Do Managers In Chinese Family Firms Learn From The Market? Evidence From Chinese Private Placement

Recent empirical papers report managers’ learning in merger and acquisition (M&A) decisions and family control is central in many countries. Does learning exist in family firms’ financing decisions? Based on the announced private placements from Chinese family firms, we investigate the relation between managers’ final decisions in family firms and the market reaction to the announcement. Our analysis suggests that a non-linear relation exists between managers’ learning and family control. Managers generally learn from the market when making final decisions but family involvement can reduce this probability. Supplementary testing indicates that managers in family firms with low ownership are less likely to learn from the market than those in family firms with high ownership. Further analysis suggests that corporate governance can influence managers’ learning. Family member’ participation in purchasing the placed shares and serve as the top managers can make manager’ learning less likely when the ownership is low. Independent directors in family firms don’t play their due role in supervising the behavior of managers and large shareholders

Optical Transportation and Accumulation of Microparticles by Self-Accelerating Cusp Beams

Most of the self-accelerating beams have monotonous single-channel bending structures, which greatly limit their applications in many fields such as microscopic imaging and particle manipulation. In this paper, the self-accelerating cusp beams with variable numbers of multichannel bending structures are generated to demonstrate the optical transportation and accumulation of micrometer polystyrene particles. The transportation velocity and optical force profiles of the microparticles moving along the bending channels of cusp beams are analyzed. Parallel particle transportation and particle accumulation manipulation from all the bending channels are further demonstrated. These results will inspire a lot of promising applications for self-accelerating beams especially in three-dimensional optical micromanipulation

Does Zero-leverage Policy Increase Inefficient Investment? - From The Perspective Of Lack Of Bank Creditors

Using a sample of up to 12023 firm-year observations across 2358 individual firms from 2007 to 2013, this paper examines whether zero-leverage policy increases firms’ inefficient investment from the perspective of lack of bank creditors. Due to the lack of bank creditor monitoring, zero-leverage policy leads to more serious information asymmetry and agency problems, which are the two types of frictions that affect investment efficiency. The empirical results show that zero-leverage policy indeed increases inefficient investment. Furthermore, we test whether external monitoring helps to mitigate the effects of zero-leverage policy on inefficient investment. Our findings suggest that the sensitivity between zero-leverage policy and inefficient investment will be lower in firms with strong external monitoring. Overall, the zero-leverage policy seems to be a key determinant of inefficient investment

Market Feedback And Managers’ Decisions In Private Placement – Evidence From Chinese Family Firms

What effect does market feedback have on managers’ decisions on private placement in family firms? Based on information asymmetry, agency theory, and corporate governance theory, we investigate the relationship between managers’ final decisions and market feedback to the announcement. We find that managers in family firms accept market feedback in decision-making and their attitude can be affected by many external factors. Managers tend to listen to the market when family firms are non-high-tech, when family members participate in purchasing the placed shares, when family members serve as managers, and when separation of control rights from ownership is small

Out-of-plane polarization and topological magnetic vortices in multiferroic CrPSe3_3

Two-dimensional (2D) multiferroic materials are ideal systems for exploring new coupling mechanisms between different ferroic orders and producing novel quantum phenomena with potential applications. We employed first-principles density functional theory calculations to discover intrinsic ferroelectric and anti-ferroelectric phases of CrPSe$_3$, which show ferromagnetic order and compete with the centrosymmetric phase with an antiferromagnetic order. Our analysis show that the electrical dipoles of such type-I multiferroic phases come from the out-of-plane displacements of phosphorus ions due to the stereochemically active lone pairs. The coupling between polar and magnetic orders creates the opportunity for tunning the magnetic ground state by switching from the centrosymmetric to the ferroelectric phase using an out-of-plane electric field. In ferroelectric and antiferroelectric phases, the combination of easy-plane anisotropy and Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interactions (DMI) indicate they can host topological magnetic vortices like meron pairs.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, and the supplementary materia