Forced board changes: Evidence from Norway.

The recently introduced gender quota on Norwegian corporate boards dramatically increased the share of female directors. This reform offers a natural experiment to investigate changes in corporate governance from forced increases in gender diver- sity, and whether these changes in turn impact firm performance. I find that investors anticipate the new directors to be more effective in firms with less information asymmetry between insiders of the firm and outsiders. Firms with low information asymmetry experience positive and significant cumulative abnormal returns (CAR) at the introduction of the quota, whereas firms with high information asymmetry show negative but insignificant CAR.Natural experiment; Regulation; Corporate governance; Gender quota.

World population projections, 2020

The world's population, today numbering some 5.5 billion people, may approach 12 billion by the end of the next century. By the year 2020, 26 years from today, it will most likely have increased by about 2.5 billion to a total of 8 billion people, an increase of nearly 100 million a year. Over 93 percent of this growth will take place in the developing countries. Nygaard contends that two regions in particular merit attention. South Asia and Africa, where large percentages of the poor live today and where future food production is of concern, face substantial increases in their populations. India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh plus the continent of Africa will add another 1.5 billion people to the population roles.Population forecasting. ,Population Statistics. ,Population growth. ,Africa Economic conditions. ,Asia Economic conditions. ,Bangladesh. ,Pakistan. ,India. ,

Engaging Processes of Sense-Making and Negotiation in Contemporary Timor-Leste

The articles in this special issue build on past ethnographic inquiries and focus on political and social change since Timor-Leste independence. One of the things we have found particularly exciting about researching post-independent Timor-Leste has been to carry out fieldwork in a context where not just researchers, but also our informants, are caught up in processes of sense-making of determining what kind of place Timor-Leste as an independent nation is becoming. The reality of ethnographic research in such a context is far different from, as Ferguson (1999, 208) has it, the archetypal image of the anthropologist dropped into the middle of a cultural homogenous village community where the researcher acquires from local informants a degree of cultural fluency. Rather, while we as researchers have tried to learn about Timor-Leste, our informants, as citizens of a new nation, have been absorbed in a parallel process of learning, deliberating and at times contesting what kind of place Timor-Leste as an independent nation is, and should become in the future (see Kammen 2009). In other words, making sense of independent Timor- Leste has, over the past decade, been a project that preoccupies Timorese citizens as much as the foreign researcher. This issue addresses some of these processes of sense-making and negotiation; and highlights the ambiguities and paradoxes, while stressing the heterogeneity and unpredictability of contemporary Timor-Leste

Feshbach Molecules in a One-dimensional Optical Lattice

We present the theory of a pair of atoms in a one-dimensional optical lattice interacting via a narrow Feshbach resonance. Using a two-channel description of the resonance, we derive analytic results for the scattering states inside the continuum band and the discrete bound states outside the band. We identify a Fano resonance profile, and the survival probability of a molecule when swept through the Bloch band of scattering states by varying an applied magnetic field. We discuss how these results may be used to investigate the importance of the structured nature of the continuum in experiments.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Two-channel Feshbach physics in a structured continuum

We analyze the scattering and bound state physics of a pair of atoms in a one-dimensional optical lattice interacting via a narrow Feshbach resonance. The lattice provides a structured continuum allowing for the existence of bound dimer states both below and above the continuum bands, with pairs above the continuum stabilized by either repulsive interactions or their center of mass motion. Inside the band the Feshbach coupling to a closed channel bound state leads to a Fano resonance profile for the transmission, which may be mapped out by RF- or photodissociative spectroscopy. We generalize the scattering length concept to the one-dimensional lattice, where a scattering length may be defined at both the lower and the upper continuum thresholds. As a function of the applied magnetic field the scattering length at either band edge exhibits the usual Feshbach divergence when a bound state enters or exits the continuum. Near the scattering length divergences the binding energy and wavefunction of the weakly bound dimer state acquires a universal form reminiscent of those of free-space Feshbach molecules. We give numerical examples of our analytic results for a specific Feshbach resonance, which has been studied experimentally.Comment: 18 pages, 9 embedded figure