23,372 research outputs found
Performance-vested Stock Options and Pay-Performance Sensitivity
The paper investigates the incentive effects of performance-vested stock options (PVSOs) in aligning management interests with shareholder wealth. Performance targets attached to option vesting would prevent executives from receiving rewards from outcomes that are unaffected by their effort.Such targets align executive pay more closely with shareholder wealth.The degree of interest alignment is measured by pay-performance sensitivity (PPS).Using data on 4,238 executive-level observations for 1,383 executive directors in the largest 244 UK non-financial firms from 1999 to 2004, we find that the presence of PVSO schemes in executive-compensation contracts is associated with higher PPS, consistent with the idea that stronger incentives are provided by PVSOs.The empirical evidence also shows that PVSOs outperform unconditional stock options (TSOs) in providing incentives, since higher PPS is associated with the presence of PVSOs. Moreover, the results testify the role of vesting-target difficulty of PVSOs in the pay-performance relation.Specifically, difficult targets are associated with lower PPS levels, implying that too difficult targets negatively affect managers' choice of effort, that relatively lower effort is to be expected, and that the interests of managers will diverge from the interests of shareholders.stock options;pay-performance sensitivity;equity incentive
A test of the power law relationship between gamma-ray burst pulse width ratio and energy expected in fireballs or uniform jets
Recently, under the assumption that the Doppler effect of the
relativistically expanding fireball surface is important, Qin et al. showed
that in most cases the power law relationship between the pulse width and
energy of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs)would exist in a certain energy range. We
check this prediction with two GRB samples which contain well identified
pulses. A power law anti-correlation between the full pulse width and energy
and a power law correlation between the pulse width ratio and energy are seen
in the light curves of the majority (around 65%) of bursts of the two samples
within the energy range of BATSE, suggesting that these bursts are likely to
arise from the emission associated with the shocks occurred on a
relativistically expanding fireball surface. For the rest of the bursts, the
relationships between these quantities were not predicted previously. We
propose to consider other spectral evolutionary patterns or other radiation
mechanisms such as a varying synchrotron or Comptonized spectrum to check if
the observed relationships for these rest bursts can also be accounted for by
the Doppler model. In addition, we find that the upper limits of the width
ratio for the two samples do not exceed 0.9, in agrement with what predicted
previously by the Doppler model. The plateau/power law/plateau and the peaked
features predicted and detected previously by Qin et al. are generally
observed, with the exceptions being noticed only in a few cases. According to
the distinct values of two power law indices of FWHM and ratio and energy, we
divide the bursts into three subsets which are located in different areas of
the two indices plane. We suspect that different locations of the two indices
might correspond to different mechanisms.Comment: 16 pages, 7 figures, MNRAS accepte
Relationship between the gamma-ray burst pulse width and energy due to the Doppler effect of fireballs
We study in details how the pulse width of gamma-ray bursts is related with
energy under the assumption that the sources concerned are in the stage of
fireballs. Due to the Doppler effect of fireballs, there exists a power law
relationship between the two quantities within a limited range of frequency.
The power law range and the power law index depend strongly on the observed
peak energy as well as the rest frame radiation form, and the upper and
lower limits of the power law range can be determined by . It is found
that, within the same power law range, the ratio of the of the rising
portion to that of the decaying phase of the pulses is also related with energy
in the form of power laws. A platform-power-law-platform feature could be
observed in the two relationships. In the case of an obvious softening of the
rest frame spectrum, the two power law relationships also exist, but the
feature would evolve to a peaked one. Predictions on the relationships in the
energy range covering both the BATSE and Swift bands for a typical hard burst
and a typical soft one are made. A sample of FRED (fast rise and exponential
decay) pulse bursts shows that 27 out of the 28 sources belong to either the
platform-power-law-platform feature class or the peaked feature group,
suggesting that the effect concerned is indeed important for most of the
sources of the sample. Among these bursts, many might undergo an obvious
softening evolution of the rest frame spectrum.Comment: Accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journa
Hadronic Transition chi(c1)(1P) to eta(c) plus two pions at the Beijing Spectrometer BES and the Cornell CLEO-c
Hadronic transitions of the chi(cj)(1P) states have not been studied yet. We
calculate the rate of the hadronic transition chi(c1)(1P) to eta(c) plus two
pions in the framework of QCD multipole expansion. We show that this process
can be studied experimentally at the upgraded Beijing Spectrometer BES III and
the Cornell CLEO-c.Comment: 6 pages RevTex4(two-column). Version published in Phys. Rev. D 75,
054019 (2007
Jet Modification in a Brick of QGP Matter
We have implemented the LPM effect into a microscopic transport model with
partonic degrees of freedom by following the algorithm of Zapp & Wiedemann. The
Landau-Pomeranchuk-Migdal (LPM) effect is a quantum interference process that
modifies the emission of radiation in the presence of a dense medium. In QCD
this results in a quadratic length dependence for radiative energy loss. This
is an important effect for the modification of jets by their passage through
the QGP.
