This paper studies the relationship between firm performance, proxied by Tobin's Q, and two distinct ownership types, managerial owned firms and outside owned firms. The sample consists of 2005 young firms from Europe and the US that incorporated since the dot-com-bubble 2001. Very similar to the pre-2001 period, young and highly funded firms are of popular concern. In particular their owners, founders and CEOs are topic of interest and serve as figurehead for their company, raising the question whether their firms perform better if they also own them or not and whether that differs with the institutional framework that the company is situated in. Thus the research question is the following: What is the effect of having management as majority shareholder(s) on the performance of the young firm in different environments? To find an answer, I used quantitative data from Orbis and analyzed it using time-series panel data, recent information using simple OLS as well as multiple analyses of variance. I find evidence of higher valuations of firms owned by managers, especially in countries with common law and stronger shareholder rights. I also find evidence of relatively lower valuations of firms owned by their managers when these are situated in code law countries or countries with stronger creditor rights. A surprising addition to the findings were extreme values of Tobin's Q that may indicate another bubble in the making, coincidentally closing the circle of this study.

Le concept d’empowerment psychologique a émergé en marketing avec l’essor d’internet, pour désigner un sentiment d’émancipation du consommateur dans son processus de décision. Il soulève des questions importantes, sur une éventuelle perte d’influence du marketing ou sur la remise en cause du rôle prescripteur de la force de vente, notamment ; pourtant peu d’études empiriques ont à ce jour exploré le concept. Ces travaux contribuent à une meilleure compréhension des mécanismes et conséquences de l’empowerment psychologique du consommateur selon le contexte d’achat : les résultats d’études auprès de 1043 acheteurs de séjours touristiques permettent de conclure à un effet positif de l’empowerment psychologique sur la satisfaction du consommateur, à la fois envers sa décision d’achat et envers la marque auprès de laquelle l’achat a été effectué, principalement du fait d’un effet médiateur de l’appropriation psychologique de la décision. Cet effet positif perdure après l’étape de consommation et favorise indirectement l’intention de ré-achat. Plusieurs facteurs explicatifs de l’empowerment psychologique ont été identifiés, à la fois d’ordre individuel et contextuel, dont l’utilisation d’internet en préparation de l’achat. Les enseignements de cette recherche mettent en lumière le rôle positif de l’empowerment psychologique sur la satisfaction et la fidélité des acheteurs, et suggèrent de nouvelles pistes sur la relation entre le contexte/canal d’achat utilisé et la satisfaction du consommateur. Des préconisations sont formulées pour mieux prendre en compte l’évolution des attentes et comportements d’achat des consommateurs dans un contexte d’empowerment par internet. / The concept of consumer psychological empowerment has emerged in marketing with the rise of internet, to designate a feeling of emancipation in the decision making process. It raises important questions, among which the hypothetical loss of influence of marketing and the future role of vendors at traditional points of sale; yet very little empirical work has been made on the concept. This research contributes to a better understanding of the mechanism and consequences of consumer psychological empowerment in a purchase context, through several empirical studies among 1043 buyers of package travels in France. Our results show a positive effect of psychological empowerment on consumers’ satisfaction, both towards the purchase decision and towards the service provider, mainly due to the mediating effect of psychological ownership of the decision. Psychological empowerment also indirectly contributes to a higher re-purchase intent, after the consumption phase. Several antecedents have been identified, both individual and contextual ones, among which the use of internet in the purchase process. Our findings shed light on the positive effect of psychological empowerment on buyers’ satisfaction and loyalty, and suggest new routes on the relationship between the purchase context/channel and consumer satisfaction. Managerial implications are proposed, to help marketers better adapt to an empowering-by-the-internet environment.

