A Reexamination of Tunneling and Business Groups: New Data and New Methods

One of the most rigorous methodologies in the corporate governance literature uses firms\u27 reactions to industry shocks to characterize the quality of governance. This methodology can produce the wrong answer unless one considers the ways firms compete. Because macro-level shocks reverberate differently at the firm level depending on whether a firm has a cost structure that requires significant adjustment, the quality of governance can only be elucidated accurately analyzing a firm\u27s business strategy and their corporate governance. These differences can help one determine whether the fruits of a positive macro-level shock have been expropriated by insiders. Using the example of Indian firms, we show that an influential finding is reversed when these differences are considered. We further argue that the conventional wisdom about tunneling and business groups will need to be reformulated in light of the data, methodology, and findings presented here

Political Instability: Effects on Financial Development, Roots in the Severity of Economic Inequality

We here bring forward strong evidence that political instability impedes financial development, with its variation a primary determinant of differences in financial development around the world. As such, it needs to be added to the short list of major determinants of financial development. First, structural conditions first postulated by Engerman and Sokoloff (2002) as generating long-term inequality are shown here empirically to be exogenous determinants of political instability. Second, that exogenously-determined political instability in turn holds back financial development, even when we control for factors prominent in the last decade’s cross-country studies of financial development. The findings indicate that inequality-perpetuating conditions that result in political instability are fundamental roadblocks for international organizations like the World Bank that seek to promote financial development. The evidence here includes country fixed effect regressions and an instrumental model inspired by Engerman and Sokoloff’s (2002) work, which to our knowledge has not yet been used in finance and which is consistent with current tests as valid instruments. Four conventional measures of national political instability - Alesina and Perotti’s (1996) well-known index of instability, a subsequent index derived from Banks’ (2005) work, and two indices of managerial perceptions of nation-by-nation political instability - persistently predict a wide range of national financial development outcomes for recent decades. Political instability’s significance is time consistent in cross-sectional regressions back to the 1960’s, the period when the key data becomes available, robust in both country fixed-effects and instrumental variable regressions, and consistent across multiple measures of instability and of financial development. Overall, the results indicate the existence of an important channel running from structural inequality to political instability, principally in nondemocratic settings, and then to financial backwardness. The robust significance of that channel extends existing work demonstrating the importance of political economy explanations for financial development and financial backwardness. It should help to better understand which policies will work for financial development, because political instability has causes, cures, and effects quite distinct from those of many of the key institutions most studied in the past decade as explaining financial backwardness

Political Instability: Its Effects on Financial Development, Its Roots in the Severity of Economic Inequality

Political instability impedes financial development and is a primary determinant of differences in financial development around the world. Four conventional measures of national political instability — Alesina and Perotti’s (1996) well-known index of instability, a subsequent index derived from Banks’ (2005) work, and two indices of managerial perceptions of nation-by-nation political instability — persistently predict a wide range of national financial development outcomes for recent decades. These results are robust to other factors prominent in the literature in the past decade and hold for a range of key financial outcomes for data over all available years and all available countries over several decades. Political instability’s significance is time consistent back to the 1960’s, the period when the key data becomes available, robust in both country fixed-effects and instrumental variable regressions, and consistent across multiple measures of instability and of financial development. Overall, the results indicate the existence of an important channel running from political instability, principally in nondemocratic settings, to financial backwardness. The robust significance of that channel extends existing work demonstrating the importance of political economy explanations for financial development and financial backwardness. It should help to better understand what policies will work for financial development, because political instability has causes, cures, and effects quite distinct from those of many of the key institutions most studied in the past decade as explaining financial backwardness

Political Instability: Effects on Financial Development, Roots in the Severity of Economic Inequality

