Venture capital meets contract theory: risky claims or formal control?

This paper develops a theory of the joint allocation of formal control and cash-flow rights in venture capital deals. We argue that when the need for investor support calls for very high-powered outside claims, entrepreneurs should optimally retain formal control in order to avoid excessive interference. Hence, we predict that risky claims should be be negatively correlated to control rights, both along the life of a start-up and across deals. This challenges the idea that risky claims should a ways be associated to more formal control, and is in line with contractual terms increasingly used in venture capital, in corporate venturing and in partnership deals between biotech start-ups and large drug companies. The paper provides a theoretical explanation to some puzzling evidence documented in Gompers (1997) and Kaplan and Stromberg (2000), namely the inclusion in venture capital contracts of contingencies that trigger both a reduction in VC control and the conversion! of her preferred stocks into common stocks.

Algumas medidas microclimáticas, em mata da região "Bromélia-Malária", em Santa Catarina, Brasil: II - Efeito do abrigo, temperaturas extremas, amplitude térmica diária, temperatura do solo, radiação global, velocidade do vento e déficit de saturação

Em continuação a um artigo anterior (I), são apresentados os valores médios mensais das seguintes observaçõs: efeito do abrigo, temperaturas extremas, amplitude térmica diária, temperatura do solo, radiação global, velocidade do vento e déficit de saturação. O exame, dos gráficos e tabelas contidos no texto, mostra que: 1 - Enquanto em locais livremente expostos ao vento a diferença entre a temperatura lida dentro do abrigo tipo "Stevenson" e a obtida com o psicrômetro ventilado, só excepcionalmente tem significado estatístico, na mata as diferenças médias da ordem de 0,5ºC são comuns, em qualquer das horas de observação. 2 - As maiores médias das temperaturas máximas foram sempre as obtidas ao ar livre. Na mata elas são mais elevadas no vale e mais baixas no alto da elevação. 3 - As diferenças entre as temperaturas mínimas só são nítidas no inverno, quando em alguns pontos da mata elas são mais baixas e em outros mais altas do que as observadas ao ar livre. Nos meses mais frios a inversão noturna póde provocar, na mata, uma diferença médias de 3ºC para um desnível de 100 m. 4 - A não ser no vale, onde foram registrados alguns valores médios iguais aos observados aos ar livre, a amplitude térmica diária é sempre menor na mata. 5 - A evolução da curva da temperatura do solo é influenciada pela situação topográfica e pela proteção oferecida pela vegetação. 6 - A atenuação da velocidade do vento é provocada principalmente pelas copas das árvores. Abaixo dess estrato, praticamente não foi registrada variação nos valores médios da velocidade do vento. 7 - Para o estudo do estado higrométrico do ar, dentro da mata, o déficit de saturação fornece melhors informações do que a umidade relativa.

Normal forms for rational difference equations with applications to the global periodicity problem

We propose a classification and derive the associated normal forms for rational difference equations with complex coefficients. As an application, we study the global periodicity problem for second order rational difference equations with complex coefficients. We find new necessary conditions as well as some new examples of globally periodic equations.

Factores de marketing que determinan el rendimiento internacional de las empresas exportadoras españolas: enfoque sobre las empresas born-global

El estudio de las nuevas empresas se ha convertido en una parte importante de la literatura sobre la creación de empresas internacionales y dentro de este campo las empresas que empiezan la actividad internacional a poco tiempo después de su creación, nombradas empresas born-global, en adelante BG*, empiezan a despertar el interés de los investigadores. En España, hasta la fecha el número de estudios, que han investigado las empresas BG, es limitado. El objetivo de la investigación es contribuir a explicar los factores claves, principalmente de marketing, que influyen sobre el rendimiento internacional de las empresas BG españolas y las empresas exportadoras tradicionales. En base a una revisión de la literatura específica, se desarrolla un modelo para explicar los factores determinantes del rendimiento internacional de este tipo de empresas, que es comprobado en una muestra de 29 empresas BG y 26 empresas exportadoras tradicionales. Los resultados demuestran que el modelo es significativo, los factores propuestos influyen sobre el rendimiento internacional de estas empresas. Sin embargo, sólo uno de los factores propuestos, la calidad del producto, es el factor clave que más determina el rendimiento internacional de las empresas BG, y para las empresas exportadoras tradicionales es otro factor distinto, la diferenciación del producto, lo que más determina el rendimiento internacional. Conclusiones y limitaciones del estudio son presentadas junto con indicaciones para futuras investigaciones.