We verify the leading parton energy loss in the model against the leading
order Baier-Dokshitzer-Mueller-Peigne-Schiff-Zakharov (BDMPS-Z) result.
We apply our model to the recent observations of the modification of di-jets
at the LHC.Comment: Presented at Panic 1
Two types of softening detected in X-ray afterglows of Swift bursts: internal and external shock origins?
The softening process observed in the steep decay phase of early X-ray
afterglows of Swift bursts has remained a puzzle since its discovery. The
softening process can also be observed in the later phase of the bursts and its
cause has also been unknown. Recently, it was suggested that, influenced by the
curvature effect, emission from high latitudes would shift the Band function
spectrum from higher energy band to lower band, and this would give rise to the
observed softening process accompanied by a steep decay of the flux density.
The curvature effect scenario predicts that the terminating time of the
softening process would be correlated with the duration of the process. In this
paper, based on the data from the UNLV GRB group web-site, we found an obvious
correlation between the two quantities. In addition, we found that the
softening process can be divided into two classes: the early type softening
() and the late type softening ().
The two types of softening show different behaviors in the duration vs.
terminating time plot. In the relation between the variation rates of the flux
density and spectral index during the softening process, a discrepancy between
the two types of softening is also observed. According to their time scales and
the discrepancy between them, we propose that the two types are of different
origins: the early type is of internal shock origin and the late type is of
external shock origin. The early softening is referred to the steep decay just
following the prompt emission, whereas the late decay typically conceives the
transition from flat decay to late afterglow decay. We suspect that there might
be a great difference of the Lorentz factor in two classes which is responsible
for the observed discrepancy.Comment: 20 pages, 5 figures, 2 tables, Accepted for Publication to Journal of
Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics (JCAP
Radiative and Collisional Jet Energy Loss in a Quark-Gluon Plasma
We calculate radiative and collisional energy loss of hard partons traversing
the quark-gluon plasma created at RHIC and compare the respective size of these
contributions. We employ the AMY formalism for radiative energy loss and
include additionally energy loss by elastic collisions. Our treatment of both
processes is complete at leading order in the coupling, and accounts for the
probabilistic nature of jet energy loss. We find that a solution of the
Fokker-Planck equation for the probability density distributions of partons is
necessary for a complete calculation of the nuclear modification factor
for pion production in heavy ion collisions. It is found that the
magnitude of is sensitive to the inclusion of both collisional and
radiative energy loss, while the average energy is less affected by the
addition of collisional contributions. We present a calculation of for
at RHIC, combining our energy loss formalism with a relativistic
(3+1)-dimensional hydrodynamic description of the thermalized medium.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, contributed to Quark Matter 2008, Jaipur, Indi
Why Does China Allow Freer Social Media? Protests Versus Surveillance And Propaganda
In this paper, we document basic facts regarding public debates about controversial political issues on Chinese social media. Our documentation is based on a dataset of 13.2 billion blog posts published on Sina Weibo--the most prominent Chinese microblogging platform--during the 2009-2013 period. Our primary finding is that a shockingly large number of posts on highly sensitive topics were published and circulated on social media. For instance, we find millions of posts discussing protests, and these posts are informative in predicting the occurrence of specific events. We find an even larger number of posts with explicit corruption allegations, and that these posts predict future corruption charges of specific individuals. Our findings challenge a popular view that an authoritarian regime would relentlessly censor or even ban social media. Instead, the interaction of an authoritarian government with social media seems more complex.published_or_final_versio
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