We here bring forward strong evidence that political instability impedes financial development, with its variation a primary determinant of differences in financial development around the world. As such, it needs to be added to the short list of major determinants of financial development. First, structural conditions first postulated by Engerman and Sokoloff (2002) as generating long-term inequality are shown here empirically to be exogenous determinants of political instability. Second, that exogenously-determined political instability in turn holds back financial development, even when we control for factors prominent in the last decade’s cross-country studies of financial development. The findings indicate that inequality-perpetuating conditions that result in political instability are fundamental roadblocks for international organizations like the World Bank that seek to promote financial development. The evidence here includes country fixed effect regressions and an instrumental model inspired by Engerman and Sokoloff’s (2002) work, which to our knowledge has not yet been used in finance and which is consistent with current tests as valid instruments. Four conventional measures of national political instability - Alesina and Perotti’s (1996) well-known index of instability, a subsequent index derived from Banks’ (2005) work, and two indices of managerial perceptions of nation-by-nation political instability - persistently predict a wide range of national financial development outcomes for recent decades. Political instability’s significance is time consistent in cross-sectional regressions back to the 1960’s, the period when the key data becomes available, robust in both country fixed-effects and instrumental variable regressions, and consistent across multiple measures of instability and of financial development. Overall, the results indicate the existence of an important channel running from structural inequality to political instability, principally in nondemocratic settings, and then to financial backwardness. The robust significance of that channel extends existing work demonstrating the importance of political economy explanations for financial development and financial backwardness. It should help to better understand which policies will work for financial development, because political instability has causes, cures, and effects quite distinct from those of many of the key institutions most studied in the past decade as explaining financial backwardness

Nitric oxide regulates skeletal muscle fatigue, fiber type, microtubule organization, and mitochondrial ATP synthesis efficiency through cGMP-dependent mechanisms

Aim: Skeletal muscle nitric oxide–cyclic guanosine monophosphate (NO-cGMP) pathways are impaired in Duchenne and Becker muscular dystrophy partly because of reduced nNOSμ and soluble guanylate cyclase (GC) activity. However, GC function and the consequences of reduced GC activity in skeletal muscle are unknown. In this study, we explore the functions of GC and NO-cGMP signaling in skeletal muscle. Results: GC1, but not GC2, expression was higher in oxidative than glycolytic muscles. GC1 was found in a complex with nNOSμ and targeted to nNOS compartments at the Golgi complex and neuromuscular junction. Baseline GC activity and GC agonist responsiveness was reduced in the absence of nNOS. Structural analyses revealed aberrant microtubule directionality in GC1−/− muscle. Functional analyses of GC1−/− muscles revealed reduced fatigue resistance and postexercise force recovery that were not due to shifts in type IIA–IIX fiber balance. Force deficits in GC1−/− muscles were also not driven by defects in resting mitochondrial adenosine triphosphate (ATP) synthesis. However, increasing muscle cGMP with sildenafil decreased ATP synthesis efficiency and capacity, without impacting mitochondrial content or ultrastructure. Innovation: GC may represent a new target for alleviating muscle fatigue and that NO-cGMP signaling may play important roles in muscle structure, contractility, and bioenergetics. Conclusions: These findings suggest that GC activity is nNOS dependent and that muscle-specific control of GC expression and differential GC targeting may facilitate NO-cGMP signaling diversity. They suggest that nNOS regulates muscle fiber type, microtubule organization, fatigability, and postexercise force recovery partly through GC1 and suggest that NO-cGMP pathways may modulate mitochondrial ATP synthesis efficiency

A recentering approach for interpreting interaction effects from logit, probit, and other nonlinear models

Research SummaryStrategic management has seen numerous studies analyzing interaction terms in nonlinear models since Hoetker’s (Strat Mgmt J., 2007, 28(4), 331- 343) best- practice recommendations and Zelner’s (Strat Mgmt J., 2009, 30(12), 1335- 1348) simulation- based approach. We suggest an alternative recentering approach to assess the statistical and economic importance of interaction terms in nonlinear models. Our approach does not rely on making assumptions about the values of the control variables; it takes the existing model and data as is and requires fewer computational steps. The recentering approach not only provides a consistent answer about statistical meaningfulness of the interaction term at a given point of interest, but also helps to assess the effect size using the template that we offer in this study. We demonstrate how to implement our approach and discuss the implications for strategy researchers.Managerial SummaryIn industry settings, the relationship between multiple corporate strategy- related inputs and corporate performance is often nonlinear in nature. Furthermore, such relationships tend to vary for different types of firms represented within the broader population of firms in a given industry. It is thus imperative for managers to know how to take nonlinear relationships between related business factors into account when they make strategic decisions. We suggest a simple and easily implementable way of assessing and interpreting interactions in a nonlinear setting, which we term a recentering approach. We demonstrate how to apply our approach to a strategic management setting.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/163421/3/smj3202.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/163421/2/smj3202-sup-0001-Supinfo.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/163421/1/smj3202_am.pd

