Career concerns and competitive pressure

In a duopoly model I study the effects of increased competitive pressure on the implicit incentives provided by career concerns. By building a good reputation, managers are able to capture on the labor market part of the profits that they produce in excess with respect to less talented managers. Increased competition, then, has an ambiguous effect: it raises the reputational concern to the extent that it makes to hire a good manager more valuable. The threat of a hostile takeover is then introduced and it is shown to reduce managerial salary while having a potentially negative effect on ex ante incentives. In particular, it is argued that if alternative governance systems are already available, the threat of a hostile takeover can be harmful

Essays on the economic theory of managerial incentives

Corporations are very common in the business world. In this kind of organizations shareholders are protected by limited liability and, furthermore, they can easily transfer their shares. As a consequence, investors might be interested in buying a corporation's shares just to diversify their portfolios, without any real interest in getting involved in management. It is therefore much easier for corporations to obtain external finance than other organizational forms, and this might well be the basic reason for their wide diffusion. For the very same reason, however, it is necessary to hire professional managers to make all the relevant decisions, and this contains the seed of their problematic governance. In fact, the separation of ownership and control produces a conflict of interest between shareholders, interested in maximizing the firm value, and managers, who can be interested in pursuing a variety of different objectives (empire building, entrenchment, shirking, etc.). This dissertation is composed by three research papers dealing with the economics of managerial incentive provision. It is common to interpret the relationship between shareholders and managers as an agency relationship affected by both a moral hazard and adverse selection problem. Usually, managerial incentives are affected by several elements such as, for example, their compensation packages and career concerns, the internal monitoring of the board of directors, the external monitoring of the market for corporate control, etc. This dissertation suggests that it might be necessary to consider Overview 2 the interactions between alternative incentive mechanisms both to better understand their functioning and, at least as importantly, to help interpreting empirical observations. The first chapter, Paying for Observable Luck, proposes a simple hidden action model which explains recent empirical evidence of asymmetric benchmarking in managerial compensation: managers appear to be insulated from bad luck but not from good luck. The explanation hinges on the interaction between explicit contractual incentives and implicit incentives deriving from the possibility of bankruptcy. The second chapter, Career Concerns and Competitive Pressure, studies how the level of competition in the product market a ects the strength of managerial career concerns. Good managers are in short supply so that firms are willing to compete for them. However, the value of good managers depends on the profit differential they are able to produce on the product market. It is then shown that increased competition makes career concerns stronger if it increases such profit differential. The third chapter, Managerial Entrenchment and the Market for CEOs, suggests that the observed trends of increased managerial pay and increased board independence might be related. Boards captured by an entrenched managers are not active on the demand side of the managerial labor market. Therefore, increased board independence, reducing the number of captured boards, also increases competition for good managers, then rising their pay and making their career concerns stronger

Career concerns and competitive pressure.

In a duopoly model I study the effects of increased competitive pressure on the implicit incentives provided by career concerns. By building a good reputation, managers are able to capture on the labor market part of the profits that they produce in excess with respect to less talented managers. Increased competition, then, has an ambiguous effect: it raises the reputational concern to the extent that it makes to hire a good manager more valuable. The threat of a hostile takeover is then introduced and it is shown to reduce managerial salary while having a potentially negative effect on ex ante incentives. In particular, it is argued that if alternative governance systems are already available, the threat of a hostile takeover can be harmful.

CAREER CONCERNS AND COMPETITIVE PRESSURE

In a duopoly model I study the effects of increased competitive pressure on the implicit incentives provided by career concerns. By building a good reputation, managers are able to capture on the labor market part of the profits that they produce in excess with respect to less talented managers. Increased competition, then, has an ambiguous effect: it raises the reputational concern to the extent that it makes to hire a good manager more valuable. The threat of a hostile takeover is then introduced and it is shown to reduce managerial salary while having a potentially negative effect on ex ante incentives. In particular, it is argued that if alternative governance systems are already available, the threat of a hostile takeover can be harmful.

