Director Characteristics and Firm Performance

The traditional methodology examining optimal boards relates a simple board variable (e.g. independence or board demography) to firm performance, however, ig- noring other board characteristics. This paper investigates how the education and business experience of directors affect firm performance. The sample consists of 1,574 directorships from 224 listed firms in Switzerland. Using OLS and including control variables, the results show that graduates of minor Swiss universities are negatively related to Tobin’s Q, and industrial knowledge and Tobin’s Q are nega- tively correlated if the firm has more divisions. In addition, director fixed effects (or unobserved characteristics) are significant, but improve the explanatory power of the models only by 5 percent

Ethical Considerations in Risk Communication Practice and Research†

Risk communication is a growth industry. The increasing size of Risk Analysis is just one reflection of a more general flood of publications, workshops, research projects, as well as serious efforts to communicate or to tell others how to communicate. The National Research Council has recently issued a summary report on the topic.(’) Amid all this activity, there is a simmering conflict regarding the ethical status of risk communication. Some people hold it to be an unabashedly good thing, an essential activity if lay people are to make informed decisions regarding risks. Others have a darker view. For example, Sheila Jasanoff suggests that “risk communication is often a code [word] for brainwashing by experts or industry”.(2) In this editorial, we offer a framework for analyzing the ethical status of that subset of communications composed of messages from technical experts to the lay public.</p

Can the U.S. Have Reliable Electricity?

Nuclear power plant operators have greatly increased reliability over the past two decades. What can the electric power industry as a whole learn from their experience

Power Play: A More Reliable U.S. Electric System

U.S. utilities have a lot to learn about avoiding power outages. They can benefit from the experience of foreign utilities, other U.S. industries, and even their own nuclear power plants.</p

The U.S. Electric Power Sector and Climate Change Mitigation

Measured by environmental impact and economic importance, the electricity industry is one of the most important sectors of the American economy. The generation of electricity is responsible for 38 percent of all U.S. carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and one third of all U.S. greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This sector is the largest single source of these emissions. It is also the largest source of sulfur dioxide (SO2), oxides of nitrogen (NOX), small particles, and other air pollutants. At the same time, electricity is critical to the U.S. economy. Recent annual national expenditures on electricity totaled $250 billion—making the electricity sector’s share of overall GDP larger than that of the automobile manufacturing industry and roughly equal in magnitude to that of the telecommunications industry. Expenditures alone, however, understate the importance of electricity to the U.S. economy. Nearly every aspect of productive activity and daily life in a modern economy depends on electricity for which there is, in many cases, no close substitute. As the most desirable form of energy for many uses, electricity use has grown faster than GDP. The Internet and computers would not operate without very reliable, high-quality electricity. Electricity also plays a major role in delivering modern comforts and easing household tasks, from running heating and cooling systems to washing clothes and dishes. It plays an even more important role in the commercial, manufacturing, and agricultural sectors, where it provides lighting and powers a variety of machines. In short, it is hard to imagine a modern economy functioning without large amounts of reliable, high-quality electricity.</p

Introducing Electric Power Into a Multidisciplinary Curriculum for Network Industries

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