The Impact of Product Market Competition on Private Benefits of Control

This paper investigates the impact of product market competition (PMC) on private benefits of control (PBC). We estimate PBC using the voting premium between shares with differential voting rights. We use two measures of the intensity of product market competition: an external competition measure based on industry-level import penetration, and an internal measure derived from domestic product market regulations. Using data for publicly-traded firms in 19 countries for which information on dual class shares is available we find that PMC is strongly negatively correlated with PBC. The evidence indicates that the effect is particularly strong for firms in industries that are likely to be concentrated and in countries with poor legal environments. We further examine the channels through which PMC enhances governance. We find evidence indicating that improvements in the availability of industry information and the higher default probability associated with tougher competition are two important forces in reducing the estimated price gap between dual class shares. Using exchange rates and terms of trade as instruments for import penetration, we find that the link between competition in product markets and private benefits of control is not spurious. Overall, our results suggest that product market competition can help in curbing private benefits of control.private benefits of control, competition, corporate governance, import penetration

Do CEOs matter?

Estimating the value of top managerial talent is a central topic of research that has attracted widespread attention from academics and practitioners. Yet, studying the impact of managers on firm performance is difficult because of endogeneity and omitted variables concerns. In this paper, we test for the impact of managers on firm performance in two ways. First, we examine whether top executive deaths have an impact on firm performance, focusing on the manager and firm characteristics that are associated to large manager-death effects. Second, we test for the interaction between the personal and professional activities of managers by examining the effect of deaths of immediate family members (spouses, parents, children, etc) on firm performance. Our main findings are three. First, CEO deaths are strongly correlated with declines in firms operating profitability, asset growth and sales growth. Second, the death of board members does not seem to affect firm prospects, indicating that not all senior managers are equally important for firms' outcomes. Third, CEOs' immediate family deaths are significantly negatively correlated to firm performance. This last result suggests a strong link between the personal and business roles that top management plays, a connection that is present even in large firms. Overall, our findings demonstrate CEOs are extremely important for firms' prospects.

Soil health -- a new challenge for microbiologists and chemists.

The original publication is available on LINK at http://revistes.iec.cat/index.php/IM/article/view/4c457c718d531.002 This work, including photographs and other illustrations, unless the contrary is indicated, is subject to an Attributions–Non-Commercial–ShareAlike 3.0 Creative Commons License, the full text of which can be consulted at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/. You are free to share, copy, distribute and transmit the work provided that the author is credited and reuse of the material is restricted to non-commercial purposes only and that if you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this on

Nature-based solutions for flood mitigation and soil conservation in a steep-slope olive-orchard catchment (Arquillos, Spain)

The frequency and magnitude of flash floods in the olive orchards of southern Spain have increased because of climate change and unsustainable olive-growing techniques. Affected surfaces occupy >85% of the rural regions of the Upper Guadalquivir Basin. Dangerous geomorphic processes record the increase of runoff, soil loss and streamflow through time. We report on ripple/dune growth over a plane bed on overland flows, deep incision of ephemeral gullies in olive groves and rock-bed erosion in streams, showing an extraordinary sediment transport capacity of sub-daily pluvial floods. We develop a novel method to design optimal solutions for natural flood management and erosion risk mitigation. We adopt physical-based equations and build a whole-system model that accurately reproduces the named processes. The approach yields the optimal targeted locations of nature-based solutions (NbSs) for active flow-control by choosing the physical-model parameters that minimise the peak discharge and the erosion-prone area, maximising the soil infiltration capacity. The sub-metric spatial resolution used to resolve microtopographic features of terrains/NbS yields a computational mesh with millions of cells, requiring a Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) to run massive numerical simulations. Our study could contribute to developing principles and standards for agricultural-management initiatives using NbSs in Mediterranean olive and vineyard orchards.This work was funded by: “Programa Operativo FEDER 2014-2020” and “Consejería de Economía y Conocimiento de la Junta de Andalucía” grant number 138096; the European Union NextGenerationEU/PRTR and MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 grant number TED2021-129910B-I00

Technological advances to rescue temporary and ephemeral wetlands: reducing their vulnerability, making them visible

Mediterranean temporary ponds are a priority habitat according to the Natura 2000 network of the European Union, and complete inventories of these ecosystems are therefore needed. Their small size, short hydroperiod, or severe disturbance make these ponds undetectable by most remote sensing systems. Here we show, for the first time, that the distributed hydrologic model IBER+ detects ephemeral and even extinct wetlands by fully exploiting the available digital elevation model and resolving many microtopographic features at drainage basin scales of about 1000 km2. This paper aims to implement a methodology for siting flood-prone areas that can potentially host a temporary wetland, validating the results with historical orthophotos and existing wetlands inventories. Our model succeeds in dryland endorheic catchments of the Upper Guadalquivir Basin: it has detected 89% of the previously catalogued wetlands and found four new unknown wetlands. In addition, we have found that 24% of the detected wetlands have disappeared because of global change. Subsequently, environmental managers could use the proposed methodology to locate wetlands quickly and cheaply. Finding wetlands would help monitor their conservation and restore them if needed.This work was funded by: “Programa Operativo FEDER 2014–2020” and “Consejería de Economía y Conocimiento de la Junta de Andalucía” grant number 138096; the European Union NextGenerationEU/PRTR and MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 grant number TED2021-129910BI00