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1 Pavel Škvára Ownership of real estate in the Czech legal order Abstract The reasons, why I decided to choose as a topic of my dissertation, issues of ownership in the Czech legal code, it was just a few. In the first place, therefore, that the legal concept of property rights is seen in any democratic legislation, as the basic instrument governing private relations in society. And as such a fundamental tool must be properly treated in the legislative plane. The concept of the ownership, may seem at first glance a very clear and smooth, but the opposite is true. Really fine and perfectly understand this concept and to understand its theoretical structure, is not simple at all. In particular, on the grounds that many legal theorists interpret the content of the concept of ownership a little differently, and there was no agreement on the definition of unique match and the determination of the theoretical sources of this concept. Of course, in the case of authoritarian or totalitarian regimes is the institutes of the ownership in national legal systems often formally retained, but its content and form are often significantly modified. The aim of the thesis was also to focus on the issues of real estate. Real estate can be understood as a special group of things that have specific characteristics, are often...

Em 1994, a prefeitura de São Paulo aprovou uma lei permitindo novos condomínios horizontais de casas em lotes de até 15.000m2, com a intenção de dar continuidade a um tipo urbano tradicional da cidade, chamado \"vila\". Apesar deste modelo ter sofrido várias transformações desde seu surgimento no final do século XIX como habitação para operários, o tipo visualizado pelos desenvolvedores do projeto de lei foi o das vilas rentistas produzidas durante meados do século XX e que nos anos 1980 tiveram grande valorização pelo mercado. Porém, quando a Lei de Vilas foi aprovada, outras referências urbanas já haviam surgido no imaginário coletivo paulistano, e os conjuntos decorrentes da Lei 11.605/94 já são distintos daquelas vilas de meados do século XX. Sejam elas um novo tipo urbano ou uma nova versão do tipo \"vila\", fato é que nenhum estudo consistente sobre esses empreendimentos foi localizado até o momento, mesmo estando esta lei há mais de dez anos em vigor e sua produção em crescimento praticamente constante desde 1994.Nesta pesquisa a intenção é fazer um diagnóstico do que foi produzido, apresentando dez projetos executados de diferentes padrões e regiões da cidade, descobrir o quanto se produziu por ano e por bairro, os motivos de suas configurações físicas finais, quem produziu, quem são e o que pensam os moradores a respeito dos imóveis onde estão morando. No final do trabalho, são apresentadas algumas sugestões para futuros projetos deste tipo na cidade, com a intenção de evitar alguns erros encontrados durante o desenvolvimento do trabalho. / In 1994, São Paulo municipality approved a new law that allows new horizontal joint ownerships in areas until 15.000m2 at this town, to continue the production of a traditional urban type of this city, called vilas. Although this urban type has been modified since its origin in the last 19th century decade as popular housing for industries employees, the goal seeked by the law developers was the form of vilas builded by the middle 20th century for renting. These ones had their market prices increased during the 1980?s.However, when the law was approved, other urban references had already arised to São Paulo popular knowledge, and the properties created through the law of vilas are quite different from the middle 20th century examples. Anyway, no consistent study about these cases was finded until now, although the law has been applied for more than ten years and its production has been increasing since 1994.This research goal is discovering what and how much has been done through these years, who are the developers, who are the consumers (and what they think about their living spaces). Ten cases of different kind of consumers and regions of the city are studied and showed. In the very end some project suggestions are presented, intending to avoid some usual mistakes.