Political autonomy and independence: theory and experimental evidence

We study the process by which subordinated regions of a country can obtain a more favourable political status. In our theoretical model a dominant and a dominated region first interact through a voting process that can lead to different degrees of autonomy. If this process fails then both regions engage in a costly political conflict which can only lead to the maintenance of the initial subordination of the region in question or to its complete independence. In the subgame-perfect equilibrium the voting process always leads to an intermediate arrangement acceptable for both parts. Hence, the costly political struggle never occurs. In contrast, in our experiments we observe a large amount of fighting involving high material losses, even in a case in which the possibilities for an arrangement without conflict are very salient. In our experimental environment intermediate solutions are feasible and stable, but purely emotional elements prevent them from being reached.

Contractive probability metrics and asymptotic behavior of dissipative kinetic equations

The present notes are intended to present a detailed review of the existing results in dissipative kinetic theory which make use of the contraction properties of two main families of probability metrics: optimal mass transport and Fourier-based metrics. The first part of the notes is devoted to a self-consistent summary and presentation of the properties of both probability metrics, including new aspects on the relationships between them and other metrics of wide use in probability theory. These results are of independent interest with potential use in other contexts in Partial Differential Equations and Probability Theory. The second part of the notes makes a different presentation of the asymptotic behavior of Inelastic Maxwell Models than the one presented in the literature and it shows a new example of application: particle's bath heating. We show how starting from the contraction properties in probability metrics, one can deduce the existence, uniqueness and asymptotic stability in classical spaces. A global strategy with this aim is set up and applied in two dissipative models.

Where Has the Old Debate Gone? Realism, Institutionalism, and IR Theory

This paper resorts to the contribution of the science philosopher Gerald Holton to map some of the IR arguments and debates in an unconventional and more insightful way. From this starting point, it is sustained that the formerly all-pervading neorealism-neoinstitutionalism debate has lost its appeal and is attracting less and less interest among scholars. It does not structure the approach of the theoretically-oriented authors any more; at least, not with the habitual intensity. More specifically, we defend that the neo-neo rapprochement, even if it could have demonstrated that international cooperation is possible and relevant in a Realist world, it has also impoverished theoretical debate by hiding some of the most significant issues that preoccupied classical transnationalists. Hence, some authors appear to be trying to rescue some of these arguments in an analytical and systematic fashion, opening up a theoretical querelle that may be the next one to pay attention to.

The ‘Global Dimension’ of Contemporary Politics. An Argument for Taking ‘Global’ Seriously

Recent years have seen a striking proliferation of the term ‘global’ in public and political discourse. The popularity of the term is a manifestation of the fact that there is a widespread notion that contemporary social reality is ‘global’. The acknowledgment of this notion has important political implications and raises questions about the role played by the idea of the ‘global’ in policy making. These questions, in turn, expose even more fundamental issues about whether the term ‘global’ indicates a difference in kind, even an ontological shift, and, if so, how to approach it. This paper argues that the notion of ‘global’, in other words the ‘global dimension’, is a significant aspect of contemporary politics that needs to be investigated. The paper argues that in the globalization discourse of International Studies ‘global’ is ‘naturalized’, which means that it is taken for granted and assumed to be self-evident. The term ‘global’ is used mainly in a descriptive way and subsumed under the rubric of ‘globalization’. ‘Global’ tends to be equated with transnational and/or world-wide; hence, it addresses quantitative differences in degree but not (alleged) differences in kind. In order to advance our understanding of contemporary politics, ‘global’ needs to be taken seriously. This means, firstly, to understand and to conceptualize ‘global’ as a social category; and, secondly, to uncover ‘global’ as a ‘naturalized’ concept in the Political and International Studies strand of the globalization discourse in order to rescue it for innovative new approaches in the investigation of contemporary politics. In order to do so, the paper suggests adopting a strong linguistic approach starting with the analysis of the word ‘global’. Based on insights from post-structuralism as well as cognitive and general constructivist perspectives it argues that a frame-based corpus linguistic analysis offers the possibility of investigating the collective/social meaning(s) of global in order to operationalize them for the analysis of the ‘global dimension’ of contemporary politics.

