Who controls East Asian corporations ?

The authors identify the ultimate ownership structure for 2,980 corporations in nine East Asian countries. They find that: A) More than half of those firms are controlled be a single shareholder. B) Smaller firms and older firms are more likely to be family-controlled. C) Patterns of controlling ownership stakes differ across countries. The concentration of control generally diminishes with higher economic and institutional development. D) In many countries control is enhanced though pyramid structures and deviations from one-share-one-vote rules. As a result, voting rights exceed cash-flow rights. E) Management is rarely separated from ownership control, and management in two thirds of the firms that are not widely held is related to management of the controlling shareholder. F) In some countries, wealth is very concentrated and links between government andbusiness are extensive, so the legal system has probably been influenced by the prevailing ownership structure.Small and Medium Size Enterprises,Microfinance,Small Scale Enterprise,International Terrorism&Counterterrorism,Economic Theory&Research,Microfinance,Private Participation in Infrastructure,Small Scale Enterprise,Rural Land Policies for Poverty Reduction,Economic Theory&Research

Diversification and efficiency of investment by East Asian corporations

The East Asian financial crisis has been attributed in part to the corporate diversification associated with the misallocation of capital investment toward less profitable and more risky business segments. Much anecdotal evidence to support this view has surfaced since the crisis but there was little discussion of it before the crisis. Quite the contrary: The rapid expansion of East Asian firms by entering new business segments was viewed as contributing to the East Asian miracle. The authors examine the efficiency of investment by diversified corporations in nine East Asian countries, using unique panel data from more than 10,000 corporations for the pre-crisis period, 1991-96. They: 1) Document the degree of diversification in the corporate sector in Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan (China), and Thailand, countries that have achieved enviable rates of economic growth over the past three decades. 2) Distinguished between vertical and complementary diversification and study the differences across nine countries. 3) Investigate whether diversification in East Asian has hurt economic efficiency. Their study tests the learning-by-doing and misallocation-of-capital hypotheses related to the types and degrees of diversification in East Asian countries. Firms in Indonesia, Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand appear to have suffered significant negative effects of vertical integration on short-term performance; the same countries gained significant short-term benefits from complementary expansion. The results suggests that the misallocation-of-capital hypothesis is appropriate for Korea and Malaysia; the learning-by-doing hypothesis for Indonesia, Taiwan, and Thailand. Firms in more developed countries succeed in vertically integrating and improve both short-term profitability and market valuation. Firms in more developed countries are ultimately more likely to benefit from such diversification (learn faster, to improve theirperformance). And diversification by firms in less developed countries is subject to more misallocation of capital.Microfinance,Fiscal&Monetary Policy,Economic Theory&Research,Small and Medium Size Enterprises,Small Scale Enterprise,Economic Theory&Research,Microfinance,Private Participation in Infrastructure,Small Scale Enterprise,Achieving Shared Growth

On the number of particles which a curved quantum waveguide can bind

We discuss the discrete spectrum of N particles in a curved planar waveguide. If they are neutral fermions, the maximum number of particles which the waveguide can bind is given by a one-particle Birman-Schwinger bound in combination with the Pauli principle. On the other hand, if they are charged, e.g., electrons in a bent quantum wire, the Coulomb repulsion plays a crucial role. We prove a sufficient condition under which the discrete spectrum of such a system is empty.Comment: a LateX file, 12 page

Detection of SUSY Signals in Stau Neutralino Co-annihilation Region at the LHC

We study the prospects of detecting the signal in the stau neutralino co-annihilation region at the LHC using tau leptons. The co-annihilation signal is characterized by the stau and neutralino mass difference (dM) to be 5-15 GeV to be consistent with the WMAP measurement of the cold dark matter relic density as well as all other experimental bounds within the minimal supergravity model. Focusing on tau's from neutralino_2 --> tau stau --> tau tau neutralino_1 decays in gluino and squark production, we consider inclusive MET+jet+3tau production, with two tau's above a high E_T threshold and a third tau above a lower threshold. Two observables, the number of opposite-signed tau pairs minus the number of like-signed tau pairs and the peak position of the di-tau invariant mass distribution, allow for the simultaneous determination of dM and M_gluino. For dM = 9 GeV and M_gluino = 850 GeV with 30 fb^-1 of data, we can measure dM to 15% and M_gluino to 6%.Comment: 4 pages LaTex, 3 figures. To appear in Proceedings of SUSY06, the 14th International Conference on Supersymmetry and the Unification of Fundamental Interactions, UC Irvine, California, 12-17 June 2006. A typo in a reference is correcte

