Does Earnings Management Amplify The Association Between Corporate Governance And Firm Performance?: Evidence From Korea

This paper aims to examine whether earnings management strengthens the causal links between corporate governance and firm performance. It examines the association between corporate governance and real activity-based earnings management and extends it to firm performance. This study involves 1,104 listings on the Korean Stock Exchange and finds that real activity-based earnings management decreases if firms have a well-established governance system, and such earnings management could strengthen the causal link between corporate governance and firm performance as measured by Tobin’s Q. Our study results are the first empirical evidences that real activity-based earnings management is effectively controlled by a corporate governance system and that it has links between corporate governance and performance. This provides the importance of corporate governance which could effectively constrain real activity-based earnings management, such that eventually influences the firm’s performance. In particular, it provides useful insights into corporate structures in which ownership is highly concentrated. Our findings are of great importance for Korea, in which the predominant business structure for large enterprises is that of the chaebol (equivalent to the Japanese keiretsu), which consists of conglomerates of many smaller companies and in which the structure of corporate governance is that of owner control

D-SLATS: Distributed Simultaneous Localization and Time Synchronization

Through the last decade, we have witnessed a surge of Internet of Things (IoT) devices, and with that a greater need to choreograph their actions across both time and space. Although these two problems, namely time synchronization and localization, share many aspects in common, they are traditionally treated separately or combined on centralized approaches that results in an ineffcient use of resources, or in solutions that are not scalable in terms of the number of IoT devices. Therefore, we propose D-SLATS, a framework comprised of three different and independent algorithms to jointly solve time synchronization and localization problems in a distributed fashion. The First two algorithms are based mainly on the distributed Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) whereas the third one uses optimization techniques. No fusion center is required, and the devices only communicate with their neighbors. The proposed methods are evaluated on custom Ultra-Wideband communication Testbed and a quadrotor, representing a network of both static and mobile nodes. Our algorithms achieve up to three microseconds time synchronization accuracy and 30 cm localization error

Direct Plating of Low Resistivity Bright Cu Films onto TiN Barrier Layer via Pd Activation

For seedless electroplating of low resistivity Cu film applicable to deep submicrometer damascene feature, Pd activation was introduced to direct Cu electroplating onto a high resistivity TiN barrier to get a high quality Cu film. Displacement-deposited Pd particles on the TiN substrate acted as nucleation sites for Cu plating. This high-density instantaneous nucleation made it possible to deposit a continuous, bright Cu film with low resistivity of 3.1 mV cm ~after annealing!. Aided by small amounts of benzotriazole, Pd activation also gave way to the application of seedless plating to superfilling of a deep submicrometer damascene structure, where the formation of the seed layer had been a critical issue. Poor adhesion between plated Cu and Pd activated TiN substrate was greatly improved by the addition of poly~ethylene glycol!. The change in film characteristics was found to be negligible

Oxidation Resistive Cu Films by Room Temperature Surface Passivation with Thin Ag Layer

A displacement-deposited Ag layer was investigated as an oxidation barrier in damascene Cu structure for high performance interconnection. A 40 nm thick bright and continuous Ag film was formed at the surface of electrodeposited Cu by immersing the copper film into the silver displacement solution. The Ag film at Cu surface significantly blocked oxygen diffusion into the Cu film and retarded oxidation. More importantly, an elevated barrier performance for oxygen diffusion through elimination and stuffing of grain boundaries of Cu was observed upon annealing in a 400°C N2 atmosphere. Outward Cu diffusion through Ag layer controlled Cu oxidation when the surface was passivated with Ag layer

Korea’s technical assistance for better governance

노트 : - Paper for International Conference on U.S.-Korea Dialogue on Strategies for Effective Development Cooperation - Organized by Asia Foundation October 17-18, 2011 Seoul, Korea 행사명 : International Conference on U.S.-Korea Dialogue on Strategies for Effective Development Cooperatio