Geometrical properties of Riemannian superspaces, observables and physical states

Classical and quantum aspects of physical systems that can be described by Riemannian non degenerate superspaces are analyzed from the topological and geometrical points of view. For the N=1 case the simplest supermetric introduced in [Physics Letters B \textbf{661}, (2008),186] have the correct number of degrees of freedom for the fermion fields and the super-momentum fulfil the mass shell condition, in sharp contrast with other cases in the literature where the supermetric is degenerate. This fact leads a deviation of the 4-impulse (e.g. mass constraint) that can be mechanically interpreted as a modification of the Newton's law. Quantum aspects of the physical states and the basic states and the projection relation between them, are completely described due the introduction of a new Majorana-Weyl representation of the generators of the underlying group manifold. A new oscillatory fermionic effect in the $B_{0}$ part of the vaccum solution involving the chiral and antichiral components of this Majorana bispinor is explicitly shown.Comment: 16 pags. 3 figures. To Anna Grigorievna Kartavenko and Academic Professor Alexei Norianovich Sissakian, in memoria

Ligand Mediated Sequestering of Integrins in Raft-Mimicking Lipid Mixtures: The Role of Bilayer Asymmetry and Cholesterol Content

poster abstractLipid microdomains play an important functional role in plasma membranes. However, the small size and transient nature of lipid/membrane heterogeneities in the plasma membrane make characterization of microdomains and microdomain-related membrane processes quite challenging. To address this issue, we recently introduced a powerful model membrane system that allows the investigation of membrane protein sequestering and oligomerization in raft-mimicking lipid mixtures using combined confocal fluorescence spectroscopy, photon counting histogram (PCH), and epifluorescence microscopy. Our experiments on bilayer-spanning domains showed that αvβ3 and α5β1 integrins predominantly exist as monomers and sequester preferentially to the liquid-disordered (ld) phase in the absence of ligands. Notably, addition of vitronectin (αvβ3) and fibronectin (α5β1) caused substantial translocations of integrins into the liquid-ordered (lo) phase without altering receptor oligomerization state. Here we expand our previous studies and report on the sequestering and oligomerization state of αvβ3 and α5β1 in asymmetric bilayer compositions containing coexisting lo and ld phases located exclusively in the top leaflet of the bilayer (bottom leaflet shows only ld phase). Remarkably, in such a membrane environment, both integrins show a higher affinity for the top leaflet-restricted lo domains in the absence of their respective ligands. A slight change in the integrin sequestration was observed after addition of their respective ligands. We also present experimental findings, which show that cholesterol content has a substantial influence on integrin sequestering and oligomerization in raft-mimicking lipid mixtures. The described experimental results highlight the potential importance of membrane asymmetry and lipid composition in the sequestering of membrane proteins in biological membranes

Evolved Stars in the Core of the Massive Globular Cluster NGC 2419

We present an analysis of optical and ultraviolet Hubble Space Telescope photometry for evolved stars in the core of the distant massive globular cluster NGC 2419. We characterize the horizontal branch (HB) population in detail including corrections for incompleteness on the long blue tail. We present a method for removing (to first order) lifetime effects from the distribution of HB stars to facilitate more accurate measurements of helium abundance for clusters with blue HBs and to clarify the distribution of stars reaching the zero-age HB. The population ratio R = N_HB / N_RGB implies there may be slight helium enrichment among the EHB stars in the cluster, but that it is likely to be small (dY < 0.05). An examination of the upper main sequence does not reveal any sign of multiple populations. Through comparisons of optical CMDs, we present evidence that the EHB clump in NGC 2419 contains the end of the canonical horizontal branch, and that the boundary between the normal HB stars and blue hook stars shows up as a change in the density of stars in the CMD. This corresponds to a spectroscopically-verified gap in NGC 2808 and an "edge" in omega Cen. The more clearly visible HB gap at V = 23.5 appears to be too bright.(Abridged)Comment: 27 pages, 25 figures (some bitmapped), uses emulateapj, accepted to Astronomical Journa