Contribution of inflammatory pathways to Fabry disease pathogenesis

Lysosomal storage diseases are usually considered to be pathologies in which the passive deposition of unwanted materials leads to functional changes in lysosomes. Lysosomal deposition of unmetabolized glycolipid substrates stimulates the activation of pathogenic cascades, including immunological processes, and particularly the activation of inflammation. In lysosomal storage diseases, the inflammatory response is continuously being activated because the stimulus cannot be eliminated. Consequently, inflammation becomes a chronic process. Lysosomes play a role in many steps of the immune response. Leukocyte perturbation and over-expression of immune molecules have been reported in Fabry disease. Innate immunity is activated by signals originating from dendritic cells via interactions between toll-like receptors and globotriaosylceramide (Gb3) and/or globotriaosylsphingosine (lyso-Gb3). Evidence indicates that these glycolipids can activate toll-like receptors, thus triggering inflammation and fibrosis cascades. In the kidney, Gb3 deposition is associated with the increased release of transforming growth factor beta and with epithelial-to-mesenchymal cell transition, leading to the over-expression of pro-fibrotic molecules and to renal fibrosis. Interstitial fibrosis is also a typical feature of heart involvement in Fabry disease. Endomyocardial biopsies show infiltration of lymphocytes and macrophages, suggesting a role for inflammation in causing tissue damage. Inflammation is present in all tissues and may be associated with other potentially pathologic processes such as apoptosis, impaired autophagy, and increases in pro-oxidative molecules, which could all contribute synergistically to tissue damage. In Fabry disease, the activation of chronic inflammation over time leads to organ damage. Therefore, enzyme replacement therapy must be started early, before this process becomes irreversible.Facultad de Ciencias Exacta

Ileocecal appendix involvement in fabry disease mimicking an acute abdomen

Anderson-Fabry disease (AFD) is a rare, X-linked, lysosomal storage disorder due to a deficiency of alphagalactosidase A. The direct consequence is a lipid storage with the accumulation of glycosphingolipids throughout the body. The clinical picture is highly variable and depends on cellular storage deposition ranging from neurological, cutaneous and renal symptoms to cardiac and gastrointestinal ones. We are reporting about the case of a young female carrier of alpha-galactosidase A (agalA) gene mutation who was treated at our out-clinic practice for minimal neurological involvement (achroparaestesia). She was subsequently admitted in order to undergo appendectomy because of an acute severe abdominal pain. The histological examination of her appendix revealed only a deposition of globotriaosylceramide (Gb3) without any sign of acute inflammation. This case confirms the extreme clinical variability of Fabry disease and how the gastrointestinal involvement diagnosis can be misse

Cephotaxime-associated allergic interstitial nephritis and MPO-ANCA positive vasculitis.

We report a case of reversible acute renal failure after cephotaxime treatment in a patient affected by non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Renal biopsy showed necrotizing vasculitis associated with eosinophil-rich interstitial inflammatory infiltrates and patchy infiltrates of CD20+ lymphoid cells. High serum p-ANCA titers were also detected. Drug withdrawal was closely related with recovery of renal function and disappearance of ANCA. Acute renal failure therefore represented a consequence of ANCA-mediated renal vasculitis and acute interstitial nephritis related to cephotaxime treatment

FP616CHOLECALCIFEROL SUPPLEMENTATION IMPROVES SECONDARY HYPERPARATHYROIDISM CONTROL IN HEMODIALYSIS PATIENTS

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Procedure parametriche per la conformazione di musei virtuali pluridimensionali

La parola museo ha assunto un’accezione più ampia nei musei virtuali. Poiché essi si generano in uno spazio, appunto, virtuale, hanno caratte- ristiche completamente diverse da quelli reali. Per questo motivo alla luce delle possibilità of- ferte da un tale spazio, il museo virtuale è stato immaginato come un luogo multidimensionale che, pur esistendo in una dimensione non per- cepibile dall’uomo, si traduce in uno spazio tridi- mensionale in continua mutazione. Le tecnologie digitali per il controllo degli spazi in ambiente parametrico offrono difatti notevoli possibilità nella generazione di “architetture” dinamiche e riconfigurabili. Se tale riorganizzazione è control- lata dall’utente, è possibile ottenere un museo al servizio del visitatore