Honors Project (B.A.) -- Carson-Newman College, 2010. / Project advisor: Dr. Kara Stooksbury.

Thesis (M. Hous. M.)--University of Hong Kong, 2006.

Thesis (M.A.)--Ohio University, June, 2004. / Title from PDF t.p. Includes bibliographical references (p. 80-91)

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This thesis provides empirical evidence on the relation between concentrated ownership and the long term operating performance of acquiring firms. Large shareholders are generally viewed as beneficial monitors of corporate performance but high levels of concentration can lead to potential expropriation from minority shareholders via managerial entrenchment, tunneling, or sub-optimal investment decisions. This problem is potentially greater in firms with separation of voting and ownership rights. This thesis investigates the performance around takeovers in English origin countries other than the US by following the classification of La Porta, Lopez-de-Silanes, Shleifer and Vishny (1998). While generally considered similar to the US, these countries vary with respect to ownership concentration and investor protection. This thesis controls a broad set of corporate governance mechanisms including first generation governance measures like CEO positions, board characteristics, and other blockholders. Furthermore, this thesis also examines whether different degrees of second generation governance mechanisms such as anti-director rights, accounting standards, legal enforcement, and extra-legal institutions lead to different levels of M&A performance. In addition, this thesis includes the new legal indexes recently developed by Djankov, La Porta, Lopez-de-Silanes and Shleifer (2006); these measures have yet to be examined through empirical research. By using an accounting based methodology, this thesis presents Healy, Palepu and Ruback (1992) abnormal post cash flow return regression-based results and results of a change model (Ghosh 2001). Moreover, this thesis refers to the sample matching techniques in Barber and Lyon (1996) and develops the industry, size, and pre performance benchmark. The principal finding of this thesis is that M&A transactions should improve the long-term financial and operating performance of merging firms to reflect that accounting performance can capture real economic creations. After controlling for well documented governance mechanisms and deal characteristics, the relationship between concentrated ownership and the level and change in operating cash flow returns after takeovers is non-linear. Value creating deals are associated with higher levels of concentration consistent with decreasing agency costs as the large shareholder’s wealth invested in the acquiring firm increases. Further, separation of ownership and voting rights leads to greater value destruction; acquiring firms with controlling CEO make significant improvements in post acquisition performance after controlling pre-performance; and the presence of CEO-Chairman duality and board size are both significantly negatively associated with acquisition operating performance. This thesis also finds, although all acquiring firms are from English origin countries, that the greater investor protection, as measured by the initial anti-director right index in La Porta et al. (1998) and revised anti-director rights index in Djankov et al. (2006) has a positive impact on operating cash flow returns from acquisitions. However, this thesis does not document any differential performance with respect to the extra- legal systems of Dyck and Zingales (2004) and the anti-self-dealing index of Djankov et al. (2006).

This thesis is concerned with the doctrine of title by possession and the doctrine of relative title. Many property lawyers believe that these doctrines are elementary, important and interesting. But, while virtually everyone accepts that possession of land or chattels is a source of title and that titles are relative, the doctrines have long been a focus of debate. The nature of possession, the nature of the possessor's title, and the relationships between possession, relative title and ownership have been particularly contentious. Accordingly, this thesis seeks to provide sound answers to the following questions: (1) what, in this context, is possession? (2) What is the nature of the title that is acquired by taking possession of land or chattels? (3) Does English law recognise landownership and chattel-ownership?-and, if it does, is a person who acquires, by virtue of his or her possession, a title to land or chattels the (or an) owner of the land or chattels? It is argued in Chapter 2 that, for the purposes of the doctrine of title by possession, the general rule is that a person is in possession of land or chattels if and only if she has: (i) a sufficient degree of exclusive physical control; and (ii) an intention to possess. Chapters 3-5 are concerned with the second question. It is argued that, upon obtaining possession, a person acquires, in cases involving land, an estate in fee simple absolute in possession and, in cases involving chattels, a general property interest. Chapter 6 is concerned with the third question. It is argued that English law does recognise landownership and chattel-ownership; and that a person who acquires a title by obtaining possession of land or chattels owns the land or chattels if her title is supreme but not if it is inferior.

