The Deep-Pocket Effect of Internal Capital Markets

We provide evidence suggesting that incumbents’ access to group deep pockets has a negative impact on entry in product markets. Relying on a unique French data set on business groups, our paper presents three major findings. First, the amount of cash holdings owned by incumbent-affiliated groups is negatively related to entry in a market. Second, the impact on entry of group deep pockets is more important in markets where access to external funding is likely to be more difficult. Third, the ‘entry deterring effeect’ of group deep pockets is more pronounced when groups have more active internal capital markets. Our findings suggest that internal capital markets operate within corporate groups and that they have a potential anti-competitive effect.Business Groups, Internal Capital Markets, Deep-Pockets, Market Entry

The Power of Dynastic Commitment

We study how, at times of CEO transitions, the identity of the CEO successor shapes labor contracts within family firms. We propose an alternate view of how family management might underperform relative to external management in family firms. The idea developed in this paper is that, in contrast to external professionals, CEOs promoted from within the family not only inherit control of the firm but also inherit a set of implicit contracts that affects their ability to restructure the firm. Consistent with our dynastic commitment hypothesis, we find that family-promoted CEOs are associated with lower turnover of the workforce, lower wage renegotiation, and greater loyalty for the incumbent workforce

The Deep-Pocket Effect of Internal Capital Markets

We provide evidence suggesting that incumbents' access to group deep pockets has a negative impact on entry in product markets. Relying on a unique French data set on business groups, our paper presents three major findings. First, the amount of cash holdings owned by incumbent-affiliated groups is negatively related to entry in a market. Second, the impact on entry of group deep pockets is more important in markets where access to external funding is likely to be more difficult. Third, the “entry deterring effect" of group deep pockets is more pronounced when groups have more active internal capital markets. Our findings suggest that internal capital markets operate within corporate groups and that they have a potential anti-competitive effect.Business Groups, Cash Holdings, Internal Capital Markets, Deep-Pockets, Market Entry

Bankruptcy Law and the Cost of Banking Finance

Many theories study how firms'cost of funding depends on reorganization and liquidation in bankruptcy. However empirical evidence on this subject is scarce due to the difficulty in interpreting reforms that change different legal instruments at the same time. We take advantage of the timing of the 2005-2006 Italian bankruptcy law and combine it with a unique loan-level dataset. We find that the introduction of a reorganization procedure increased the interest rates on bank loans; the reform that made the liquidation procedure faster reduced firms' loan costs; and the presence of gains from creditor coordination reduced the cost of funding

Conceptualizing and Designing a Resilience Information Portal

Cities need to cater for the challenges they face. They must endure, respond to, and adapt to short-term shocks and long-term stresses. This ability is now commonly referred to as resilience. Communication and collaboration are vital aspects of a city\u27s effort of becoming (more) resilient. In particular, cities ought to engage their citizens, who ultimately are those that make it resilient - and who benefit from their city\u27s resilience. In this paper we present work from a large-scale research project with a considerably practical focus. We have employed IT artefacts to conceptualize and design what we call a Resilience Information Portal. This portal is meant to be the unifier of communication and collaboration efforts of a city. Our proposal takes into account that the basic technological artefacts already exist and are relatively simple, but that the actual problem is complex and requires the integration of various IT systems

Information from Automated Evaluation in an Engineering School

[EN] The paper introduces the need for automated evaluation and presents the experience of automating all the evaluations of a course in Computer Science in the sophomore year of an engineering degree. First, the paper describes the features needed and developed for that course and the positive results for both professors and students. The main advantage of automated evaluation is that it allows real continuous grading for all types of activities: short answers and exercises during the class, homework, short exercises evaluated every 10 days in class, medium term evaluations and the final grade for the course. A significant benefit of this practice is that it allows the professor, from the very beginning of the course, to monitor how the students perform each task. The professor can see in real time the marks of an exercise or evaluation, the global evolution of the class or the status of a specific student. The students also have immediate feedback from their exercises and the total points obtained at any given time providing greater involvement in the course. http://ocs.editorial.upv.es/index.php/HEAD/HEAD18Serrano, N.; Blanco, C.; Carias, F.; Reina, E. (2018). Information from Automated Evaluation in an Engineering School. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 987-994. https://doi.org/10.4995/HEAD18.2018.8132OCS98799

Influencia del uso del suelo en la diversidad y composición de artrópodos edáficos en la Granja Tunguavita

