The determinants of board size and composition: Evidence from the UK

This paper examines the trends and determinants of board structure for a large sample of UK firms from 1981 to 2002. We extend the predominantly US based literature in a number of important ways. Firstly, a comparative analysis of the UK and US legal and institutional settings leads us to hypothesize that UK boards will play a weaker monitoring role and hence board structures will not be determined by monitoring related factors. Our evidence supports this conjecture, showing that board structure determinants differ in predictable ways across different institutional settings. Secondly, in contrast to recent US mandatory reforms, UK reforms have been voluntary. As such they provide an interesting comparison, being arguably more effective than a mandatory approach by allowing firms to choose board structures most appropriate for their own needs. Our results support this point of view. Although the UK reforms do have a significant impact on board structures, a large number of firms choose not to comply, and those that do appear to do so for strong economic reasons. The reforms also appear to reduce the ability of well performing CEOs to influence board structures

Spaces of polynomials with roots of bounded multiplicity

We describe an alternative approach to some results of Vassiliev on spaces of polynomials, by using the scanning method which was used by Segal in his investigation of spaces of rational functions. We explain how these two approaches are related by the Smale-Hirsch Principle or the h-Principle of Gromov. We obtain several generalizations, which may be of interest in their own right.Comment: 29 pages, AMS-Te

Robust point correspondence applied to two and three-dimensional image registration

Accurate and robust correspondence calculations are very important in many medical and biological applications. Often, the correspondence calculation forms part of a rigid registration algorithm, but accurate correspondences are especially important for elastic registration algorithms and for quantifying changes over time. In this paper, a new correspondence calculation algorithm, CSM (correspondence by sensitivity to movement), is described. A robust corresponding point is calculated by determining the sensitivity of a correspondence to movement of the point being matched. If the correspondence is reliable, a perturbation in the position of this point should not result in a large movement of the correspondence. A measure of reliability is also calculated. This correspondence calculation method is independent of the registration transformation and has been incorporated into both a 2D elastic registration algorithm for warping serial sections and a 3D rigid registration algorithm for registering pre and postoperative facial range scans. These applications use different methods for calculating the registration transformation and accurate rigid and elastic alignment of images has been achieved with the CSM method. It is expected that this method will be applicable to many different applications and that good results would be achieved if it were to be inserted into other methods for calculating a registration transformation from correspondence

“You Traded Your Mother for an Unripe Mango”: Playing with Insults in an Angolan Refugee Community

This article draws on material gathered in a community of Angolan refugee camps to describe and analyze the content of a children\u27s verbal insulting game, called estiga-sein local Portuguese-language slang. The game takes a form similar to verbal insulting games in other parts of the world but also invokes local understandings of what it means to be a good person. Using examples from children asked about the game, this analysis offers a typology of insults used in the community and interprets how those types illustrate local norms and meanings. While some of the insults targeted familiar personal traits in creative ways (e.g., Your chest is like a biscuit, when you try to concentrate it breaks ), it was more common for children to target behaviors and social roles (e.g., Your father used witchcraft to steal bread from children or You traded your mother for an unripe mango ). The insults ultimately highlight a necessary balance between individual ambition and collective expectations for appropriate behavior within familiar social roles

Activities, Advantages, and Inequalities: The Theory and Practice of Sports, Arts, and Service in Catholic High Schools

Catholic schools have a particular tradition of excellence in the types of sports, arts, and service activities that have a prominent role in contemporary American education and youth culture. When Sports Illustrated magazine, for example, rated the top High School athletic programs in the United States over half (13 of the 25) were Catholic schools, despite the fact that only about three percent of American secondary schools are Catholic. Likewise, though other types of activity programs are harder to quantify, many Catholic schools have extensive and high quality offerings in music, drama, community service, and other domains that serve to build community, engage students, and attract attention—sometimes for good and sometimes for ill. This paper offers a selective review of literature and recent research to address several questions deriving from the prominence of these activities in Catholic schools. What are some of the social, historical, and educational reasons for the particular role of activities in Catholic education? And what does the contemporary prominence of these activities mean for the developmental and educational experiences of students in Catholic school contexts? The broad argument here, drawing primarily on existing scholarly literature while also being informed by field research with activity programs in Catholic high schools, is that extracurricular activities are co-constitutive of educational contexts in ways that matter to fulfilling school missions and addressing socioeconomic inequality

On zero stiffness

Zero-stiffness structures have the remarkable ability to undergo large elastic deformations without requiring external work. Several equivalent descriptions exist, such as (i) continuous equilibrium, (ii) constant potential energy, (iii) neutral stability and (iv) zero stiffness. Each perspective on zero stiffness provides different methods of analysis and design. This paper reviews the concept of zero stiffness and categorises examples from the literature by the interpretation that best describes their working principle. Lastly, a basic spring-to-spring balancer is analysed to demonstrate the equivalence of the four different interpretations, and illustrate the different insights that each approach brings. This is the accepted version of an article first published in Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part C: Journal of Mechanical Engineering Science. The final version is available online at http://pic.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/11/14/0954406213511903.abstract

The Impact of Takeovers on the Fundamental Value of Acquirers

This paper develops a new methodology to examine the financial impact of acquisitions, designed to address whether takeovers yield a positive net present value for the acquiring company. Specifically, we employ the residual income valuation method to compare the fundamental value of the acquiring company before acquisition with the fundamental value after acquisition.We apply this methodology to 303 UK acquisitions completed during 1985–1996, and compare the results with the effects of takeover on profitability and short- and long-run share returns. We find that the impact of acquisition on fundamental value is slightly negative but statistically insignificant. This result differs from the effect of takeover on profitability, which is significantly positive, and the effect of takeover on share returns, which is significantly negative