Music enrichment for gifted children in the first grade

Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston Universit

Pay for Performance from Future Fund Flows: The Case of Private Equity

Lifetime incomes of private equity general partners are affected by their current funds’ performance through both carried interest profit sharing provisions, and also by the effect of the current fund’s performance on general partners’ abilities to raise capital for future funds. We present a learning-based framework for estimating the market-based pay for performance arising from future fundraising. For the typical first-time private equity fund, we estimate that implicit pay for performance from expected future fundraising is approximately the same order of magnitude as the explicit pay for performance general partners receive from carried interest in their current fund, implying that the performance-sensitive component of general partner revenue is about twice as large as commonly discussed. Consistent with the learning framework, we find that implicit pay for performance is stronger when managerial abilities are more scalable and weaker when current performance contains less new information about ability. Specifically, implicit pay for performance is stronger for buyout funds compared to venture capital funds, and declines in the sequence of a partnership’s funds. Our framework can be adapted to estimate implicit pay for performance in other asset management settings in which future fund flows and compensation depend on current performance.Private equity; Venture capital; Fundraising; Compensation; Incentives

Pay for Performance from Future Fund Flows: The Case of Private Equity

Lifetime incomes of private equity general partners are affected by their current funds’ performance through both carried interest profit sharing provisions, and also by the effect of the current fund’s performance on general partners’ abilities to raise capital for future funds. We present a learning-based framework for estimating the market-based pay for performance arising from future fundraising. For the typical first-time private equity fund, we estimate that implicit pay for performance from expected future fundraising is approximately the same order of magnitude as the explicit pay for performance general partners receive from carried interest in their current fund, implying that the performance-sensitive component of general partner revenue is about twice as large as commonly discussed. Consistent with the learning framework, we find that implicit pay for performance is stronger when managerial abilities are more scalable and weaker when current performance contains less new information about ability. Specifically, implicit pay for performance is stronger for buyout funds compared to venture capital funds, and declines in the sequence of a partnership’s funds. Our framework can be adapted to estimate implicit pay for performance in other asset management settings in which future fund flows and compensation depend on current performance.

Desynchronization and Wave Pattern Formation in MPI-Parallel and Hybrid Memory-Bound Programs

Analytic, first-principles performance modeling of distributed-memory parallel codes is notoriously imprecise. Even for applications with extremely regular and homogeneous compute-communicate phases, simply adding communication time to computation time does often not yield a satisfactory prediction of parallel runtime due to deviations from the expected simple lockstep pattern caused by system noise, variations in communication time, and inherent load imbalance. In this paper, we highlight the specific cases of provoked and spontaneous desynchronization of memory-bound, bulk-synchronous pure MPI and hybrid MPI+OpenMP programs. Using simple microbenchmarks we observe that although desynchronization can introduce increased waiting time per process, it does not necessarily cause lower resource utilization but can lead to an increase in available bandwidth per core. In case of significant communication overhead, even natural noise can shove the system into a state of automatic overlap of communication and computation, improving the overall time to solution. The saturation point, i.e., the number of processes per memory domain required to achieve full memory bandwidth, is pivotal in the dynamics of this process and the emerging stable wave pattern. We also demonstrate how hybrid MPI-OpenMP programming can prevent desirable desynchronization by eliminating the bandwidth bottleneck among processes. A Chebyshev filter diagonalization application is used to demonstrate some of the observed effects in a realistic setting.Comment: 18 pages, 8 figure

The use of happiness research for public policy

Research on happiness tends to follow a "benevolent dictator" approach where politicians pursue people's happiness. This paper takes an antithetic approach based on the insights of public choice theory. First, we inquire how the results of happiness research may be used to improve the choice of institutions. Second, we show that the policy approach matters for the choice of research questions and the kind of knowledge happiness research aims to provide. Third, we emphasize that there is no shortcut to an optimal policy maximizing some happiness indicator or social welfare function since governments have an incentive to manipulate this indicator

Regulation and the Evolution of Corporate Boards: Monitoring, Advising or Window Dressing?

An earlier version of this paper was entitled “Deregulation and Board Composition: Evidence on the Value of the Revolving Door.”It is generally agreed that boards are endogenously determined institutions that serve both oversight and advisory roles in a firm. While the oversight role of boards has been extensively studied, relatively few studies have examined the advisory role of corporate boards. We examine the participation of political directors on the boards of natural gas companies between 1930 and 1998. We focus on the expansion of federal regulation of the natural gas industry in 1938 and 1954 and subsequent partial deregulation in 1986. Using data sets covering the periods from 1930 to 1990 and 1978 to 1998, we test whether regulation and deregulation altered the composition of companies' boards as the firms' environment changed. In particular, did regulation cause an increase and deregulation a decrease in the number of political directors on corporate boards? We find evidence that the number of political directors increases as firms shift from market to political competition. Specifically, the regulation of natural gas is associated with an increase in the number of political directors and deregulation is associated with a decrease in the number of political directors on boards

Multiple agency perspective, family control, and private information abuse in an emerging economy

Using a comprehensive sample of listed companies in Hong Kong this paper investigates how family control affects private information abuses and firm performance in emerging economies. We combine research on stock market microstructure with more recent studies of multiple agency perspectives and argue that family ownership and control over the board increases the risk of private information abuse. This, in turn, has a negative impact on stock market performance. Family control is associated with an incentive to distort information disclosure to minority shareholders and obtain private benefits of control. However, the multiple agency roles of controlling families may have different governance properties in terms of investors’ perceptions of private information abuse. These findings contribute to our understanding of the conflicting evidence on the governance role of family control within a multiple agency perspectiv