Comparing Japanese Versus U.S. Decision Making in Corporate Governance

This study examines how widespread the similarities between U.S. and Japanese corporate governance practices have become. Results suggest that, in spite of convergence in many areas of business practices, Japanese board structures and governance practices still differ greatly from those in the United States -- particularly in SEC-mandated reforms such as independent audit and compensation committees. Our results suggest that findings concerning corporate governance differences between Japanese and U.S. firms may be driven, in part, by differences in directors' recognition of investors' performance expectations. In particular, our results indicate that the exit barriers related to employment impact decision-making for Japanese directors more strongly than they affect U.S. directors' decisions

Comparing Exit Decisions and Corporate Governance

This study examines how widespread the similarities between U.S. and Japanese corporate governance practices have become. Results suggest that, in spite of convergence in many areas of business practices, Japanese board structures and governance practices still differ greatly from those in the United States -- particularly in SEC-mandated reforms such as independent audit and compensation committees. Our results suggest that corporate governance differences between Japanese and U.S. firms may be driven, in part, by differences in directors' recognition of investors' performance expectations. In particular, results indicate that the exit barriers related to employment influence decision-making for Japanese directors more strongly than they affect U.S. directors' decisions. Board independence -- particularly with respect to audit and compensation committee membership -- reduces the height of perceived exit barriers. Results suggest that, in spite of convergence in many areas of business practices, Japanese board structures and governance practices still differ greatly from those in the United States although it does not conclude that the transition is necessarily desirable

Quantifying Kinematic Substructure in the Milky Way's Stellar Halo

We present and analyze the positions, distances, and radial velocities for over 4000 blue horizontal-branch (BHB) stars in the Milky Way's halo, drawn from SDSS DR8. We search for position-velocity substructure in these data, a signature of the hierarchical assembly of the stellar halo. Using a cumulative "close pair distribution" (CPD) as a statistic in the 4-dimensional space of sky position, distance, and velocity, we quantify the presence of position-velocity substructure at high statistical significance among the BHB stars: pairs of BHB stars that are close in position on the sky tend to have more similar distances and radial velocities compared to a random sampling of these overall distributions. We make analogous mock-observations of 11 numerical halo formation simulations, in which the stellar halo is entirely composed of disrupted satellite debris, and find a level of substructure comparable to that seen in the actually observed BHB star sample. This result quantitatively confirms the hierarchical build-up of the stellar halo through a signature in phase (position-velocity) space. In detail, the structure present in the BHB stars is somewhat less prominent than that seen in most simulated halos, quite possibly because BHB stars represent an older sub-population. BHB stars located beyond 20 kpc from the Galactic center exhibit stronger substructure than at $\rm r_{gc} < 20$ kpc.Comment: 29 page, 10 figures, 1 table; accepted by APJ; for related article by another group see arXiv:1011.192

Incidence of AIDS-Defining Opportunistic Infections in a Multicohort Analysis of HIV-infected Persons in the United States and Canada, 2000–2010

Background. There are few recent data on the rates of AIDS-defining opportunistic infections (OIs) among human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)–infected patients in care in the United States and Canada

End-Stage Renal Disease Among HIV-Infected Adults in North America

Background. Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-infected adults, particularly those of black race, are at high-risk for end-stage renal disease (ESRD), but contributing factors are evolving. We hypothesized that improvements in HIV treatment have led to declines in risk of ESRD, particularly among HIV-infected blacks

Operating autonomy in Chinese-foreign joint ventures

With asymmetries in resource contributions and uncertainty regarding local operations, the degree of operating autonomy given to a venture is a frequent source of conflict between JV parents. To what extent can JV managers decide for themselves, and when do they need parental approval? We analyze this pivotal question drawing on the resource dependence theory to explain how much autonomy was provided to Chinese-foreign JVs. We find that resource dependence on foreign parents' contributions provided a stronger explanation to JV operating autonomy than that of Chinese parents' contributions – the local parent allowed a higher level of autonomy to its JV in comparison to the foreign parent