Incentives vs. Control: An Analysis of U.S. Dual-Class Companies

Dual-class common stock allows for the separation of voting rights and cash flow rights across the different classes of equity. We construct a large sample of dual-class firms in the United States and analyze the relationships of insider's cash flow rights and voting rights with firm value, performance, and investment behavior. We find that relationship of firm value to cash flow rights is positive and concave and the relationship to voting rights is negative and convex. Identical quadratic relationships are found for the respective ownership variables with sales growth, capital expenditures, and the combination of R&D and advertising. Our evidence is consistent with an entrenchment effect of voting control that leads managers to underinvest and an incentive effect of cash flow ownership that induces managers to pursue more aggressive strategies.

Moment inequalities and their application

This paper provides conditions under which the inequality constraints generated by either single agent optimizing behavior, or by the Nash equilibria of multiple agent problems, can be used as a basis for estimation and inference. We also add to the econometric literature on inference in models defined by inequality constraints by providing a new specification test and methods of inference for the boundaries of the model's identified set. Two applications illustrate how the use of inequality constraints can simplify the problem of obtaining estimators from complex behavioral models of substantial applied interest.

Corporate Governance and Equity Prices

Corporate-governance provisions related to takeover defenses and shareholder rights vary substantially across firms. In this paper, we use the incidence of 24 different provisions to build a 'Governance Index' for about 1,500 firms per year, and then we study the relationship between this index and several forward-looking performance measures during the 1990s. We find a striking relationship between corporate governance and stock returns. An investment strategy that bought the firms in the lowest decile of the index (strongest shareholder rights) and sold the firms in the highest decile of the index (weakest shareholder rights) would have earned abnormal returns of 8.5 percent per year during the sample period. Furthermore, the Governance Index is highly correlated with firm value. In 1990, a one-point increase in the index is associated with a 2.4 percentage-point lower value for Tobin's Q. By 1999, this difference had increased significantly, with a one-point increase in the index associated with an 8.9 percentage-point lower value for Tobin's Q. Finally, we find that weaker shareholder rights are associated with lower profits, lower sales growth, higher capital expenditures, and a higher amount of corporate acquisitions. We conclude with a discussion of several causal interpretations.

The microbial nitrogen cycling, bacterial community composition, and functional potential in a natural grassland are stable from breaking dormancy to being dormant again

DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT : The raw data is available on NCBI’s Sequence Read Archive (SRA) database under BioProject: PRJNA803487.SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIALS : FIGURE S1: Soil textures of the sampling sites; FIGURE S2: Distribution of plant groups across the six study sites; FIGURE S3: Plant species distribution across the study sites. The legume species are represented by asterisk (*) on the legend. The abbreviations represent: BRIN, Bromus inermis; POPR, Poa pratensis; PHAR, Phalaris arundinacea; CA, Carex sp.; NA, Nassella sp.; ANGE, Andropogon gerardii; SCSC, Schizachyrium scoparium; BOCU, Bouteloua curtipendula; DIOL, Dichanthelium oligosanthes; CIFL, Cirsium flodmanii; ASSP, Asclepias speciose; SOMI, Solidago missouriensis; HEMA, Helianthus maximiliani; ANCA, Anemone canadensis; SOCA, Solidago canadensis; GLLE, Glycyrrhiza lepidota; PH, Physalis sp.; AMCA*, Amorpha canescens; DAPU*, Dalea purpurea; PE*, Pediomelum sp.; RO, Rosa sp.; FIGURE S4: Soil chemical properties across sampling sites within the sampling time points with Kruskal–Wallis test results; FIGURE S5: Alpha-diversity of the bacterial communities across 6 months. (a) Shannon diversity and (b) Pielou Evenness.; FIGURE S6: Taxa differences across at least one time point across the seasons (p < 0.01). The names of the phyla shown here are based on the taxonomic profile downloaded from the Greengenes database, however, some of the phylum names have recently been changed [38]; TABLE S1. G-Block solutions; TABLE S2. Primers used for nitrogen cycle genes. SUPPLEMENTARY DATA S3. R 2 values of the qPCR assays. SUPPLEMENTARY DATA S4. OTU table.The quantity of grass-root exudates varies by season, suggesting temporal shifts in soil microbial community composition and activity across a growing season. We hypothesized that bacterial community and nitrogen cycle-associated prokaryotic gene expressions shift across three phases of the growing season. To test this hypothesis, we quantified gene and transcript copy number of nitrogen fixation (nifH), ammonia oxidation (amoA, hao, nxrB), denitrification (narG, napA, nirK, nirS, norB, nosZ), dissimilatory nitrate reduction to ammonia (nrfA), and anaerobic ammonium oxidation (hzs, hdh) using the pre-optimized Nitrogen Cycle Evaluation (NiCE) chip. Bacterial community composition was characterized using V3-V4 of the 16S rRNA gene, and PICRUSt2 was used to draw out functional inferences. Surprisingly, the nitrogen cycle genes and transcript quantities were largely stable and unresponsive to seasonal changes. We found that genes and transcripts related to ammonia oxidation and denitrification were different for only one or two time points across the seasons (p < 0.05). However, overall, the nitrogen cycling genes did not show drastic variations. Similarly, the bacterial community also did not vary across the seasons. In contrast, the predicted functional potential was slightly low for May and remained constant for other months. Moreover, soil chemical properties showed a seasonal pattern only for nitrate and ammonium concentrations, while ammonia oxidation and denitrification transcripts were strongly correlated with each other. Hence, the results refuted our assumptions, showing stability in N cycling and bacterial community across growing seasons in a natural grassland.The South Dakota Agricultural Experiment Station.https://www.mdpi.com/journal/microorganismsam2023BiochemistryGeneticsMicrobiology and Plant Patholog

The psychological science accelerator’s COVID-19 rapid-response dataset

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Psychological Science Accelerator coordinated three large-scale psychological studies to examine the effects of loss-gain framing, cognitive reappraisals, and autonomy framing manipulations on behavioral intentions and affective measures. The data collected (April to October 2020) included specific measures for each experimental study, a general questionnaire examining health prevention behaviors and COVID-19 experience, geographical and cultural context characterization, and demographic information for each participant. Each participant started the study with the same general questions and then was randomized to complete either one longer experiment or two shorter experiments. Data were provided by 73,223 participants with varying completion rates. Participants completed the survey from 111 geopolitical regions in 44 unique languages/dialects. The anonymized dataset described here is provided in both raw and processed formats to facilitate re-use and further analyses. The dataset offers secondary analytic opportunities to explore coping, framing, and self-determination across a diverse, global sample obtained at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which can be merged with other time-sampled or geographic data

A global experiment on motivating social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic

Finding communication strategies that effectively motivate social distancing continues to be a global public health priority during the COVID-19 pandemic. This cross-country, preregistered experiment (n = 25,718 from 89 countries) tested hypotheses concerning generalizable positive and negative outcomes of social distancing messages that promoted personal agency and reflective choices (i.e., an autonomy-supportive message) or were restrictive and shaming (i.e., a controlling message) compared with no message at all. Results partially supported experimental hypotheses in that the controlling message increased controlled motivation (a poorly internalized form of motivation relying on shame, guilt, and fear of social consequences) relative to no message. On the other hand, the autonomy-supportive message lowered feelings of defiance compared with the controlling message, but the controlling message did not differ from receiving no message at all. Unexpectedly, messages did not influence autonomous motivation (a highly internalized form of motivation relying on one’s core values) or behavioral intentions. Results supported hypothesized associations between people’s existing autonomous and controlled motivations and self-reported behavioral intentions to engage in social distancing. Controlled motivation was associated with more defiance and less long-term behavioral intention to engage in social distancing, whereas autonomous motivation was associated with less defiance and more short- and long-term intentions to social distance. Overall, this work highlights the potential harm of using shaming and pressuring language in public health communication, with implications for the current and future global health challenges