ANÁLISIS DEL DESEMPLEO, LA MIGRACIÓN Y LA POBREZA EN MÉXICO

La mayoría de los movimientos poblacionales en todas las regiones geográficas del mundo, obedecen principalmente a motivaciones vinculadas con la búsqueda de mejores condiciones de vida. No obstante, en casi todos los casos el costo social de lograr que los hogares reciban lo necesario para sobrevivir es la ruptura familiar y la seguridad personal.Los graves problemas que están enfrentando las economías subdesarrolladas con bajo o nulo crecimiento económico, altas tasas de desempleo, elevado índice de migración y millones de habitantes en pobreza extrema. El objetivo del presente trabajo fue analizar el desempleo, la migración y la pobreza en México. El desempleo es uno de los problemas de la economía mexicana (según INEGI de 5.5%), le sigue la migración y la pobreza extrema. Debido al incremento del desempleo y los bajos salarios que tiene el país estimulan a las personas a emigrar. Aunado a lo anterior, en Estados Unidos de América la tasa de desempleo de los migrantes mexicanos se elevó de 8.0% a 12.0% (2009) aproximadamente, provocando una fuerte disminución en las remesas, lo que trae como consecuencia una baja en los ingresos de las familias que viven de dichas transferencias ocasionando que se agudice la pobreza en el país

Individualized exercises for continuous assessment in engineering

This project focuses on the development of a web application that automatically grades the solution to engineering exercises. The input data of each exercise is different for each student in order to reduce plagiarism and increase motivation. Students can access the web app from any device with internet access (computer, laptop, phone, …) at any time. The fact that the exercises are enunciated and evaluated in an individualized way eliminates the possibility for students to share the solutions and divert the profitable collaboration between students towards the learning of the resolution procedure itself. From the professor’s perspective, this tool allows an efficient and continuous evaluation of students. Besides, the storage of the data (number of attempts, time required, etc.) provides valuable information both for the self-assessment of the professor and for the analysis of the individualized learning process of each student. The web application is coded in Python, which easily allows the incorporation of additional features according to the needs of professors and students. The web application has already been tested during two academic years in two Spanish universities and for several engineering degrees. Ten professor and more than 2000 students have already benefit from this web application.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Respuesta de tres cultivares de maíz a la inoculación con Azospirillum brasilense bajo cuatro diferentes dosis de nitrógeno

En el municipio de Huamuxtitlán, estado de Guerrero, México, se evaluó la respuesta de los materiales de maíz VS-535, H-507 y criollo veracruzano en las dosis de 0, 30, 60 y 90 kg de nitrógeno ha-1, con y sin Azospirillum brasilense. En el sintético VS- 535 se registró el mayor rendimiento de grano (5.23 t ha-1). En las dosis de 0, 30, 60 y 90 kg de N ha-1 se registraron 4.38, 4.36, 4.81 y 4.93 t ha-1, respectivamente. La diferencia entre aplicar o no Azospirillum brasilense (promedio sobre los factores A, B y repeticiones) fue de 1.47 t ha-1 y de dos días en el ciclo biológico del cultivo.En el municipio de Huamuxtitlán, estado de Guerrero, México, se evaluó la respuesta de los materiales de maíz VS-535, H-507 y criollo veracruzano en las dosis de 0, 30, 60 y 90 kg de nitrógeno ha-1, con y sin Azospirillum brasilense. En el sintético VS535 se registró el mayor rendimiento de grano (5.23 t ha-1). En las dosis de 0, 30, 60 y 90 kg de N ha-1 se registraron 4.38, 4.36, 4.81 y 4.93 t ha-1, respectivamente. La diferencia entre aplicar o no Azospirillum brasilense (promedio sobre los factores A, B y repeticiones) fue de 1.47 t ha-1 y de dos días en el ciclo biológico del cultivo

Integration of Multisensorial Stimuli and Multimodal Interaction in a Hybrid 3DTV System

This article proposes the integration of multisensorial stimuli and multimodal interaction components into a sports multimedia asset under two dimensions: immersion and interaction. The first dimension comprises a binaural audio system and a set of sensory effects synchronized with the audiovisual content, whereas the second explores interaction through the insertion of interactive 3D objects into the main screen and on-demand presentation of additional information in a second touchscreen. We present an end-to-end solution integrating these components into a hybrid (internet-broadcast) television system using current 3DTV standards. Results from an experimental study analyzing the perceived quality of these stimuli and their influence on the Quality of Experience are presented