Using a large cross-sectional dataset comprising of FTSE 350 listed firms, this study investigates whether superior environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) disclosure affects firm value. ...We find a positive association between ESG disclosure level and firm value, suggesting that improved transparency and accountability and enhanced stakeholder trust play a role in boosting firm value. We also report that higher CEO power enhances the ESG disclosure effect on firm value, indicating that stakeholders associate ESG disclosure from firms with higher CEO power with greater commitment to ESG practice. This evidence is strong and consistent for three different measures of ESG-related disclosure: the ESG, environmental and social disclosure scores. The results are robust to the use of an instrumental variable approach, and the Heckman two-stage estimation procedure.
Research Question/Issue
We examine the impact of the age of compensation committee (CC) members on CEO compensation. Sociological theory suggests that age is a significant demographic factor ...influencing behavior. We argue that monitoring intensity increases with age because older directors are more likely to commit to their fiduciary duties.
Research Findings/Insights
Using FTSE 350 firms for the period 2002 to 2017, we find that CC members' age is negatively associated with the level of CEO pay but positively associated with pay–performance sensitivity after controlling for risk aversion attitude, experience in board monitoring, knowledge of the firm, and other firm and CEO characteristics. The relationships remain robust to alternative measures for age and compensation, using two‐stage least squares and high‐dimensional fixed effects models. Consistent with the view that older individuals tend to hold higher ethical standards and concomitant closer monitoring, we find that age effects are sensitive to the influence of ethical factors and are strongest for those firms for which intense monitoring is most needed. This suggests that age operates via older directors carrying out their roles more assiduously. We further show that our findings are less likely to be driven by director reputational effects, and the relationship between CC member age and CEO compensation persists even when we control for multiple dimensions of culturally inherited attributes of the CC members.
Theoretical/Academic Implications
Despite the large literature on the influence of demographic characteristics on corporate governance, this study is the first on the monitoring effect of CC members' age. It contributes to the literature on the influence of demographic characteristic. It also contributes to the literature on CEO compensation by identifying a demographic factor—age—as a determinant of CEO pay, after controlling for the economic and corporate governance variables of the firm.
Practitioner/Policy Implications
This study highlights the role of demographic factors in explaining the monitoring of the CEO compensation contracting process and provides timely evidence on the recent regulatory changes.
This paper examines the effect of female directors on corporate debt maturity structures. We find that firms with a higher ratio of female directors tend to have a larger proportion of short‐maturity ...debt. This effect is more pronounced with female independent directors and is insignificant with female inside directors. These findings remain robust under propensity score matching and instrumental variable approaches to address potential endogeneity concerns. Furthermore, we find that our results are driven primarily by firms with weak governance quality and low financial constraints. We also find that the effect does not differ between high‐ and low‐leveraged firms, and there is a negative relation between female directors and likelihood of overinvestment. This evidence suggests that female directors view short‐term debt as a monitoring device.
A conforming discontinuous Galerkin (CDG) finite element method is designed for solving second order non-self adjoint and indefinite elliptic equations. Unlike other discontinuous Galerkin (DG) ...methods, the numerical trace on the edge/triangle between two elements is not the average of two discontinuous
P
k
functions, but a lifted
P
k
+
2
function from four (eight in 3D) nearby
P
k
functions. While all existing DG methods have the optimal order of convergence, this CDG method has a superconvergence of order two above the optimal order when solving general second order elliptic equations. Due to the superconvergence, a post-process lifts a
P
k
CDG solution to a quasi-optimal
P
k
+
2
solution on each element. Numerical tests in 2D and 3D are provided confirming the theory.
Using enforcement actions by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as a proxy for noncompliance with securities regulations, we examine whether a firm's compliance with non‐accounting laws and ...regulations is associated with GAAP violations. We find that firms that violate securities regulations related to non‐accounting issues are more likely to report accounting restatements than control firms that comply with securities regulations. We also find that the difference between the two groups is significant only for the periods subsequent to the start of the noncompliance period but not for periods prior to this date. Our results highlight the interrelation between the accounting and compliance systems, and suggest that managers who are non‐compliant with non‐accounting regulations are also more likely to be non‐compliant with accounting rules.
