Industry effect on Venture capital and Private Equity backed transactions

Purpose: The aim of this research is to contrast transaction multiples of mergers and acquisitions backed by private equity and venture capital investors against all other types of transactions. Design: The researcher conducted an independent samples t-test on 20-year historical data of mergers and acquisitions gathered through Capital IQ database. Findings: The researcher found that there is a statistically significant difference in transaction multiples of mergers and acquisitions backed by private equity and venture capital firms as compared to those mergers and acquisitions that were not backed by a private equity or venture capital firm. Originality and Value: The findings of this study will provide evidence to suggest that industry group may play an important role in the transaction multiples of deals backed by venture capital and private equity investors

Essays on managerial productivity and firm outcomes

This dissertation studies internal and external factors affecting firm outcomes. The first two chapters explore the sources of variation in managerial skill within an Indian life insurance firm. The existing literature has investigated the association between managerial productivity and management practices across firms, but has largely overlooked how individual traits and skills affect managerial performance. Intra-firm variation in managerial productivity allows us to study managerial skill without the confounded effects of variation in management practices. The third chapter models how external technological change affects competition between media firms, and what that implies for information availability in a society. For the first two chapters, I use a novel dataset drawn from a life insurance firm in India, with 211 managers, each leading a sales team of insurance agents. Chapter 1 studies the sources of large variation in performance across teams. I find that the performance of newly recruited agents is positively correlated with the managers' past team productivity index. I also observe that when agents move across teams in the firm's internal labor market, there is no change in the output of such agents, except when they join the team of a high performing manager (in the top decile of team performance). This allows me to infer that most managers differ from along their recruiting skill, whereas the high performers are able to provide some form of managerial contribution to productivity such as training, supervision or guidance. Chapter 2 examines the dynamics of managerial skills in this firm. I distinguish between internally-hired managers who were working previously as agents in the firm, and externally-hired managers, who joined the firm directly as managers. I find that the teams of internally-hired managers are 14% more productive, but that the teams of externally-hired managers catch up in a span of six to seven years. Among different mechanisms, I find evidence that the managers differ in the recruitment of good workers and also in the contribution to the output of their workers. Further, I find evidence that the externally-hired managers learn how to recruit good workers. This is the first study to show evidence supporting learning-by-doing on part of managers. The third chapter, co-authored with Benjamin Ogden, develops a model of endogenous media polarization- or, product differentiation among news sources- to study how this affects political outcomes. We show that under internet-based technology, where users provide additional values when they are served their preferred content, media firms would have an incentive to skew their content, leading to divergence. However, the degree of divergence will depend on the distribution of audience. Under reasonable restrictions on the distribution of voters, informed political choices are implemented. The model demonstrates why increasing media polarization does not necessarily lead to incorrect political outcomes and may in fact create conditions for correct policy choice

Bone versus implant: an atypical presentation of a typical complication of forearm fractures

Both bone forearm fractures are one of the most common upper limb fractures operated by orthopedicians. Although the primary surgery is usually relatively straight forward and simple, but we present a case where the primary surgery failed and the patient presented with a deformed hand after 5 months, even though there were signs of union on radiographs. When operated upon, although the ulna had undergone primary bone healing and a peri-implant fracture had occurred, whereas radius had refractured from the fracture site and the plate was bent giving the deformed appearance. We discuss this unique complication, the planning, difficulties and scope of errors in such a situation, where the race to union is won by ulna but lost by radius

A rare case of fenoxaprop-P-ethyl poisoning: Presenting as acute myocardial infarction

Fenoxaprop-P-ethyl (FPPE) is a phenoxy herbicide and exerts its herbicidal action by interfering with fatty acid biosynthesis through inhibition of acetyl-CoA-carboxylase in plant chloroplast and thereby hampering fatty acid synthesis. It also inhibits this enzyme in the mammalian liver and has produced reversible hepatic toxicity in laboratory studies. Poisoning with this herbicide is uncommon, and herbicide product appears to be safe in patients with an acute self-poisoning, particularly in comparison with other herbicides and causing few clinical features. Here, we report the case of a 35-year-old male patient presented with FPPE poisoning. He came with an altered sensorium and later on developed acute myocardial infarction. Even after appropriate management, the patient deteriorated and succumbed

Quasi-Newton policy gradient algorithms

Policy gradient algorithms have been widely applied to Markov decision process and reinforcement learning problems in recent years. Regularization with various entropy functions is often used to encourage exploration and improve stability. In this paper, we propose a quasi-Newton method for the policy gradient algorithm with entropy regularization. In the case of Shannon entropy, the resulting algorithm reproduces the natural policy gradient algorithm. For other entropy functions, this method results in brand new policy gradient algorithms. We provide a simple proof that all these algorithms enjoy the Newton-type quadratic convergence and that the corresponding gradient flow converges globally to the optimal solution. Using both synthetic and industrial-scale examples, we demonstrate that the proposed quasi-Newton method typically converges in single-digit iterations, often orders of magnitude faster than other state-of-the-art algorithms.Comment: 18 pages, 10 figure