Corporate Ethics and CEO Compensation

Corporate ethics and chief executive officer (CEO) compensation will be forever linked together. The dramatic increase in recent corporate scandals has driven increased scrutiny of the enormous executive salaries that CEOs collect each year. The connection between these two topics led me to explore how executive compensation plans are designed and how ethics affect executives’ decision making. In this paper I try to determine which financial factors are the best indicators of a CEO’s compensation. I also examine how profitable a company is with an ethical CEO compared to a company with an unethical CEO. The companies I use are the ones in the S&P 500, S&P 400 (mid-cap), and the S&P 600 (small-cap). The factors that I use to observe a CEO’s compensation are five year returns, percent growth rate in net income, percent change in revenue, and average gross profit margin. Other factors that were included are CEO tenure and the market capitalization of a company (total dollar market value of all of a company’s outstanding shares). To examine ethical CEOs against unethical CEOs, I devise an equation that consists of five different ethic components (employees, community, governance, environment, and product). Each company I examined was awarded 0-10 points based on how ethical that CEO and company were for that component. Companies scoring above a 70% were seen as ethical, and the ones scoring below 70% were seen as unethical. The ethical and unethical companies were then compared and evaluated. Then I plug the ethical score result into a final regression equation to see how and if ethics play a role in a CEO’s compensation

Non-linear optimized cash flow model

During construction of a lump-sum project, progress payments (cash inflow) are paid periodically to contractors for project performance. Contractors are required to pay the direct costs (cash outflow) during construction. The net difference between the cash inflow and outflow are the required overdraft, which the contractor financed from a bank. In order to increase profit margin, contractors look into alternate ways, such as front-end loading (unbalanced bid) and activities shifting. Usually, front-end loading and activities shifting are done in a linear, independent, and sequential method. This linear front-end loading and activity shifting formulation will likely not produce an ideal optimized solution. This research examines the combination of the two linear procedures into a single non-linear formulation to achieve better gross profit margin for the contractor

Multigrid Monte Carlo in the Sine Gordon model

We pose two questions about the dynamical critical behavior of multigrid Monte Carlo: Will a multigrid Monte Carlo simulation of the two dimensional Sine Gordon model exhibit critical slowing down, as expected by a theoretical analysis of Metropolis acceptance rates? Can we reduce critical slowing down caused by decreasing acceptance rates on large blocks by performing more updates on coarser lattices? To this end we simulate the model with a W-cycle (gamma = 2) and a higher cycle with gamma = 4 using piecewise constant interpolation. The answer to the first question is positive, the answer to the second one is negative.Comment: 3 pages in ps-format, to appear in the Proceedings of LATTICE 93, Dallas, USA, October 199

First human study in treatment of unresectable liver metastases from colorectal cancer with irinotecan-loaded beads (DEBIRI)

The objective of this pilot clinical study was to assess the safety, technical feasibility, pharmacokinetic (PK) profile and tumour response of DC Bead™ with irinotecan (DEBIRI™) delivered by intra-arterial embolisation for the treatment of metastatic colorectal cancer. Eleven patients with unresectable liver metastases from CRC, tumour burden <30% of liver volume, adequate haematological, liver and renal function, performance status of <2 were included in this study. Patients received up to 4 sessions of TACE with DEBIRI at 3-week intervals. Feasibility of the procedure, safety and tumour response were assessed after each cycle. PK was measured after the first cycle. Patients were followed up to 24 weeks. Only mild to moderate adverse events were observed. DEBIRI is a technically feasibile procedure; no technical complications were observed. Average Cmax for irinotecan and SN-38 was 194 ng/ml and 16.7 ng/ml, respectively, with average t½ of 4.6 h and 12.4 h following administration of DEBIRI. Best overall response during the study showed disease control in 9 patients (2 patients with partial response and 7 with stable disease, overall response rate of 18%). Our study shows that transarterial chemoembolisation with irinotecan-loaded DC beads (DEBIRI) is safe, technically feasible and effective with a good PK profile