Marine organisms including bacteria, fungi, algae, sponges, echinoderms, mollusks, and cephalochordates produce a variety of products with antifungal activity including bacterial chitinases, ...lipopeptides, and lactones; fungal (-)-sclerotiorin and peptaibols, purpurides B and C, berkedrimane B and purpuride; algal gambieric acids A and B, phlorotannins; 3,5-dibromo-2-(3,5-dibromo-2-methoxyphenoxy)phenol, spongistatin 1, eurysterols A and B, nortetillapyrone, bromotyrosine alkaloids, bis-indole alkaloid, ageloxime B and (-)-ageloxime D, haliscosamine, hamigeran G, hippolachnin A from sponges; echinoderm triterpene glycosides and alkene sulfates; molluscan kahalalide F and a 1485-Da peptide with a sequence SRSELIVHQR; and cepalochordate chitotriosidase and a 5026.9-Da antifungal peptide. The antiviral compounds from marine organisms include bacterial polysaccharide and furan-2-yl acetate; fungal macrolide, purpurester A, purpurquinone B, isoindolone derivatives, alterporriol Q, tetrahydroaltersolanol C and asperterrestide A, algal diterpenes, xylogalactofucan, alginic acid, glycolipid sulfoquinovosyldiacylglycerol, sulfated polysaccharide p-KG03, meroditerpenoids, methyl ester derivative of vatomaric acid, lectins, polysaccharides, tannins, cnidarian zoanthoxanthin alkaloids, norditerpenoid and capilloquinol; crustacean antilipopolysaccharide factors, molluscan hemocyanin; echinoderm triterpenoid glycosides; tunicate didemnin B, tamandarins A and B and; tilapia hepcidin 1-5 (TH 1-5), seabream SauMx1, SauMx2, and SauMx3, and orange-spotted grouper β-defensin. Although the mechanisms of antifungal and antiviral activities of only some of the aforementioned compounds have been elucidated, the possibility to use those known to have distinctly different mechanisms, good bioavailability, and minimal toxicity in combination therapy remains to be investigated. It is also worthwhile to test the marine antimicrobials for possible synergism with existing drugs. The prospects of employing them in clinical practice are promising in view of the wealth of these compounds from marine organisms. The compounds may also be used in agriculture and the food industry.
In this paper, we introduce a new finite element method for solving the Stokes equations in the primary velocity-pressure formulation using
H
(div) finite elements to approximate velocity. Like other ...finite element methods with velocity discretized by
H
(div) conforming elements, our method has the advantages of an exact divergence-free velocity field and pressure-robustness. However, most of
H
(div) conforming finite element methods for the Stokes equations require stabilizers to enforce the weak continuity of velocity in tangential direction. Some stabilizers need to tune penalty parameter and some of them do not. Our method is stabilizer free although discontinuous velocity fields are used. Optimal-order error estimates are established for the corresponding numerical approximation in various norms. Extensive numerical investigations are conducted to test accuracy and robustness of the method and to confirm the theory. The numerical examples cover low- and high-order approximations up to the degree four, and 2D and 3D cases.
In this paper, we introduce an
H
(
div
)
finite element method on polygonal and polyhedral meshes for solving the Stokes equations in the primary velocity–pressure formulation. An
H
(
div
)
finite ...element on polygons or polyhedra is introduced to approximate the velocity so that the method is pressure robust and produces exact divergence free solutions, when the discontinuous
P
k
finite element is adopted for the pressure approximation. In addition, this method is stabilizer-free, in handling the
H
1
non-conformity. Optimal order error estimates are established for the method. Numerical tests are conducted to confirm the theory.
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