Cette approche multidisciplinaire, basée sur le champ conceptuel de la géographie psychosociologique du tourisme, empreinte une démarche méthodologique qualitative. Le Système d’Analyse Multiniveau de l’Appropriation Spatiale Touristique (SAMAST) que j’ai développé utilise trois enquêtes, basées sur les perceptions et usages spatiaux, afin de mettre en évidence les formes d’appropriation. Celui-ci fait apparaître des niveaux d’appropriation différents selon les échelles du tourisme (du global au fin).Avant le départ, le choix de la destination et des activités touristiques est fortement influencé par l’image perçue des futurs visiteurs. La prise de décision et d’information, notamment par le biais des guides touristiques et des TIC, constitue une forme de préappropiation touristique de l’espace. Cette dernière s’oriente vers l’autonomie et l’altérité des individus, car elle comprend la réservation d’activité et de lieux touristiques, propre au projet de voyage. Une fois sur place, le touriste s’approprie l’espace d’accueil par ses usages de consommation, de mobilité et de changement d’habiter. Le touriste privatise temporairement les lieux, comme les espaces de production et d’hébergement touristiques et y laisse des marques. Enfin, au retour du séjour, la désappropriation de l’espace s’effectue par le partage du vécu, des souvenirs et des expériences de voyage. Par la transmission et la diffusion d’avis et d’informations sur les espaces visités, l’individu influence le choix et participe à la préappropriation de l’espace potentiellement convoité par autrui. Cette postappropriation interconnectée referme ainsi le cycle (la boucle) de l’appropriation spatiale touristique. / This multidisciplinary approach, based on the conceptual field of psycho-geography of tourism, marked a qualitative methodological approach. The latter focuses on participant observation and interviews with tourists, professionals and the local population, shows different levels of ownership in the scale of tourism (from the global to the end). The Multilevel Analysis System of Appropriation Space ownership (MASASO) uses three surveys, based on the perceptions and uses space to highlight the forms of appropriation. Before departure, the choice of destination and tourism is heavily influenced by the perceived future visitors’ picture. Decision making and information, including through guidebooks and Technologies of Information and Communication, is a form of tourism preappropiation space. The latter is oriented toward self and otherness of individuals, because it includes the booking of activities and sights, specific travel plans. Once there, the tourist appropriates the host by its uses consumer space, mobility and change of living. Tourists temporarily privatize places such as production areas and tourist accommodation, and leaves marks. These forms of ownership are helping to change the scene and the perceived tourist, by improving knowledge of haunts picture. Finally, the return of the stay, the dispossession of the space is by sharing experiences, memories and travel experiences. For the transmission and dissemination of advice and information on areas visited, the individual influences the choice and helps to preappropriation of potentially space coveted by others. This interconnected postappropriation closes the cycle (loop) of the tourism spatial appropriation.

This study consists of two essays. In the first essay, I examine the effect of employee blockholdings on the values of corporate cash and capital expenditures. I find that when employees hold large equity stake in their companies, corporate cash holdings are worth less to outside shareholders and capital expenditures contribute less to shareholder value. The negative effect of employee block ownership on the values of cash and capital expenditures is concentrated in companies with fewer anti-takeover provisions, in companies which pay their employees abnormally high wages, and in companies where managers have little equity ownership. Our findings support the hypothesis that employee blockholdings can serve as a protection for managers from the market for corporate control and allow managers to extract private benefits at the expense of shareholders. In the second essay, I examine how labor power affects the informativeness of companies’ reported earnings. Using a sample of firms in 42 countries for the period of 1990 to 2009, I find that strong union laws provide managers greater incentives to manipulate reported earnings to hide firm true performance from labor, leading to lower value relevance of earnings in these countries. Further analysis shows that firms use more negative accruals in countries with more powerful labor unions. Overall, these findings support the hypothesis that managers intentionally distort reported earnings to shelter corporate income from labor so that they can improve their bargaining position against powerful labor unions

