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This study seeks to understand the leading role played by the blockholders and their true governance mechanism, in the French context, characterised by complex ownership structures. ...We focus on the role that second-tier shareholders can play in the optimal governance of companies and in their capacity to solve both principal/agent and principal/principal agency conflicts. Using a sample of 2118 observations between 2000 and 2009, we find that second-tier shareholders exercise effective additional monitoring when power is contestable but increase principal/principal agency costs in the presence of a controlling owner. We also show that shareholder homogeneity reduces agency conflicts. Our results demonstrate that the level of control contestability is essential in the understanding of governance mechanisms. Such contestability is to be found simultaneously at institutional level, at the level of the balance of power between blockholders, and according to the nature of the shareholders. Thus, the usual agency theory conclusions are debateable when the legal framework offers little protection of minority shareholders, and when ownership structure is complex and heterogeneous in nature. The study of corporate governance must therefore encompass a twofold analytical perspective, namely, an institutional and a socio-organisational one. The analysis and findings could be particularly useful in assessing corporate governance in the context of several European countries with a similar self-dealing legal environment to the French one, including Italy and Greece.
We present Clinica (www.clinica.run), an open-source software platform designed to make clinical neuroscience studies easier and more reproducible. Clinica aims for researchers to (i) spend less time ...on data management and processing, (ii) perform reproducible evaluations of their methods, and (iii) easily share data and results within their institution and with external collaborators. The core of Clinica is a set of automatic pipelines for processing and analysis of multimodal neuroimaging data (currently, T1-weighted MRI, diffusion MRI, and PET data), as well as tools for statistics, machine learning, and deep learning. It relies on the brain imaging data structure (BIDS) for the organization of raw neuroimaging datasets and on established tools written by the community to build its pipelines. It also provides converters of public neuroimaging datasets to BIDS (currently ADNI, AIBL, OASIS, and NIFD). Processed data include image-valued scalar fields (e.g., tissue probability maps), meshes, surface-based scalar fields (e.g., cortical thickness maps), or scalar outputs (e.g., regional averages). These data follow the ClinicA Processed Structure (CAPS) format which shares the same philosophy as BIDS. Consistent organization of raw and processed neuroimaging files facilitates the execution of single pipelines and of sequences of pipelines, as well as the integration of processed data into statistics or machine learning frameworks. The target audience of Clinica is neuroscientists or clinicians conducting clinical neuroscience studies involving multimodal imaging, and researchers developing advanced machine learning algorithms applied to neuroimaging data.
An 83-year-old patient developed erosions and a blister of the gingival mucous membrane, 6 months after discontinuation of the anti-programmed death-1 (anti PD-1) pembrolizumab therapy administered ...for 10 months for a metastatic melanoma. A diagnosis of mild mucous membrane pemphigoid (MMP) was made. Complete remission of MMP was rapidly obtained with minimal therapy (doxycycline). MMP remained in complete remission after a 3-month follow-up since discontinuation of the doxycycline therapy and no evidence of relapse of the melanoma was observed after a 14-month follow-up since discontinuation of the pembrolizumab therapy. The widespread use of anti PD-1 and anti-programmed death-ligand-1 (PD-L1) in several malignancies reveals new adverse events. MMP describes a group of chronic, inflammatory, mucous membrane-predominant, subepithelial auto-immune blistering diseases. It is clinically distinct from bullous pemphigoid another autoimmune blistering disease but shares some immunological similarities with it. Twenty-nine cases of bullous pemphigoid associated with anti PD-1/PD-L1 have been reported in the literature and one of MMP. Here, we described the case of a MMP developed after pembrolizumab and discussed the accountability of anti PD-1/PD-L1 in our case and the previous reported bullous pemphigoid and MMP cases using the Begaud system scoring.
This paper analyzes both the market quality and price dynamics of a sample group of Islamic indexes. Our results highlight that efficient investment allocation is not compromised by the application ...of Shariah criteria. However, although few indexes impose an additional liquidity cost on investors, a vast majority of indexes present degrees of liquidity that are similar to conventional indexes. Ultimately, investors whose investment decisions are guided by religious principles do not bear significant additional costs of inefficiency but may have to accept that their portfolios are more sensitive to geopolitical events. However, Islamic indexes may contribute to the international diversification of investors' portfolios.
The financial health of local governments has attracted considerable interest over the past couple of decades. In this study, we follow a benchmarking perspective and introduce a multi-attribute ...financial evaluation model that allows peer assessments to be made, including comparisons over time, while differentiating between managerial performance and the effect of the external environment. The model is applied to a large database involving the entire population of French municipalities over the period 2000–2012 to assess how the reforms implemented over the past decade (taxation and decentralization) have affected the financial performance of local governments in France. The findings are of particular interest to both the academia and policymakers including local public authorities and central governments.
•Introduction of a multi-attribute peer assessment approach for panel data.•A rich data set with more than 35,000 French municipalities over 2000–2012.•Distinction of management competence effects from the external conditions.•Analysis of the impact of decentralization and amalgamation processes.
Quality of life and well-being is a topic of major importance for public policy making and urban planning decisions. However, these concepts entail complex multiple socio-economic aspects, and are ...ill-defined. Quantitative assessments of quality of life based on composite indicators have become quite popular in academic research and practice. This study presents the application of an approach that combines ideas from multiple criteria decision making and efficiency analysis to the assessment of quality of life at the municipality level. A dataset involving French municipalities in 2012 is used for the analysis based on a rich set of key performance indicators that cover different aspects of quality of life conditions for citizens. The relationship of quality of life performance with the financial strength of the municipalities is also explored.
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