Cost of capital in an international context: Institutional distance, quality, and dynamics

Cost of debt is a key cognitive anchor for managerial decisions and an important determinant of firm profitability. We extend international management research by analyzing the effects of institutional distance, institutional quality, and their dynamics on the cost of debt in the context of foreign direct investments (FDI). We test our conceptual model on a sample of companies making 3,764 greenfield foreign direct investments from developed into less developed markets. Using hierarchical linear modelling, we show that the financial consequences of internationalizing into countries with weak institutions depend on both the institutional distance between countries, as well as their institutional quality. Furthermore, we find that recent changes in institutional quality form expectations about future development and ultimately influence post investment financing costs

On the Consistency of Perturbativity and Gauge Coupling Unification

We investigate constraints that the requirements of perturbativity and gauge coupling unification impose on extensions of the Standard Model and of the MSSM. In particular, we discuss the renormalization group running in several SUSY left-right symmetric and Pati-Salam models and show how the various scales appearing in these models have to be chosen in order to achieve unification. We find that unification in the considered models occurs typically at scales below M^{min}_{B violation} = 10^16 GeV, implying potential conflicts with the non-observation of proton decay. We emphasize that extending the particle content of a model in order to push the GUT scale higher or to achieve unification in the first place will very often lead to non-perturbative evolution. We generalize this observation to arbitrary extensions of the Standard Model and of the MSSM and show that the requirement of perturbativity up to M^{min}_{B violation}, if considered a valid guideline for model building, severely limits the particle content of any such model, especially in the supersymmetric case. However, we also discuss several mechanisms to circumvent perturbativity and proton decay issues, for example in certain classes of extra dimensional models.Comment: LaTeX, 20 pages, 8 figures, 1 tabl

Microstructure and Wear Resistance of AlCoCrFeNiTi High-Entropy Alloy Coatings Produced by HVOF

The investigation of high-entropy alloys (HEAs) has revealed many promising properties. HEAs with a high share of Al and Ti are suitable for the formation of lightweight materials. Investigations of the alloy system AlCoCrFeNiTi showed high strength, hardness, ductility, and wear resistance, which makes this special alloy interesting for surface engineering and particularly for thermal spray technology. In this study, the suitability of inert gas-atomised HEA powder for high-velocity-oxygen-fuel (HVOF) thermal spray is investigated. This process allows for high particle velocities and comparatively low process temperatures, resulting in dense coatings with a low oxidation. The microstructure and phase composition of the atomised powder and the HVOF coating were investigated, as well as the wear behaviour under various conditions. A multiphase microstructure was revealed for the powder and coating, whereas a chemically ordered bcc phase occurred as the main phase. The thermal spray process resulted in a slightly changed lattice parameter of the main phase and an additional phase. In comparison with a hard chrome-plated sample, an increase in wear resistance was achieved. Furthermore, no brittle behaviour occurred under abrasive load in the scratch test. The investigation of wear tracks showed only minor cracking and spallation under maximum load

Heteroepitaxy of III–V Zinc Blende Semiconductors on Nanopatterned Substrates

In the last decade, zinc blende structure III–V semiconductors have been increasingly utilized for the realization of high‐performance optoelectronic applications because of their tunable bandgaps, high carrier mobility and the absence of piezoelectric fields. However, the integration of III–V devices on the Si platform commonly used for CMOS electronic circuits still poses a challenge, due to the large densities of mismatch‐related defects in heteroepitaxial III–V layers grown on planar Si substrates. A promising method to obtain thin III–V layers of high crystalline quality is the growth on nanopatterned substrates. In this approach, defects can be effectively eliminated by elastic lattice relaxation in three dimensions or confined close to the substrate interface by using aspect‐ratio trapping masks. As a result, an etch pit density as low as 3.3 × 105 cm−2 and a flat surface of submicron GaAs layers have been accomplished by growth onto a SiO2 nanohole film patterned Si(001) substrate, where the threading defects are trapped at the SiO2 mask sidewalls. An open issue that remains to be resolved is to gain a better understanding of the interplay between mask shape, growth conditions and formation of coalescence defects during mask overgrowth in order to achieve thin device quality III–V layers