Why Ownership Matters?: Politicization and Entrepreneurship in the Restructuring of Enterprises in Central Europe

This paper, base on a study of mid-sized firms in the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland, examines the sources of performance differences between state and privatized firms, particularly those that may be due to politicization and differences in the degree of entreprenurship. The paper presents empirical evidence that politicization of decision making is responsible for the observed inefficiencies in the cost behavior of state enterprises, but does not explain their inferior revenue performance, which is independent of the degree of state involvement.OWNERSHIP ; PRIVATIZATION ; HUMAN CAPITAL

Why Ownership Matters? Entrepreneurship and the Restructuring of Enterprises in Central Europe

This paper, based on a study of mid-sized firms in the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland, seeks to explain the reasons behind the marked impact of ownership on firm performance which has been observed in a number of studies in Eastern Europe and other parts of the world. Focusing in particular on the differential impact of ownership on revenue and cost performance, the paper argues that privatized firms controlled by outside investors are more entrepreneurial than those controlled by corporate insiders or the state. The paper provides evidence that all state and privatized firms in transition economies engage in similar types of restructuring, but that product restructuring by firms owned by outsider investors is significantly more effective (in terms of revenue generation) than that by firms with other types of ownership. The paper also examines the impact of managerial turnover on revenue performance, as well as differences among managers of firms with different types of ownership, and concludes that the more entrepreneurial behavior of outsider-owned firms is due primarily to incentive effects, rather than human capital effects, of privatization. More specifically, the authors argue that the success of outsider-owned firms is due to their greater readiness to accept risks (as evidenced by the higher variance of the revenues generated by restructuring) and a lesser need to defend, and account for, their managerial decisions.OWNERSHIP; PRIVATIZATION; POLITICIZATION; ENTREPRENEURSHIP; INCENTIVES; HUMAN CAPITAL

Why metallic surfaces with grooves a few nanometers deep and wide may strongly absorb visible light

It is theoretically shown that nanometric silver lamellar gratings present very strong visible light absorption inside the grooves, leading to electric field intensities by several orders of magnitude larger than that of the impinging light. This effect, due to the excitation of long wave vector surface plasmon polaritons with particular small penetration depth in the metal, may explain the abnormal optical absorption observed a long time ago on almost flat Ag films. Surface enhanced Raman scattering in rough metallic films could also be due to the excitation of such plasmon polaritons in the grain boundaries or notches of the films.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure, submitted to Phys. Rev. Let

The Limits of Discipline: Ownership and Hard Budget Constraints in the Transition Economies

This paper argues that the imposition of financial discipline is not sufficient to remedy ownership and governance-related deficiencies of corporate performance. Using evidence from the postcommunist transition economies, the paper shows that a policy of hard budget constraints falters when state firms, because of inferior revenue performance and lesser willingness to meet payment obligations, continue to pose higher credit risk than privatized firms. The brunt of state firms' lower creditworthiness falls on state creditors. But the "softness" of these creditors is unavoidable if it prevents a demise of firms that are in principle capable of successful restructuring through ownership changes.OWNERSHIP; FINANCIAL DISCIPLINE; PERFORMANCE; TRANSITION.

Optical properties of tungsten thin films perforated with a bidimensional array of subwavelength holes

We present a theorical investigation of the optical transmission of a dielectric grating carved in a tungsten layer. For appropriate wavelengths tungsten shows indeed a dielectric behaviour. Our numerical simulations leads to theoretical results similar to those found with metallic systems studied in earlier works. The interpretation of our results rests on the idea that the transmission is correlated with the resonant response of eigenmodes coupled to evanescent diffraction orders.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Model for the low-temperature magnetic phases observed in doped YBa_2Cu_3O_{6+x}

A classical statistical model for the antiferromagnetic (AFM) ordering of the Cu-spins in the CuO_2 planes of reduced YBa_2Cu_3O_{6+x} type materials is presented. The magnetic phases considered are the experimentally observed high-temperature AFI phase with ordering vector Q_I=(1/2,1/2,0), and the low-temperature phases: AFII with Q_II=(1/2,1/2,1/2) and intermediate TA (Turn Angle) phases TAI, TAII and TAIII with components of both ordering vectors. It is shown that the AFII and TA phases result from an effective ferromagnetic (FM) type coupling mediated by free spins in the CuO_x basal plane. Good agreement with experimental data is obtained for realistic model parameters.Comment: 11 pages, 2 Postscript figures, Submitted to Phys.Rev.Let

Uniaxial and biaxial soft deformations of nematic elastomers

We give a geometric interpretation of the soft elastic deformation modes of nematic elastomers, with explicit examples, for both uniaxial and biaxial nematic order. We show the importance of body rotations in this non-classical elasticity and how the invariance under rotations of the reference and target states gives soft elasticity (the Golubovic and Lubensky theorem). The role of rotations makes the Polar Decomposition Theorem vital for decomposing general deformations into body rotations and symmetric strains. The role of the square roots of tensors is discussed in this context and that of finding explicit forms for soft deformations (the approach of Olmsted).Comment: 10 pages, 10 figures, RevTex, AmsTe