One of the sharpest distinctions among corporate governance systems is between communitarian and contractarian governance systems. At the core of this distinction is corporate ownership. Ownership in Japanese governance system, a typical communitarian governance system, used to be quite stable. However, many Japanese firms experience significant ownership change in recent decades. Despite numerous studies on the debate about change and continuity of communitarian governance system, there is a lack of scholarly efforts on why some firms experience significant change of corporate governance while others do not. Besides, past research predominantly views ownership as an exogenous factor in determining firm outcomes and suggests that it is increasing transactional ownership and declining relational ownership that facilitate corporate governance reform. Nonetheless, we have limited understanding of what triggers change of ownership from relational to transactional shareholders in the first place. / To fill these research gaps, my dissertation adopts symbolic interactionism perspective to explain ownership regime change, which happens when a firm owned by relational shareholders becomes dominantly owned by transactional shareholders. It is an unusual phenomenon in communitarian corporate governance system where ownership is more of a symbolic representation of the underlying social relationships between a firm and its shareholders. The central premise is that certain corporate actions undertaken by a firm may violate the shared meanings underlying communitarian governance system, which triggers a higher likelihood of ownership regime change. With a sample of 24910 firm-year observations from 1990 to 2010 in Japan, I demonstrate that downsizing, hostile takeover, and business relationship termination undertaken by a firm affect the likelihood of ownership regime change, which is moderated by corporate actions conforming to communitarian meanings (e.g. minority shareholding, new alliance formation) and the frequency of corporate actions against shared communitarian meanings at the organizational field level. / This dissertation sheds new lights on corporate governance research by providing an alternative view to explain the antecedents of ownership regime change in communitarian governance system. By adopting a symbolic interactionism perspective, it enriches our understanding of the realm of meanings underlying corporate governance system as well as the interactions between shareholders and firms. Besides, it goes beyond previous feature-oriented approach in corporate governance research by illustrating how salient corporate actions, as events in shareholders’ view, can trigger profound change of corporate governance structure. / 儘管許多文獻曾探討過社群治理體系的變化和沿用，管理學界依然缺乏有關企業經歷重大公司治理變化的成因研究。過往研究大多假設在社群情境裡，外國投資者的增加會導致公司治理變化；然而，這種由外國投資者主導的變化忽略了原來本地關係型股東在公司治理中的角色。此外，股權結構一直被理所當然的視為公司治理變革的外因，卻對觸發股權變動的成因所知甚少。 / 為了彌補這個研究缺口，本文以象徵互動論去解釋社群情境下的股權變動。股權不僅作為公司治理的控制機制，同樣作為企業與股東間社會關係的象徵。本文的中心前提是：企業引起的事件可能會違犯了社群治理體系中的蘊含的共同意義，因此損害了企業與關係型股東的關係，導致更大機會出現關係型股東出售股權予外國投資者。本文以1990年至2010年的於日本上市的工業企業為研究樣本，結果發現企業緊縮和敵意併購會增加發生股權變動的機會；然而，當企業頻繁地進行一些遵從社群治理角度的行為，以及當這些違犯社群共同意義的行為在社群當中愈見頻繁，企業事件對股權變動的影響將減弱。 / 本文對公司治理研究的貢獻在於從另一角度去解釋股權變動的成因。從象徵互動論出發，本文增加了對公司治理體系中蘊含的意義，以及企業與股東交互的理解。此外，不同於以往側重於公司治理特徵的研究，本文著重研究公司的事件如何最終導致此公司治理架構的變化。 / Chen, Xing. / Thesis Ph.D. Chinese University of Hong Kong 2015. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 105-120). / Abstracts also in Chinese. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on 09, September, 2016). / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only.

Cette thèse traite de l’influence de l’horizon d’investissement des actionnaires sur les décisions des entreprises et sur leur performance. Elle est composée de quatre articles. Le premier article effectue une revue de la littérature et identifie des lacunes que les trois autres articles empiriques cherchent à combler. Le second article est consacré à l’effet de l’horizon d’investissement des actionnaires sur la satisfaction des employés. La satisfaction des employés est un actif intangible qui, bien que créateur de valeur sur le long-terme, est mal valorisé par le marché à court-terme. Pour cette raison, les investisseurs de long-terme et de court-terme pourraient ne pas avoir le même intérêt à ce que les entreprises dans lesquelles ils investissent satisfassent leurs employés. L’article documente un effet positif des investisseurs de long-terme sur la satisfaction des employés et établit la causalité de différentes façons. Ce résultat indique que la structure de l’actionnariat est un déterminant important de mise en place de politiques RSE créatrices de valeur à long-terme. Le troisième article étudie l’impact de l’horizon d’investissement des actionnaires sur la performance des banques pendant la crise. Les résultats de l’analyse empirique montrent qu’une plus grande présence d’actionnaires de court-terme est associée à une plus forte chute du cours de bourse pendant la crise. Cette association s’explique partiellement par une prise de risques plus grande, avant crise, des banques dans lesquelles les actionnaires de court-terme étaient plus présents. Elle s’explique également par le comportement des actionnaires de court-terme pendant la crise. Ces derniers ont vendu massivement leurs actions, générant une pression à la vente plus forte des actions des banques par l’ensemble des investisseurs institutionnels. Ces résultats ont une implication pour la réglementation des fonds propres bancaires, ils suggèrent que l’effet protecteur des fonds propres pour les banques varie en fonction de l’horizon d’investissement des détenteurs de ces fonds. Le dernier article se concentre sur l’effet disciplinaire des investisseurs de long-terme. Il montre que l’effet disciplinaire des investisseurs de long-terme sur le surinvestissement d’une entreprise dépend de la durée pendant laquelle ces investisseurs ont effectivement détenu les actions de l’entreprise. Les résultats de l’analyse empirique soutiennent l’idée que, pour constituer une base actionnariale qui génère plus de valeur, attirer des investisseurs de long-terme n’est pas suffisant, les entreprises devraient également inciter leurs actionnaires à détenir leurs actions plus longtemps. / No English summary available.

