Agent Causation: Before and After the Ontological Turn

Imagine Ludwig has a cup of tea for breakfast. He\ud pours it; he eats his egg until it seems to him that the tea\ud should have the right temperature; he moves his hand to\ud the cup, puts his fingers at the handle, and then, careful\ud not to spill anything, he does something with his arm;\ud namely, he raises it, and if all goes well he then drinks the\ud tea without burning his lips.\ud The rising of Ludwig"s arm surely has a cause. But\ud what is the cause? Defenders of agent causation, such as\ud Thomas Reid (1788), Richard Taylor (1966), Roderick\ud Chisholm (1976a), and many more recent authors (see\ud Swinburne 1997, ch. 5; Thorp 1980; Meixner 1999; Clarke\ud 1996; O'Connor 2000) have argued that the rising of\ud Ludwig"s arm is caused by Ludwig himself. Some events\ud are caused, not by other events, but by concrete things, by\ud substances, more specifically by intentional agents

Evolution of Spatially Inhomogeneous Eco-Systems: An Unified Model Based Approach

Recently we have extended our the "unified" model of evolutionary ecology to incorporate the {\it spatial inhomogeneities} of the eco-system and the {\it migration} of individual organisms from one patch to another within the same eco-system. In this paper an extension of our recent model is investigated so as to describe the {\it migration} and {\it speciation} in a more realistic way.Comment: Latex, 10 pages, 8 figure

Sharp lines in the absorption edge of EuTe and Pb0.1_{0.1}Eu0.9_{0.9}Te in high magnetic fields

The optical absorption spectra in the region of the \fd transition energies of epitaxial layers of of EuTe and \PbEuTe, grown by molecular beam epitaxy, were studied using circularly polarized light, in the Faraday configuration. Under \sigmam polarization a sharp symmetric absorption line (full width at half-maximum 0.041 eV) emerges at the low energy side of the band-edge absorption, for magnetic fields intensities greater than 6 T. The absorption line shows a huge red shift (35 meV/T) with increasing magnetic fields. The peak position of the absorption line as a function of magnetic field is dominated by the {\em d-f} exchange interaction of the excited electron and the \Euion spins in the lattice. The {\em d-f} exchange interaction energy was estimated to be $J_{df}S=0.15\pm 0.01$ eV. In \PbEuTe the same absorption line is detected, but it is broader, due to alloy disorder, indicating that the excitation is localized within a finite radius. From a comparison of the absorption spectra in EuTe and \PbEuTe the characteristic radius of the excitation is estimated to be $\sim 10$\AA.Comment: Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter (2004, at press

Corporate Policy and the Coherence of Delaware Takeover Law

This Article presents a model that can be used to explain key elements of Delaware takeover law. By incorporating corporate policy as a key variable in the model, Delaware law’s management discretion rule can be shown to be best suited for maximizing the value of the corporation and the shareholders’ interest under a set of reasonable assumptions. By allowing for occasional market mispricing and the agency costs associated with managing to the market, we demonstrate that a shareholder choice regime would likely lead to suboptimal investment decisions. In our model, managers are assumed to have better information regarding alternative corporate policies than shareholders but may, in certain circumstances, act to maximize share price in order to insulate themselves from hostile tender offers, even at the expense of maximizing firm value. This theory explains the result in Paramount v. Time, and also why shareholder choice is allowed in limited instances that implicate Revlon duties such as Interco and Paramount v. QVC

Why Defer to Managers? A Strong-Form Efficiency Model

We compare the efficiency with which management discretion and shareholder choice regulate hostile tender offers. This is the first paper in a long running debate that rigorously compares these legal rules to analyze both the critical informational assumptions and the interplay of those assumptions with principles of financial market efficiency. A critical innovation of our model is its focus on an informed management’s choice among alternative corporate policies under the protection of the business judgment rule, but where agency costs exist. We assume that corporate assets and reinvestment opportunities are efficiently priced by financial markets, but that markets never learn the value of foregone investments. In this case, shareholder choice may create an agency problem whereby managers forego positive net present value investments that increase the risk of a hostile bid. We are able to determine analytic conditions under which the expected cost of this agency problem exceeds that of the standard agency problem usually identified with management discretion

Corporate Policy and the Coherence of Delaware Takeover Law

This Article presents a model that can be used to explain key elements of Delaware takeover law. By incorporating corporate policy as a key variable in the model, Delaware law’s management discretion rule can be shown to be best suited for maximizing the value of the corporation and the shareholders’ interest under a set of reasonable assumptions. By allowing for occasional market mispricing and the agency costs associated with managing to the market, we demonstrate that a shareholder choice regime would likely lead to suboptimal investment decisions. In our model, managers are assumed to have better information regarding alternative corporate policies than shareholders but may, in certain circumstances, act to maximize share price in order to insulate themselves from hostile tender offers, even at the expense of maximizing firm value. This theory explains the result in Paramount v. Time, and also why shareholder choice is allowed in limited instances that implicate Revlon duties such as Interco and Paramount v. QVC

Why Defer to Managers? A Strong-Form Efficiency Model

We compare the efficiency with which management discretion and shareholder choice regulate hostile tender offers. This is the first paper in a long running debate that rigorously compares these legal rules to analyze both the critical informational assumptions and the interplay of those assumptions with principles of financial market efficiency. A critical innovation of our model is its focus on an informed management’s choice among alternative corporate policies under the protection of the business judgment rule, but where agency costs exist. We assume that corporate assets and reinvestment opportunities are efficiently priced by financial markets, but that markets never learn the value of foregone investments. In this case, shareholder choice may create an agency problem whereby managers forego positive net present value investments that increase the risk of a hostile bid. We are able to determine analytic conditions under which the expected cost of this agency problem exceeds that of the standard agency problem usually identified with management discretion