The modification of the landscape, the intense exploitation of natural resources through intensive agriculture and the advance of the agricultural frontier result in the homogenization of the landscape and alteration of soil physicochemical conditions. These soil alterations cause changes in the composition and diversity of edaphic arthropod communities that can be used as biomonitoring and diagnostic tools in local areas. The objective of the study was to evaluate the diversity of edaphic arthropods and their association to different physicochemical parameters (i.e., pH, real density, bulk density, %OC, %OM and gravimetric and volumetric humidity) in three soil uses (permanent crop, rotational crop and pasture) in the experimental farm Tunguavita Paipa - Boyacá. The plot sampling technique was used to obtain data on biological and physicochemical variables. Samples were taken in three soil uses, permanent crop, rotational crop and cattle ranch. The edaphic arthropods and physicochemical variables were determined in the soil laboratory of the Universidad Pedagógica y Tecnológica de Colombia. The highest diversity of edaphic arthropods (309 individuals) was recorded in the permanent crop plot, followed by the rotational crop plot, both with high average values of %OM (1.82 - 1.90) and %OC (1.05 - 1.10). The Oligochaeta, Diplopoda and Araneae group were the major contributors to the biological differentiation between land uses. The changes in the abundance of edaphic arthropods were related to % gravimetric humidity, %volumetric humidity, pH, %OM and %OC, while the values of real density and bulk density did not correlate to a great extent with the changes in abundance. These variations allow the differentiation of land uses in an intervention gradient.  La modificación del paisaje, la intensa explotación de recursos naturales mediante agricultura intensiva y el avance de la frontera agrícola da resultado la homogeneización del paisaje y alteración de condiciones fisicoquímicas del suelo. Estas alteraciones en el suelo provocan cambios en la composición y diversidad de las comunidades de artrópodos edáficos que pueden ser utilizados como herramientas de biomonitoreo y diagnostico en zonas locales. El objetivo del estudio fue evaluar la diversidad de artrópodos edáficos y su asociación a diferentes parámetros fisicoquímicos (i.e., pH, densidad real, densidad aparente, CO, MO y humedad gravimétrica y volumétrica) en tres usos del suelo (cultivo permanente, cultivo rotativo y pastoreo) en la granja experimental Tunguavita Paipa – Boyacá. Para obtener los datos de las variables biológicas y fisicoquímicas se usó la técnica de muestreo por parcela. Las muestras fueron tomadas en tres usos de suelo, cultivo permanente, cultivo rotativo y lote de ganadería. Los artrópodos edáficos y se determinó las variables fisicoquímicas en el laboratorio de suelos de la Universidad Pedagógica y Tecnológica de Colombia. La mayor diversidad de artrópodos edáficos (309 individuos), se registró en el lote de cultivo permanente, seguido del cultivo rotativo ambos con valores promedio altos de %MO (1.82 – 1.90) y %CO (1.05 – 1.10). El grupo de Oligochaeta, Diplopoda y Araneae fueron los que contribuyeron en mayor proporción a la diferenciación biológica entre usos de suelo. Los cambios en la abundancia de artrópodos edáficos, se relacionaron con % Humedad gravimétrica, %Humedad volumétrica, pH, %MO y %CO, mientras que los valores de densidad real y densidad aparente, no se correlacionaron en gran medida con los cambios de abundancia. Estas variaciones permiten la diferenciación de usos de suelo en un gradiente de intervención

Single-Bubble Dynamics in a Dense Phase Fluidized Sand Bed Biomass Gasification Environment

Biomass gasification in fluidized beds is a process of important commercial value. The simulation of these fluidized bed units strongly depends on establishing bubble dynamics in dense phase sand fluidized beds. In these studies, the selected biomass pellet dimensions were 2.7 cm in length and 0.8 cm in diameter. To develop bubble dynamics studies in the present research, a combination of CREC-Optiprobes and a video micro-camera were employed. This was done to record bubble velocity and bubble dimensions in a 200–900 μm particle sand fluidized bed. The effects of biomass pellet concentration on the bubble rise velocity and bubble size and shape were evaluated at conditions close to minimum fluidization. On this basis, a theoretical bubble dynamic model was established. This phenomenologically based model included an adjustable bubble wake parameter, with model predictions providing the bubble chord, bubble frontal ratio, and bubble rising velocity

Application du contrôle pour garantir la performance des systèmes Big Data

International audienceNous sommes à l'aube d'une énorme explosion de données et la quantité à traiter par les entreprises est de plus en plus grande. Pour faire face à ce chalenge, Google a développé MapReduce, un modèle de programmation parallèle qui est en train de devenir l'outil de facto pour l'analyse des systèmes Big Data. Bien que dans une certaine mesure son utilisation est déjà très répandue dans l'industrie, garantir les performances d'un système aussi complexe pose de grands problèmes et sa gestion nécessite un haut niveau d'expertise. Cet article répond à ces défis en proposant le premier système autonome qui garantit des contraintes de temps de réponse pour une charge de travail MapReduce simultanée. Nous développons le premier modèle dynamique d'une grappe MapRe- duce. De plus, un contrôle en boucle fermée est conçu et implémenté pour garantir un temps de réponse donné. Un contrôle d'anticipation de type ""feedforward"" est également rajouté pour amé- liorer la réponse du système en présence de perturbations, en l'occurrence, la variation du nombre de clients. L'approche est validée en ligne sur une grappe MapReduce avec 40 nœuds utilisant une charge de travail intensive de type Business Intelligence. Nos expériences montrent que le contrôle ainsi conçu peut garantir les contraintes de temps de réponse

Feedback Autonomic Provisioning for Guaranteeing Performance in MapReduce Systems

International audienceCompanies have a fast growing amounts of data to process and store, a data explosion is happening next to us. Currentlyone of the most common approaches to treat these vast data quantities are based on the MapReduce parallel programming paradigm.While its use is widespread in the industry, ensuring performance constraints, while at the same time minimizing costs, still providesconsiderable challenges. We propose a coarse grained control theoretical approach, based on techniques that have already provedtheir usefulness in the control community. We introduce the first algorithm to create dynamic models for Big Data MapReduce systems,running a concurrent workload. Furthermore we identify two important control use cases: relaxed performance - minimal resourceand strict performance. For the first case we develop two feedback control mechanism. A classical feedback controller and an evenbasedfeedback, that minimises the number of cluster reconfigurations as well. Moreover, to address strict performance requirements afeedforward predictive controller that efficiently suppresses the effects of large workload size variations is developed. All the controllersare validated online in a benchmark running in a real 60 node MapReduce cluster, using a data intensive Business Intelligenceworkload. Our experiments demonstrate the success of the control strategies employed in assuring service time constraints