Executive compensation and the susceptibility of firms to hostile takeovers : An empirical investigation of the U.S. oil industry

We investigate the suggested substitutive relation between executive compensation and the disciplinary threat of takeover imposed by the market for corporate control. We complement other empirical studies on managerial compensation and corporate control mechanisms in three distinct ways. First, we concentrate on firms in the oil industry for which agency problems were especially severe in the 1980s. Due to the extensive generation of excess cash flow, product and factor market discipline was ineffective. Second, we obtain a unique data set drawn directly from proxy statements which accounts not only for salary and bonus but for the value of all stock-market based compensation held in the portfolio of a CEO. Our data set consists of 51 firms in the U.S. oil industry from 1977 to 1994. Third, we employ ex ante measures of the threat of takeover at the individual firm level which are superior to ex post measures like actual takeover occurrence or past incidence of takeovers in an industry. Results show that annual compensation and, to a much higher degree, stock-based managerial compensation increase after a firm becomes protected from a hostile takeover. However, clear-cut evidence that CEOs of protected firms receive higher compensation than those of firms considered susceptible to a takeover cannot be found

A Network Model of Violent Elections and Clientilism

I analyze an electoral model where voters exert efforts on behalf of one candidate or another but not both. A voter also receives benefits from her neighbors that support the same candidate as she supports. A candidate\u27s campaign can influence voters either by vote buying (i.e., offering a wage for efforts) or by acting violently. The type of violence available to a campaign depends upon its social embeddedness (i.e., what it knows about the voters\u27 preferences and place in a social network). When embeddedness is low, campaigns can only use violence to increase the costs of public efforts on behalf of its opponent. When embeddedness is high, violence can be targeted at the opposition\u27s patronage network, reducing the indirect flows of patronage between voters. In the former case, vote buying and violence are substitutes in producing turnout; in the latter they are complements

Exposed Nerves and Archival Impulses: Digital Ruination and the Death of Adobe Flash

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College

The Janus face of urban governance: State, informality and ambiguity in Berlin

Dieser Beitrag ist mit Zustimmung des Rechteinhabers aufgrund einer (DFG geförderten) Allianz- bzw. Nationallizenz frei zugänglich.This publication is with permission of the rights owner freely accessible due to an Alliance licence and a national licence (funded by the DFG, German Research Foundation) respectively.Informality is both produced by and an inherent characteristic of state practices. It thus requires close scrutiny of the structures, nature and uneven distribution of power between state and society. Using a focus on three different parks in Berlin, this article demonstrates how informality is appropriated and institutionalized in the planning regimes of pioneer urbanism at Tempelhofer Freiheit; how in everyday law enforcement, legality is stretched by policing illegitimate activities in zones of exceptions at Görlitzer Park; and why, in Preußenpark (aka Thai Park), the state embodies a theatricality of polyvalent performances, turning a blind eye to certain activities which are not tolerated in other settings. This analysis reveals the Janus-faced governance of social practices even as it exposes the inherent ambiguities in everyday statehood, in which the state is regulating activities that are beyond its rules and, at the same time, violating its own internal rules

Utilization of Lidar Intensity Data and Passive Visible Imagery for Geological Mapping of Planetary Surfaces

While lidar has been historically used for generating digital terrain maps and as a navigation tool, recent research demonstrates that lidar has many potential scientific applications, including high resolution analysis of geological outcrops. Case studies were completed at the Tunnunik impact structure, Victoria Island, Arctic Canada, and the Nickel Rim South mine, Sudbury, Canada, to assess the fidelity of characterizing and differentiating mineralogical and lithological units remotely by integrating passive visible imagery with lidar intensity data. Unsupervised classification via k-means clustering was performed on the fused datasets, with results indicating that lithologies can indeed be successfully differentiated with minor a priori knowledge of the setting. Semi-quantitative analysis through XRD of Tunnunik samples demonstrates that distance-corrected intensity is linked in a linear relationship with both dolomite and clay content. The simultaneous acquisition of both geospatial and scientific data greatly increases the applications and value of using lidar, especially for mining, geological mapping in remote environments, and for future planetary missions

Gucci Group - The New Family of Luxury Brands

This company was case-studied because, at the time of writing, Gucci’s multi brand strategy, under the innovative partnership of Tom Ford and Domenico De Sole, was considered revolutionary in the market. The text forms one of the very few detailed works on the business of Gucci

Das politische Wir - eine semantisch-pragmatische Analyse zur Verwendung der ersten Person Plural in öffentlichen Reden von nord- und lateinamerikanischen Politikern

Was ist der semantische und pragmatische Inhalt der ersten Person Plural im politischen Kontext? Mit Hilfe grundlegender Ansätze der Linguistik und mit Blick auf die politische und politikwissenschaftliche Sprachforschung sollen verschiedene Funktionen und Bedeutungen von Wir aufgezeigt werden. Im Fokus der Analyse steht dabei der Gebrauch der ersten Person Plural in öffentlichen Reden von Politikern aus Nord- und Lateinamerika (Obama, Chavez). Basierend auf einer eigenen Studie wird argumentiert, dass dem Pronomen Wir in diesen politischen Reden vor allem die Funktion zukommt, Gruppen - im Sinne von Separation und Inklusion - auf Sprachhandlungs- und Bedeutungsebene zu konstruieren