The masquerade ball of the CEOs and the mask of excessive risk

We analyze the effects of CEOs' layoff risk on their risk choice while overseeing a firm. A CEO, whose managerial ability is unknown, is fired if her expected ability is below average. Her risk choice changes the informativeness of output and market's belief about her ability. She can decrease her layoff risk by taking excessive risk and trade off current compensation for layoff risk. The firm may voluntarily or involuntarily allow excessive risk taking even under optimal linear compensation contracts. Above-average CEOs always keep their jobs, but among below-average CEOs, a higher-ability one is more likely to be fired

Maximising Survival, Growth, and Goal Reaching Under Borrowing Constraints

In this paper, we consider three problems related to survival, growth, and goal reaching maximization of an investment portfolio with proportional net cash flow. We solve the problems in a market constrained due to borrowing prohibition. To solve the problems, we first construct an auxiliary market and then apply the dynamic programming approach. Via our solutions, an alternative approach is introduced in order to solve the problems defined under an auxiliary market

Impact of Farm Size and Uncertainty on Technology Disadoption

For policies that promote use of new technologies by farmers to be successful, it is important that farmers continue to use these technologies. Technology disadoption has not been analyzed in the literature widely and there is no theoretical model that analyzes technology disadoption. The objective of the current study is to provide a theoretical framework that explains the impact of farm size and uncertainty with respect to production technology on farmers’ decision to disadopt a new technology. Current study found that a negative relationship between farm size and disadoption technologies that were complement to other technologies that are used by larger farms. Also, the current study predicted that larger farmers are more likely to disadopt a new technology if a fixed replacement cost is required, where average replacement cost decreases with farm size. For the impact of technological uncertainty, the current paper found that if the variance of the profit from current technology or pratice increases, farmers become more likely to disadopt the current technology or the practices.Technology Disadoption, Farm Size, Uncertainty, Environmental Quality, Environmental Economics and Policy,

Long-time stress relaxation of filled amorphous networks under uniaxial tension: The dynamic constrained junction model

The dynamic constrained junction model, based on the equilibrium theory of rubber elasticity, is applied to study the effects of fillers on the relaxation of stress in uniaxially deformed rubbers. Only low degrees of reinforcement are considered where complications such as filler-filler interactions are not pronounced. The proposed model is based on a purely molecular picture of the network and attempts to explain the molecular origins of the deformation and time dependence of stress in filled rubbers. Comparison with experimental data on filled (poly) isoprene networks showed that the deformation and time dependence of lightly filled samples can be predicted satisfactorily by the model

Impact of Off-Farm Employment on Farmers’ Willingness to Grow Switchgrass and Miscanthus

Current study analyzed the socio-economic factors that impact farmers’ willingness to grow switchgrass and Miscanthus in Missouri and Iowa. The results of study show that current level of farmers’ willingness to grow either crop is low. Hence, there are barriers to accomplishing to goal of producing 21 billion gallons of cellulosic ethanol by 2022, as set by the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. The results of the ordered probit regressions show that farmers with higher education levels and smaller farm sales are more willing to grow energy crops. The results of this study show that currently growing energy crops is more attractive to small farms as a source of crop diversification, rather than an alternative crop production in the big scale by large farms.Bioenergy, Cellulosic Ethanol, Switchgrass, Miscanthus, Ordered Probit, Agricultural and Food Policy, Environmental Economics and Policy, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Long time stress relaxation of amorphous networks under uniaxial tension: The Dynamic Constrained Junction Model

Poly-isoprene networks with different degrees of cross-linking and filler amount are studied under uniaxial stress relaxation. Time decay of stress obeys a stretched exponential form with a stretching parameter of 0.4 that is same for all independent variables, i.e., extensions, crosslink density and filler amount. Relaxation time τ increases with increasing strain, and decreases with both cross-link and filler content. Dependence of τ on filler content is less sensitive than on cross-link density. The isochronous Mooney-Rivlin plots show that the phenomenological constant 2C1 is time independent, and all time dependence results from that of 2C2 , which is associated with relaxation of intermolecular interactions at and above the length-scales of network chain dimensions. The relatively low value of the stretching parameter is interpreted in terms of a molecular model where entanglements contribute to relaxation at a wide spectrum of time scales