La crise financière récente a réveillé l’intérêt du monde académique pour les préceptes qui sous-tendent le comportement économique “rationnel”. En réponse au besoin d’une meilleure compréhension des fondamentaux du capitalisme, cette thèse prend une perspective historique sur XV quelques considérations managériales essentielles, parmi lesquelles la coordination principal-agent, la redistribution des bénéfices et la maximisation de la fiabilité et de l’efficience. Elle le fait par le biais de multiples analyses longitudinales de la Compagnie Néerlandaise des Indes Orientales (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie, la VOC), qui opéra pendant la première vague de mondialisation et fut une pionnière des principes managériaux modernes. Se basant sur une combinaison de données quantitatives et qualitatives, et instruite par la théorie de l’agence et par l’institutionnalisme, cette thèse fait deux contributions théoriques larges. En premier lieu, en soulignant la réactivité de la Compagnie à l’évolution des exigences d’un monde en mutation, elle enrichit l’état des connaissances sur la VOC, qui était jusqu’à présent fortement orienté vers la contextualisation historique et minimisait l’importance de l’action managériale. En deuxième lieu, elle démontre que la gestion de la VOC, bien que guidée par des objectifs organisationnels modernes par essence, tels que le contrôle, la maximisation des revenus, ou l’optimisation opérationnelle, était formatée par des situations politiques et culturelles prémodernes. Ceci confirme de nouveau la thèse selon laquelle les racines de l’action économique “rationnelle” se trouvent d’avantage dans le pragmatisme et la construction sociale que dans une logique économique autonome. Sous cet angle, la lutte de la VOC pour réconcilier les objectifs de long terme et les exigences de court terme éclaire les problématiques stratégiques d’industries dynamiques ou émergeantes, et alimente le débat sur les facteurs, culturels ou politiques, qui ont contribué à l’état actuel du capitalisme occidental. / The recent financial crisis has reinvigorated an academic interest in the precepts upon which “rational” economic behavior is based. Answering to the need for a better understanding of capitalism’s fundaments, this dissertation takes a historical perspective on a number of core managerial issues, including raising capital, controlling agents and improving reliability / efficiency. It does so by means of multiple longitudinal analyses of the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie – VOC), which operated during the first wave of globalization and pioneered modern management principles. Together, the chapters cover all of the Company’s three important domains of activity: the Asian branch, the metropolitan upper echelons and the shipping between Europe and Asia. Using a combination of quantitative and qualitative data and drawing on agency theory and institutionalism, the dissertation depicts the VOC as an actively governed organization that consciously addressed trade-offs and dilemmas. Elaborating how social and organizational processes contributed to the modernization of international business, the dissertation suggests that the roots of capitalism and “rational” economic coordination, which are often assumed to obey an autonomous economic logic, can be found in pragmatism and social construction. As such, the VOC’s struggle to reconcile long-term goals with short-term exigencies speaks to current strategic issues in dynamic or emerging industries and feeds into the debate on the factors (culture or political) that have contributed to the current state of western capitalism.

Expropriation of buildings and land Abstract The represented thesis aims to completely analyse the institute of exproriation of buildings and land as it is governed by the Expropriaton Act. Expropriation as a traditional institute of Czech law is considered as the most severe interference with the property right and, as a result, the property right or right corresponding to the easement to the land or the building is deprived or limited. The diploma thesis starts with a general treatise on expropriation, especially by including this institute in the Constitution and related property right and its protection. The basic legal acts governing expropriaton are described. The definition of the term expropriation and the analysis of the objects and subjects of expropriation are also included in this part of the thesis. The second chapter deals with the individual conditions of expropriation that must be cumulatively fulfilled in order to expropriate. The conditions under the Expropriation Act are, among others, the public interest in achieving the puprose of expropriation, subsidiarity and proportionality of expropriaton, and compliance with the objectives and tasks of spatial planning. Another condition, which is the purpose of the expropriation stipulated by a special act, is the subject of the third chapter of...