Corporate governance and firm-specific stock price crashes.” Working Paper (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2029719

Abstract We investigate whether firms' corporate governance systems can predict their propensity to experience firm-specific stock price crashes. In a multivariable framework that controls for variables previously shown to affect stock price crashes we find that several governance measures that capture firms' ownership structure, accounting opacity, as well as board structure and processes relate to future crashes. Moreover, we find that these relationships are typically asymmetric for increases and increases in the governance measures, and that they are stronger for firms with greater agency problems. Corporate Governance and Firm-Specific Stock Price Crashes May 2013 Abstract We investigate whether firms' corporate governance systems can predict their propensity to experience firm-specific stock price crashes. In a multivariable framework that controls for variables previously shown to affect stock price crashes we find that several governance measures that capture firms' ownership structure, accounting opacity, as well as board structure and processes relate to future crashes. Moreover, we find that these relationships are typically asymmetric for increases and increases in the governance measures, and that they are stronger for firms with greater agency problems.

Corporate governance and firm-specific stock price crashes

AcceptedArticleWe investigate whether ownership structure, accounting opacity, board structure & processes and managerial incentives attributes relate to future stock price crash risk. Principal component analysis on the 21 attributes that comprise these four corporate governance dimensions reveals that they can explain between 13.1% and 23.0% of a one standard deviation in crash risk. Transient institutional ownership, CEO stock option incentives and the proportion of directors that hold equity increase crashes, whilst insiders’ ownership, accounting conservatism, board size and the presence of a corporate governance policy mitigate crash risk. Overall these relations are more pronounced in environments that accentuate agency risk

Developing teaching responsiveness to children’s inquiry in science: A case study of professional development for pre-school teachers

Supporting inquiry in the science classroom is challenging work, demanding that teachers utilize abilities for addressing and responding to children’s inquiry. These abilities include, (a) knowledge of the various forms of in-class scientific inquiry; (b) abilities for evaluating elements of children’s inquiry which teachers identify; and (c) a repertoire of instructional strategies, from which to choose in order to respond to children’s in-class inquiry. Developing these abilities depends largely on teachers’ preparation and subsequent professional development (PD) in teaching science.  Our purpose in this paper is to describe the design of a professional development program (PDP) for pre-school teachers in Cyprus, seeking to help them develop teacher responsiveness to children’s inquiry. We draw on data from an implementation of this PDP to illustrate how teachers have begun developing their sensitivity towards children’s in-class inquiry and building a repertoire of responses

Advanced concrete optical remote sensors: Structural health monitoring of concrete buildings using polymer sensors

A significant amount of public funds in Cyprus are allocated for civil infrastructure construction and maintenance. As technology progresses, coupled with the need to increase the general safety of structures and citizens, the civil infrastructure is required to become “smart” by incorporating sensing technologies. An essential parameter to assess the health condition in concrete structures is the internal moisture which is linked with the concrete deterioration mechanisms, such as carbonation, frost, corrosion and crack formation and can be measured indirectly by monitoring the relative humidity (RH). This paper is a review of the latest results regarding the project “ACOReS”. During the research project, we developed a novel monitoring system based on polymer optical fibre sensors embedded in concrete structures. The proposed polymer sensors used to measure essential quantities in concretes, such as relative humidity, temperature and strain for estimating the health condition of the building structures

Distribution of cultural content through exploitation of cryptographic algorithms and hardware identification

An influential effect of IT to museums and other Cultural Content owners organizations is the digitization of collections and in general their content. In this paper, a framework for distribution and commercialization of cultural content is proposed extending an earlier work of the authors. In this work, the framework has been upgraded to include features that protect the cultural content purchased online, to be freely distributed among users through p2p networks or file transfer or copy/paste, etc. The framework utilizes cryptographic algorithms, hash functions, block ciphers and computer’s static and unique parameters/properties. The first are used for continuous hashing and digest matching of the database’s contents for quality assurance. The block ciphers are used to enable on-line selling, through encryption of digital objects. The computer’s static and unique parameters are used to ensure the customer identity and content-distribution legibility. The system’s architecture that implements the above framework is presented and explained. This work illustrates a novel approach that utilize cryptographic and security techniques for secure distribution of Cultural Content