Previous studies often associated a specific type of ownership mode with the extent of control a parent firm may have over (strategic) decision-making in a foreign subsidiary, suggesting that parent firms should have higher control over wholly-owned subsidiaries (WoS) than international joint ventures (IJVs). Building on principal agent theory, we argue that in the Chinese context higher ownership levels do not necessarily have a positive effect on the extent of control over the foreign subsidiary. We further argue that cultural distance between the parent firm and the subsidiary moderates this relationship. We test our hypotheses using data from a sample of 156 foreign subsidiaries in the People's Republic of China (PRC) and find strong support for our arguments. Our findings show that in WoS parent firms reduce their extent of control, while in IJVs parent firms increase their extent of control. Moreover, we find that extent of control over WoS (IJVs) declines (increases) when cultural distance increases. Our results have significant theoretical implications for international business (IB) research as they challenge existing views with regard to the relationship between ownership mode and control as well as the moderating effect of cultural distance.

For almost forty years gun ownership and the motivational underpinnings of why guns are valued has received little attention in psychology. The gun rights debate is an unresolved salient item that has been on the national agenda for decades, and national polls provide evidence for a slow and steady voter realignment over this issue. Motivation science tools that explain value creation, regulatory focus and regulatory fit, help to explain the salience and importance of gun rights for millions of Americans. Three field experiments, with replications and extensions, demonstrated motivational fit between the prevention orientation (marked by vigilant concern for threats) and gun ownership. This research remained agnostic regarding the legal and moral components of the gun rights debate. Instead, these experiments demonstrate the malleability of gun value as a function of fundamental motivations. This applied political psychology research made two basic contributions to regulatory fit theory. First, these field experiments found fit effects between motivational inductions and distinct field environments. Also, by incorporating a pure control condition into these regulatory fit experiments, this research pinned down that literal dollar value of motivationally relevant objects is intensified by fit (as opposed to decreased by non-fit).

This study provides empirical evidence on the role of ultimate ownership structure in explaining the variations in firms' cost of equity capital across 21 countries. Using four implied cost of equity proxies, the results show that the large discrepancy between ownership and control rights of the ultimate owner has a positive and significant impact on the firm's cost of equity capital, after controlling for traditional risk factors known in empirical literature. The finding lends support to the entrenchment effect in that the expropriation of the minority investors by the controlling owners increases the systematic risk of the company thereby increases the firm's external financing cost. Further analyses demonstrate that both the legal and extra-legal institutions play an important tank in constraining the higher equity cost as induced by the concentrated ownership structure. In particular, in countries with broad disclosure requirements, strong securities regulations enforcement, keen market competition and high tax compliance, the positive relation between the cost of equity capital and the ownership-control divergence of the ultimate owner is less pronounced. The findings suggest that the institutional factors are effective corporate governance mechanisms and are significant in explaining the international variations in the cost of equity capital. / Chu, Sin Yan Teresa. / Adviser: Woody Wu. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-06, Section: A, page: 2121. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 67-73). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / School code: 1307.