Multi-Scale Integrated Analysis of Societal and Ecosystem Metabolism (MUSIASEM): an outline of rationale and theory

This paper presents an outline of rationale and theory of the MuSIASEM scheme (Multi-Scale Integrated Analysis of Societal and Ecosystem Metabolism). First, three points of the rationale behind our MuSIASEM scheme are discussed: (i) endosomatic and exosomatic metabolism in relation to Georgescu-Roegen’s flow-fund scheme; (2) the bioeconomic analogy of hypercycle and dissipative parts in ecosystems; (3) the dramatic reallocation of human time and land use patterns in various sectors of modern economy. Next, a flow-fund representation of the MUSIASEM scheme on three levels (the whole national level, the paid work sectors level, and the agricultural sector level) is illustrated to look at the structure of the human economy in relation to two primary factors: (i) human time - a fund; and (ii) exosomatic energy - a flow. The three levels representation uses extensive and intensive variables simultaneously. Key conceptual tools of the MuSIASEM scheme - mosaic effects and impredicative loop analysis - are explained using the three level flow-fund representation. Finally, we claim that the MuSIASEM scheme can be seen as a multi-purpose grammar useful to deal with sustainability issues.

Improving the risk concept: a revision of Arrow-Pratt theory in the context of controlled dynamic stochastic environments

In the literature on risk, one generally assume that uncertainty is uniformly distributed over the entire working horizon, when the absolute risk-aversion index is negative and constant. From this perspective, the risk is totally exogenous, and thus independent of endogenous risks. The classic procedure is "myopic" with regard to potential changes in the future behavior of the agent due to inherent random fluctuations of the system. The agent's attitude to risk is rigid. Although often criticized, the most widely used hypothesis for the analysis of economic behavior is risk-neutrality. This borderline case must be envisaged with prudence in a dynamic stochastic context. The traditional measures of risk-aversion are generally too weak for making comparisons between risky situations, given the dynamic �complexity of the environment. This can be highlighted in concrete problems in finance and insurance, context for which the Arrow-Pratt measures (in the small) give ambiguous.

Que faire du couple local/global ? Pour une anthropologie pleinement processuelle

This article examines the uses of the local/global dichotomy in anthropology. It is argued that the use of these terms as analytical tools tends to lead to a reification of "global forces" seen as external to the local site where the ethnographic study takes place. To avoid endless debates on whether or not the "global" can be the object of ethnographic scrutiny, anthropologists should treat the local and the global as scalar properties of social systems that are generated in the course of historical processes.

In Search of a theory of debt management

A growing literature integrates theories of debt management into models of optimal fiscal policy. One promising theory argues that the composition of government debt should be chosen so that fluctuations in the market value of debt offset changes in expected future deficits. This complete market approach to debt management is valid even when the government only issues non-contingent bonds. A number of authors conclude from this approach that governments should issue long term debt and invest in short term assets. We argue that the conclusions of this approach are too fragile to serve as a basis for policy recommendations. This is because bonds at different maturities have highly correlated returns, causing the determination of the optimal portfolio to be ill-conditioned. To make this point concrete we examine the implications of this approach to debt management in various models, both analytically and using numerical methods calibrated to the US economy. We find the complete market approach recommends asset positions which are huge multiples of GDP. Introducing persistent shocks or capital accumulation only worsens this problem. Increasing the volatility of interest rates through habits partly reduces the size of these simulations we find no presumption that governments should issue long term debt ? policy recommendations can be easily reversed through small perturbations in the specification of shocks or small variations in the maturity of bonds issued. We further extend the literature by removing the assumption that governments every period costlessly repurchase all outstanding debt. This exacerbates the size of the required positions, worsens their volatility and in some cases produces instability in debt holdings. We conclude that it is very difficult to insulate fiscal policy from shocks by using the complete markets approach to debt management. Given the limited variability of the yield curve using maturities is a poor way to substitute for state contingent debt. The result is the positions recommended by this approach conflict with a number of features that we believe are important in making bond markets incomplete e.g allowing for transaction costs, liquidity effects, etc.. Until these features are all fully incorporated we remain in search of a theory of debt management capable of providing robust policy insights.

Elements of algebraic geometry and the positive theory of partially commutative groups

The first main result of the paper is a criterion for a partially commutative group G to be a domain. It allows us to reduce the study of algebraic sets over G to the study of irreducible algebraic sets, and reduce the elementary theory of G (of a coordinate group over G) to the elementary theories of the direct factors of G (to the elementary theory of coordinate groups of irreducible algebraic sets). Then we establish normal forms for quantifier-free formulas over a non-abelian directly indecomposable partially commutative group H. Analogously to the case of free groups, we introduce the notion of a generalised equation and prove that the positive theory of H has quantifier elimination and that arbitrary first-order formulas lift from H to H * F, where F is a free group of finite rank. As a consequence, the positive theory of an arbitrary partially commutative group is decidable.