Analytical modeling of micelle growth. 2. Molecular thermodynamics of mixed aggregates and scission energy in wormlike micelles

Hypotheses: Quantitative molecular-thermodynamic theory of the growth of giant wormlike micelles in mixed nonionic surfactant solutions can be developed on the basis of a generalized model, which includes the classical phase separation and mass action models as special cases. The generalized model describes spherocylindrical micelles, which are simultaneously multicomponent and polydisperse in size. Theory: The model is based on explicit analytical expressions for the four components of the free energy of mixed nonionic micelles: interfacial-tension, headgroup-steric, chain-conformation components and free energy of mixing. The radii of the cylindrical part and the spherical endcaps, as well as the chemical composition of the endcaps, are determined by minimization of the free energy. Findings: In the case of multicomponent micelles, an additional term appears in the expression for the micelle growth parameter (scission free energy), which takes into account the fact that the micelle endcaps and cylindrical part have different compositions. The model accurately predicts the mean mass aggregation number of wormlike micelles in mixed nonionic surfactant solutions without using any adjustable parameters. The endcaps are enriched in the surfactant with smaller packing parameter that is better accommodated in regions of higher mean surface curvature. The model can be further extended to mixed solutions of nonionic, ionic and zwitterionic surfactants used in personal-care and house-hold detergency

EUROMAT 2019 Symposia on Processing

This issue of JMEP contains invited, peer-reviewed papers presented at the European Congress and Exhibition on Advanced Materials and Processes (EUROMAT 2019), held on September 1–5, 2019, in Stockholm, Sweden, in two symposia from the Area C “Processing”: C6 “Joining,” organized by Anna Zervaki (University of Thessaly, Greece), Ivan Kaban (IFW Dresden, Germany), and C. Sommitsch (Technische Universität Graz, Austria) C8 “Interface Design and Modelling, Wetting, and High-Temperature Capillarity,” organized by Pavel Protsenko (M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russian Federation), Fabrizio Valenza (CNR—ICMATE, Genoa, Italy), and Simeon Agathopoulos (University of Ioannina, Greece) The research works in the field of joining technologies, presented at the C6 symposium, concerned soldering, brazing, diffusion bonding, resistance spot welding, friction stir welding, and riveting techniques. The symposium C8 covered research topics on grain boundary wetting, surface energy of liquid metals and interfacial phenomena, considering fundamental as well as applied issues related to materials joining, and interface design. We wish to thank the authors for the written contributions and acknowledge the reviewers for their careful reading and evaluation of the manuscripts and valuable suggestions to improve the quality of the papers. We are grateful to the editor-in-chief of JMEP, Dr. Rajiv Asthana, and the ASM journal staff, including Mary Anne Fleming, senior content developer; Kate Doman, content developer (journals); and Vincent Katona, production coordinator; for the opportunity to publish the symposia contributions in this issue and for their professional and friendly support during the entire reviewing and publication process. We hope this collection will stimulate fresh thinking and promote further research on joining and interfacial phenomena

Managing food imports for food security in Qatar

Faced with food supply disruptions due in part to geopolitics and political instability in its traditional food source markets in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, Qatar—a wealthy, highly import-dependent open economy—plans to identify a set of alternative markets that can assure it of a stable food supply chain and food security. This study develops a set of preferences and import substitution elasticities for the country’s four most important food categories: meats, dairy, vegetables, and cereals. We used quarterly food import data from 2004 to 2017 and the Restricted Source-Differentiated Almost Ideal Demand System (RSDAIDS) to estimate import-substitution elasticities for meats, dairy, vegetables, and cereals imported by Qatar. Based on our findings, India, Australia, and the Netherlands emerged as Qatar’s most competitive sources of food, followed by Brazil, Jordan, and Argentina. Qatar can assure sustained demand for food imports from the aforementioned countries in order to address its food security

Compactification in the Lightlike Limit

We study field theories in the limit that a compactified dimension becomes lightlike. In almost all cases the amplitudes at each order of perturbation theory diverge in the limit, due to strong interactions among the longitudinal zero modes. The lightlike limit generally exists nonperturbatively, but is more complicated than might have been assumed. Some implications for the matrix theory conjecture are discussed.Comment: 13 pages, 3 epsf figures. References and brief comments added. Nonexistent divergent graph in 0+- model delete