-land for each water cell and the distance-to-water for each land cell has many potential applications in remote sensing, where the applicability of geophysical retrieval algorithms may be affected by the presence of water or land within a satellite field of view (image pixel). During the generation and validation of the datasets some limitations of the GLWD database and of the LC CCI water-bodies mask have been found. Some examples of the inaccuracies/limitations are presented and discussed. Temporal change in water-body extent is common. Future versions of the LC CCI dataset are planned to represent temporal variation, and this will permit these derived datasets to be updated