Corporate governance and insider trading

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 2008.Includes bibliographical references (p. 58-64).I investigate the relation between corporate governance and insider trading by corporate executives. Despite the general view that trade on non-public information adversely affects capital market participants, the impact of corporate governance on such trading remains relatively unexplored in prior research. I propose an empirical measure that relies on a predicted pattern in stock returns to identify transactions that are more likely to be based on private information and provide evidence to validate the construct. Using this measure, I find that good corporate governance, identified through board and ownership characteristics that have been linked to more effective monitoring of management in prior research, is negatively related to opportunistic insider trading. In supplementary analysis, I provide evidence on the robustness of this relation to an alternative hypothesis and to potential endogeneity. Overall, I conclude that good corporate governance helps to attenuate opportunistic insider trading.by Konstantin A. Rozanov.Ph.D

Influence Of Higher-order Modes In Coaxial Waveguide On Measurements Of Material Parameters

The use of a coaxial air-filled line as a test fixture for measuring complex permittivity and permeability often shows odd resonance-like behavior of material parameters as functions of frequency. This effect is typically either ascribed to the half-wavelength resonance at the sample length, or erroneously misinterpreted as intrinsic resonance behavior of the material. However, as is shown in this paper, such behavior can be attributed to excitation of the higher-order modes on the surface of the sample resulting in resonance absorption of electromagnetic energy in the test fixture. Herein, analytical, numerical, and experimental results show that there can actually be a significant impact of higher-order modes in a coaxial line on the extracted constitutive material parameters of samples

Non-Equilibrium Statistical Physics of Currents in Queuing Networks

We consider a stable open queuing network as a steady non-equilibrium system of interacting particles. The network is completely specified by its underlying graphical structure, type of interaction at each node, and the Markovian transition rates between nodes. For such systems, we ask the question ``What is the most likely way for large currents to accumulate over time in a network ?'', where time is large compared to the system correlation time scale. We identify two interesting regimes. In the first regime, in which the accumulation of currents over time exceeds the expected value by a small to moderate amount (moderate large deviation), we find that the large-deviation distribution of currents is universal (independent of the interaction details), and there is no long-time and averaged over time accumulation of particles (condensation) at any nodes. In the second regime, in which the accumulation of currents over time exceeds the expected value by a large amount (severe large deviation), we find that the large-deviation current distribution is sensitive to interaction details, and there is a long-time accumulation of particles (condensation) at some nodes. The transition between the two regimes can be described as a dynamical second order phase transition. We illustrate these ideas using the simple, yet non-trivial, example of a single node with feedback.Comment: 26 pages, 5 figure