Tobin's Q, Corporate Diversification and Firm Performance

In this paper, we show that Tobin's q and firm diversification are negatively related. This negative relation holds for different diversification measures and when we control for other known determinants of q. We show further that diversified firms have lower q's than equivalent portfolios of specialized firms. This negative relation holds throughout the 1980s in our sample. Finally, it holds for firms that have kept their number of segments constant over a number of years as well as for firms that have not. In our sample, firms that increase their number of segments have lower q's than firms that keep their number of segment constant. Our evidence is consistent with the view that firms seek growth through diversification when they have exhausted internal growth opportunities. We fail to find evidence supportive of the view that diversification provides firms with a valuable intangible asset

The Benefits and Costs of Group Affiliation: Evidence from East Asia

business group, group affiliation, East Asian corporations

The Benefits and Costs of Internal Markets: Evidence from Asia's Financial Crisis

This study examines the role of internal capital markets and diversification during normal and turbulent times. We hypothesize that internal markets are more valuable for firms in countries with less-developed financial markets and that diversification generally reduces risk. To conduct our tests, we study 3,000 East Asian corporations over the period before and during the 1997-1998 financial crisis. We find support for the internal market hypothesis during normal times. We find, however, that more diversified firms perform worse during a crisis, especially in less-developed countries. This suggests that more diversification and greater usage of internal markets is associated with higher risk-taking, especially when external markets are less developed.

The Costs of Group Affiliation: Evidence from East Asia

We examine the costs of business group affiliation using data for 2,600 firms in nine East Asian economies for the 1994-1996 period. We find that group-affiliated firms are on average valued below independent firms, with the discount attributable to firms whose ultimate owners have voting rights exceeding cash-flow rights. When there is no divergence between voting and cash flow rights, group-affiliated firms actually have a slight value premium over independent firms. Our results are robust to different valuation measures, time periods and estimation techniques. The evidence is consistent with the view that the anticipation of expropriation associated with group affiliation more than offsets any possible benefits of group membership.

Expropriation of Minority Shareholders in East Asia

We examine the evidence on expropriation of minority shareholders by the controlling shareholder in publicly traded companies in nine East Asian countries. Higher cash-flow rights are associated with higher market valuation. In contrast, higher control rights have an insignificant or negative effect on corporate valuation. Deviations of voting from cash-flow rights through the use of pyramiding, cross-holdings, and dual-class shares, are associated with lower market values. Results are robust to the time period we study, splitting the sample by individual countries, using alternative measures of the incentive for expropriation, and using alternative measures for firm valuation. We conclude that the risk of expropriation is the major principal-agent problem for public corporations in East Asia.

The Pattern and Valuation Effects of Corporate Diversification: A Comparison of the United States, Japan, and other East Asian Economies

Corporate diversification, Valuation effects, East Asia, USA, Japan

Nanosensors for cancer detection.

Cancer is a major burden in today's society and one of the leading causes of death in industrialised countries. Various avenues for the detection of cancer exist, most of which rely on standard methods, such as histology, ELISA, and PCR. Here we put the focus on nanomechanical biosensors derived from atomic force microscopy cantilevers. The versatility of this novel technology has been demonstrated in different applications and in some ways surpasses current technologies, such as microarray, quartz crystal microbalance and surface plasmon resonance. The technology enables label free biomarker detection without the necessity of target amplification in a total cellular background, such as BRAF mutation analysis in malignant melanoma. A unique application of the cantilever array format is the analysis of conformational dynamics of membrane proteins associated to surface stress changes. Another development is characterisation of exhaled breath which allows assessment of a patient's condition in a non-invasive manner

Photoconductance Quantization in a Single-Photon Detector

We have made a single-photon detector that relies on photoconductive gain in a narrow electron channel in an AlGaAs/GaAs 2-dimensional electron gas. Given that the electron channel is 1-dimensional, the photo-induced conductance has plateaus at multiples of the quantum conductance 2e$^{2}$/h. Super-imposed on these broad conductance plateaus are many sharp, small, conductance steps associated with single-photon absorption events that produce individual photo-carriers. This type of photoconductive detector could measure a single photon, while safely storing and protecting the spin degree of freedom of its photo-carrier. This function is valuable for a quantum repeater that would allow very long distance teleportation of quantum information.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Bound Chains of Tilted Dipoles in Layered Systems

Ultracold polar molecules in multilayered systems have been experimentally realized very recently. While experiments study these systems almost exclusively through their chemical reactivity, the outlook for creating and manipulating exotic few- and many-body physics in dipolar systems is fascinating. Here we concentrate on few-body states in a multilayered setup. We exploit the geometry of the interlayer potential to calculate the two- and three-body chains with one molecule in each layer. The focus is on dipoles that are aligned at some angle with respect to the layer planes by means of an external eletric field. The binding energy and the spatial structure of the bound states are studied in several different ways using analytical approaches. The results are compared to stochastic variational calculations and very good agreement is found. We conclude that approximations based on harmonic oscillator potentials are accurate even for tilted dipoles when the geometry of the potential landscape is taken into account.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures. Submitted to Few-body Systems special issue on Critical Stability, revised versio