Thesis--Wisconsin. / Vita.

This dissertation presents geometric approaches of understanding chaotic transport in phase space that is fundamental across many disciplines in physical sciences and engineering. This approach is based on analyzing phase space transport using boundaries and regions inside these boundaries in presence of perturbation. We present a geometric view of defining such boundaries and study the transport that occurs by crossing such phase space structures. The structure in two dimensional non-autonomous system is the codimension 1 stable and unstable manifolds associated with the hyperbolic fixed points. The manifolds separate regions with varied dynamical fates and their time evolution encodes how the initial conditions in a given region of phase space get transported to other regions. In the context of four dimensional autonomous systems, the corresponding structure is the stable and unstable manifolds of unstable periodic orbits which reside in the bottlenecks of energy surface. The total energy and the cylindrical (or tube) manifolds form the necessary and sufficient condition for global transport between regions of phase space. Furthermore, we adopt the geometric view to define escaping zones for avoiding transition/escape from a potential well using partial control. In this approach, the objective is two fold: finding the minimum control that is required for avoiding escape and obtaining discrete representation called disturbance of continuous noise that is present in physical sciences and engineering. In the former scenario, along with avoiding escape, the control is constrained to be smaller than the disturbance so that it can not exactly cancel out the disturbances. / Ph. D.

El objetivo de la presente tesis doctoral consiste, en primer lugar, en investigar si la influencia de los accionistas principales sobre el valor de la empresa se encuentra condicionada por la existencia de conflicto de intereses entre accionistas y directivos, de manera que cuanto más alto sea el beneficio público esperado mayor será la disposición del accionista a asumir los costes derivados de la supervisión. Nuestro segundo objetivo consiste en analizar si en el mercado de capitales español la adquisición de bloques accionariales se encuentra condicionada por el beneficio público que puede derivarse de la supervisión o por la ventaja informativa que poseen los adquirentes, que pondría de manifiesto la necesidad de la aplicación estricta de los códigos de conducta y de un seguimiento más exhaustivo de las empresas con mayor asimetría informativa. El análisis empírico realizado, utilizando la metodología de datos de panel y la regresión logística, nos permite establecer las siguientes conclusiones. En primer lugar, el carácter supervisor de la propiedad accionarial es más intenso en aquellas empresas en las que el potencial conflicto de intereses entre accionistas y directivos es mayor. Asimismo, la existencia de mecanismos de gobierno alternativos en la empresa, que garanticen la supervisión de las decisiones directivas, resta significatividad a la función de vigilancia que ejercen determinados inversores. Por último, los inversores principales de la empresa tratan de compensar los costes de supervisión mediante transacciones en el mercado de control parcial, de manera que se observa un comportamiento comprador cuando se anticipa una mejora en la gestión empresarial derivada de un incremento en la supervisión y cuando existe una mayor asimetría informativa de manera que pueden beneficiarse de su posición de inversores mejor informados. / The aim of this thesis is, firstly, to analyse if the influence of majority shareholders over company value depends on the existence of conflict of interests between managers and shareholders. Therefore, the higher the expected social benefit is, the higher interest of shareholders to assume the costs derived form monitoring. The second aim of this study is to analyse if the purchase of share blocks in the Spanish capital market is motivated by the value creation derived from monitoring, or by the informative advantage of the acquirers and insider trading, which would highlight the need of an strict application of Governance Codes and vigilance of firms with asymmetric information. The empirical analysis is accomplished using panel data methodology and a logistic regression. Our empirical analysis allow us to conclude that the supervisory role of ownership is more intense in firms where the potential conflict of interest between shareholders and managers is greater, and therefore the value of the firm can be increased through a specific composition of its shareholders. Moreover, the existence of alternative governance mechanisms, that guarantee managerial decisions monitoring, reduce the importance of the investor's supervision role. Lastly, we observe a purchase behaviour when an improvement in managerial running is foreseen as a consequence of the supervision, and when there is more asymmetric information and therefore the acquirers can benefit from their position of better informed investors.