Theoretical Analysis of Acceptance Rates in Multigrid Monte Carlo

We analyze the kinematics of multigrid Monte Carlo algorithms by investigating acceptance rates for nonlocal Metropolis updates. With the help of a simple criterion we can decide whether or not a multigrid algorithm will have a chance to overcome critial slowing down for a given model. Our method is introduced in the context of spin models. A multigrid Monte Carlo procedure for nonabelian lattice gauge theory is described, and its kinematics is analyzed in detail.Comment: 7 pages, no figures, (talk at LATTICE 92 in Amsterdam

Woodwork

February, 1938."Cooperative Extension Work in Agriculture and Home Economics, University of Missouri, College of Agriculture and the United States Department of Agriculture cooperating."Title from cover

On the Two-Point Correlation Function for the Uq[SU(2)]U_q[SU(2)] Invariant Spin One-Half Heisenberg Chain at Roots of Unity

Using $U_q[SU(2)]$ tensor calculus we compute the two-point scalar operators (TPSO), their averages on the ground-state give the two-point correlation functions. The TPSOs are identified as elements of the Temperley-Lieb algebra and a recurrence relation is given for them. We have not tempted to derive the analytic expressions for the correlation functions in the general case but got some partial results. For $q=e^{i \pi/3}$, all correlation functions are (trivially) zero, for $q=e^{i \pi/4}$, they are related in the continuum to the correlation functions of left-handed and right-handed Majorana fields in the half plane coupled by the boundary condition. In the case $q=e^{i \pi/6}$, one gets the correlation functions of Mittag's and Stephen's parafermions for the three-state Potts model. A diagrammatic approach to compute correlation functions is also presented.Comment: 19 pages, LaTeX, BONN-HE-93-3

A Note on Bounds of Scalar Operators in Perturbative SCFTs

Bounds on anomalous dimensions of scalar operators in 4d superconformal field theory are explored through perturbative viewpoint. Following the recent work of Green and Shih, in which a conjecture involved this issue is verified at the NLO, we consider the NNLO corrections to the bounds, which are important in some situations and can be divided into two cases where $\mathcal{O}(\lambda^{4})$ or $\mathcal{O}(y^2)$ effects dominate respectively. In the former case, we find that the conjecture is maintained at NNLO, while in the later case, the statement still holds due to the null corrections arising from $\mathcal{O}(y^{2})$.Comment: 17 pages, no figure; v2 typos fixed; v3: revised version with more typos correcte

Physical activity and subjective well-being among people with spinal cord injury: a meta-analysis

Study design: Meta-analysis of cross-sectional, quasi-experimental and experimental studies. Objective: To determine if there is an association between physical activity (PA) and subjective well-being (SWB) among people living with spinal cord injury (SCI). Methods: Literature searches were conducted using multiple databases (Embase, CINAHL, Medline, PsychINFO and SPORTDiscus) to identify studies involving people with SCI that included a measure of PA and at least one measure of SWB (for example, symptoms of depression, life satisfaction, mood). Relevant data were extracted from the studies and subjected to meta-analysis. Results: A total of 21 studies were retrieved yielding 78 effect sizes and a total sample size of 2354. Overall, there were statistically significant, small- to medium-sized effects for the relationships between PA and SWB (broadly defined), PA and depressive symptoms, and PA and life satisfaction. Studies using experimental and quasi-experimental designs yielded larger effects for SWB (broadly defined) and life satisfaction, than studies using nonexperimental study designs. Conclusions: There is a small- to medium-sized positive relationship between PA and SWB among people with SCI that holds across a wide range of measures and operational definitions of these constructs

Multigrid Monte Carlo with higher cycles in the Sine Gordon model

We study the dynamical critical behavior of multigrid Monte Carlo for the two dimensional Sine Gordon model on lattices up to 128 x 128. Using piecewise constant interpolation, we perform a W-cycle (gamma=2). We examine whether one can reduce critical slowing down caused by decreasing acceptance rates on large blocks by doing more work on coarser lattices. To this end, we choose a higher cycle with gamma = 4. The results clearly demonstrate that critical slowing down is not reduced in either case.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figure, whole paper including figure contained in ps-file, DESY 93-00