50,204 research outputs found
Do External Auditors Perform a Corporate Governance Role in Emerging Markets? Evidence from East Asia
In emerging markets, the concentration of corporate ownership has created agency conflicts between controlling owners and minority shareholders. Conventional corporate control mechanisms such as boards of directors and takeovers are typically weak in containing the agency problem. This study examines whether external independent auditors could be employed as monitors and as bonding mechanisms to alleviate the agency conflict. Using a broad sample of firms from eight East Asian economies, we document that firms are more likely to employ Big Five auditors when they are more subject to the agency problem imbedded in their ultimate ownership structure. One possible reason that this documented relation between auditor choice and the agency problem is more evident than the inconsistent results using U.S. and U.K. data is that alternative governance mechanisms are limited in East Asia. In addition, among East Asian auditees subject to the agency problem, Big Five auditors charge a higher fee and set a lower audit modification threshold while non-Big Five auditors do not. Taken together, the evidence suggests that Big Five auditors in emerging markets do have a corporate governance role.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39784/3/wp400.pd
A meta-narrative review of electronic patient records
This session comprises four papers that consider how systematic review methods may be
developed in order to make the best use of complex evidence in education and health.
The methods and approaches reflected upon in these papers are not drawn from a single
research tradition, but share a common goal of broadening the methodological scope of
systematic reviews and better understanding the utilisation of knowledge produced in this
way. The first paper (Henry Potts) reports an ongoing review using a meta-narrative
approach to make sense of the diverse sources of knowledge regarding electronic patient
records. The review method has stressed the importance of understanding knowledge
from within the research tradition in which it was produced; it is argued that this has
important implications for the way that evidence is utilised in the policy making process.
The second paper (Geoff Wong) reflects upon the experience of using an explicit realist
approach in the synthesis of the evidence in Internet based learning. This realist synthesis
offers a method of making sense of the highly heterogeneous and context dependent
evidence which exists in this field thus enabling greater insights into what makes such
educational interventions ‘work’. The third paper (Rod Sheaff) reports a review of the
predominantly qualitative research literature on organisational structures and their
impacts upon policy outcomes in health systems. A scoping study found 14389 relevant
papers of which 1568 were selected for review. These studies were very variable in the
amount and quality of the qualitative data, hence 'evidence', which they reported. The
paper describes an attempt to adapt realist methods so as to synthesise such bodies of
research in ways which take account of this variation in the strength of qualitative
evidence. The fourth paper (Mark Pearson) draws upon the work of Donald Campbell
and colleagues in order to gain a fuller understanding of how systematic reviews are
utilised in the policy making process. It is argued that interpretive approaches to
understanding policy making (such as rhetorical analysis) need to be tempered with a
more nuanced understanding of research validity. The case is made that interpretive
approaches not only can, but should, be melded with research validity to increase
understanding of the policy making process
The maturing of positive psychology and the emergence of PP 2.0: A book review of Positive Psychology (3rd ed.) by William Compton and Edward Hoffman
Compton and Hoffman’s third edition of Positive Psychology: The Science of Happiness and Flourishing is commended for advocating an inclusive positive psychology that not only honours the rich humanistic heritage and the major contributions from mainstream psychology, but also recognizes the two emerging trends within what has become known as PP 2.0. The first is the recognition that suffering and vulnerability provide the foundation for building a solid existential positive psychology of flourishing that can endure the inevitable vicissitudes of life. The second trend is the importance of indigenous positive psychology, especially Eastern psychological systems that offer viable insights and hypotheses about the nature of the self and ultimate happiness
Assessing Jordan B. Peterson’s contribution to the psychology of wellbeing: A book review of 12 Rules for Life
This article first critically examines the Jordan B. Peterson phenomenon and the popular appeal of his book, 12 Rules for Life. It then evaluates this book’s contribution to the psychology of wellbeing in four areas: (a) the psychology of religious values, (b) the importance of personal responsibility, (c) accepting suffering as the foundation for wellbeing, and (d) the process of finding one’s meaning based on personal sacrifice and negotiating a balance between chaos and order. Finally, it examines empirical support for his ideas, as well as his contribution to the emerging domain of existential positive psychology. Finally, implications for the future of positive psychology research and interventions are discussed
Universal Behavior in Large-scale Aggregation of Independent Noisy Observations
Aggregation of noisy observations involves a difficult tradeoff between
observation quality, which can be increased by increasing the number of
observations, and aggregation quality which decreases if the number of
observations is too large. We clarify this behavior for a protypical system in
which arbitrarily large numbers of observations exceeding the system capacity
can be aggregated using lossy data compression. We show the existence of a
scaling relation between the collective error and the system capacity, and show
that large scale lossy aggregation can outperform lossless aggregation above a
critical level of observation noise. Further, we show that universal results
for scaling and critical value of noise which are independent of system
capacity can be obtained by considering asymptotic behavior when the system
capacity increases toward infinity.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figure
Rare typhoon development near the equator
In Recent Advances in Atmospheric Sciences in Asia-Pacific. (Eds: K.N. Liou, M.D. Chou and H. H. Hsu), World Scientific Publication Company, 172-181.The formation of Typhoon Vamei on 27 December 2001 in the southern South China Sea was the first-observed tropical cyclogenesis within 1.5 degrees of the equator. This rare event was first detected by observations of typhoon strength winds from a US navy ship, and the existence of an eye structure was confirmed by satellite and radar imageries. This paper reviews these observations, and discusses the dynamic theory that may explain the process suggested by Chang et al. (2003) in which a strong cold surge event interacting with the Borneo vortex led to the equatorial development. As pointed out by Chang et al., the most intriguing question is not how Vamei could form so close to the equator, but is why such a formation was not observed before then.
The formation of Typhoon Vamei on 27 December 2001 in the southern South China Sea was the first-observed tropical cyclogenesis within 1.5 degrees of the equator. This rare event was first detected by observations of typhoon strength winds from a US navy ship, and the existence of an eye structure was confirmed by satellite and radar imageries. This paper reviews these observations, and discusses the dynamic theory that may explain the process suggested by Chang et al. (2003) in which a strong cold surge event interacting with the Borneo vortex led to the equatorial development. As pointed out by Chang et al., the most intriguing question is not how Vamei could form so close to the equator, but is why such a formation was not observed before then
Real space first-principles derived semiempirical pseudopotentials applied to tunneling magnetoresistance
In this letter we present a real space density functional theory (DFT)
localized basis set semi-empirical pseudopotential (SEP) approach. The method
is applied to iron and magnesium oxide, where bulk SEP and local spin density
approximation (LSDA) band structure calculations are shown to agree within
approximately 0.1 eV. Subsequently we investigate the qualitative
transferability of bulk derived SEPs to Fe/MgO/Fe tunnel junctions. We find
that the SEP method is particularly well suited to address the tight binding
transferability problem because the transferability error at the interface can
be characterized not only in orbital space (via the interface local density of
states) but also in real space (via the system potential). To achieve a
quantitative parameterization, we introduce the notion of ghost semi-empirical
pseudopotentials extracted from the first-principles calculated Fe/MgO bonding
interface. Such interface corrections are shown to be particularly necessary
for barrier widths in the range of 1 nm, where interface states on opposite
sides of the barrier couple effectively and play a important role in the
transmission characteristics. In general the results underscore the need for
separate tight binding interface and bulk parameter sets when modeling
conduction through thin heterojunctions on the nanoscale.Comment: Submitted to Journal of Applied Physic
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