On directors’ compensation: a multilevel analysis of Spanish listed companies

This study analyzes the determinants of the annual compensation of directors belonging to the boards of the Spanish companies that constitute the IBEX 35 stock index. We investigate the importance of observed and unobserved heterogeneity in explaining director compensation. Based on a three-level mixed effect model, our analysis includes time-invariant random effects at company and manager level as determinants of director pay. We find that company effects explain 30% of the variation in director pay, while company and director effects taken together explain 77% of that variation. Our findings suggest that the characteristics of the company, in terms of activity sector, size and financial performance, and the professional attributes of the director (especially the role within the board), influence the compensation received. In addition, some directors and companies show random effects (either positive or negative) that significantly separate them from the expected compensation estimated from the fixed part of the model.

Structure of Remuneration as Assessed by Employees of the Energy Sector—Multivariate Correspondence Analysis

Remuneration policy is an element of company management. Remuneration systems should be flexible and evolutionary. They must consider not only the changes in the external environment but, most of all, the changing needs of the internal environment. In practice, this means aligning the company’s strategy and goals with the remuneration system. What is more, the remuneration policy must be consistent with all personnel substrategies, which should systematically create integrated human capital management. The aim of our research was to determine how employees perceive the appropriate structure of remuneration and how the relationships between the elements that make up the structure of remuneration are perceived. Energy sector employees were selected for the study, dividing the group of respondents by gender, age and level of education. The obtained data were submitted to multivariate correspondence analysis. The analysis of the perception map for the variables of gender, age and education, as well as the subjective assessment of the components of remuneration, allows the general assertion that both men and women believe that the amount of the fixed part of remuneration should be influenced by such elements as: work efficiency, education, seniority in the current place of employment, position in the hierarchy of the position held, as well as the level of salaries in the labor market. But people aged 60 and over with a vocational education tend to believe that the amount of the fixed part of remuneration should be influenced by collective agreements. Moreover, people aged 25–34 with higher education believe that the granting of additional benefits should not be affected by collective labor agreements.

Designing two-period decentralized service chain incentives with the consideration of customer acquisition and retention

PurposeThe authors address a two-dimensional (both customer acquisition and retention) incentive in a decentralized service chain consisting of a risk-neutral brand and agent (or averse). Design/methodology/approachThe authors focus on the relationship between acquisition and retention, that is, retained customers (repeated purchases) are based on and come from the acquired (new) customers in the former period. The authors also design a two-period separate incentive on both dimensions.FindingsThe authors found that a targeted incentive strategy should be applied for achieving more revenue when the incentive intensities are relatively small. Otherwise, the brand needs to adjust the targeted incentive strategy into incentivizing the opposite dimension, particularly on acquisition. Under the optimal contract, the brand needs to be very careful with deciding the fixed part of the incentive salary and the incentive intensities on both dimensions. For example, the fixed salary initially decreases and then increases in the incentive intensities. For the optimal incentive policies, the brand should incentivize acquisition but outsource retention if the agent is risk-neutral. When the agent is becoming risk-averse, the brand should lower its incentive intensity as the risk degree and variances become larger. Interestingly, the brand may benefit from introducing risks.Originality/valueThe study contributes to the literature by considering the following points. First, the authors extend the principal-agent incentive model by considering two-period decisions of customer acquisition and retention. Second, based on the two-period principal-agent problem, the authors design separate incentive intensities on acquisition and retention, respectively. While, most of the literature focused on acquisition incentives. Third, different from other works focusing on either risk-neutral or risk-averse environments, the authors consider both and compare the cases of risk-neutral and risk-averse to analyze the impact of risk on the optimal decisions and the brand's expected profit.

Non-archimedean hyperbolicity and applications

Inspired by the work of Cherry, we introduce and study a new notion of Brody hyperbolicity for rigid analytic varieties over a non-archimedean field K of characteristic zero. We use this notion of hyperbolicity to show the following algebraic statement: if a projective variety admits a non-constant morphism from an abelian variety, then so does any specialization of it. As an application of this result, we show that the moduli space of abelian varieties is K-analytically Brody hyperbolic in equal characteristic 0. These two results are predicted by the Green–Griffiths–Lang conjecture on hyperbolic varieties and its natural analogues for non-archimedean hyperbolicity. Finally, we use Scholze’s uniformization theorem to prove that the aforementioned moduli space satisfies a non-archimedean analogue of the “Theorem of the Fixed Part” in mixed characteristic.

The Use of Template Miners and Encryption in Log Message Compression

Presently, almost every computer software produces many log messages based on events and activities during the usage of the software. These files contain valuable runtime information that can be used in a variety of applications such as anomaly detection, error prediction, template mining, and so on. Usually, the generated log messages are raw, which means they have an unstructured format. This indicates that these messages have to be parsed before data mining models can be applied. After parsing, template miners can be applied on the data to retrieve the events occurring in the log file. These events are made from two parts, the template, which is the fixed part and is the same for all instances of the same event type, and the parameter part, which varies for all the instances. To decrease the size of the log messages, we use the mined templates to build a dictionary for the events, and only store the dictionary, the event ID, and the parameter list. We use six template miners to acquire the templates namely IPLoM, LenMa, LogMine, Spell, Drain, and MoLFI. In this paper, we evaluate the compression capacity of our dictionary method with the use of these algorithms. Since parameters could be sensitive information, we also encrypt the files after compression and measure the changes in file size. We also examine the speed of the log miner algorithms. Based on our experiments, LenMa has the best compression rate with an average of 67.4%; however, because of its high runtime, we would suggest the combination of our dictionary method with IPLoM and FFX, since it is the fastest of all methods, and it has a 57.7% compression rate.

Golgotha and the burial of Adam between Jewish and Christian tradition

The curious name of Golgotha, and its translations provided by the evangelists, became a focal point for interpretation, opening the door for new Christological concepts to become affixed to it. As these novel Christological interpretations accrued around Golgotha, they would eventually crystallise, and become a fixed part of the commemoration of Jesus in Palestine. Starting with Origen, third and fourth century Christian authors strongly associate the place of Jesus’s crucifixion with the burial place of Adam.

Design of MEMS magnetic actuator for MEMS fourier transform infrared spectrometer

The objective of this thesis is to design MEMS magnetic actuator for MEMS FTIRS. The actuator consists of moving part and fixed part. The moving part uses rotation-to-translation motion conversion mechanism to achieve large translation, which includes four trapezoidal plates, central ring, anchoring springs and connection springs. The fixed part of the actuator consists of four solenoids. The actuator can be integrated with separately fabricated micromirror plate to achieve high surface quality translation micromirror for FTIRS. The actuator is capable of eliminating titling by controlling the four solenoids individually. The MEMS magnetic actuator has been designed and simulated to be able to output a static displacement of 370micrometers. The stress has been analyzed for the moving part of the actuator. The actuator fixed part has been designed. Dynamic analysis has been conducted for the moving part of the actuator. The moving part of the actuator has been fabricated using MetalMUMPs.

Impact of the fixed and variable component of electricity price on the economic viability of a small-scale photovoltaic power plant

The article analyzes electricity prices in Slovakia, their distribution tari component, and their significant impact on small-scale photovoltaic power plants (PVPs). Fixed part of the distribution tari component in Slovakia varies considerably, given the region of operation of the distribution system operator as well as the allocated tari rate. Profitability of the small-scale PVP in Slovakia is widely discussed, with differing opinions of the lay and professional public. The article will explain under what circumstances all the opinions may be true. Profitability predictions available online or done by PVP installers are extremely simplified and lead to misleading results. The existence of fixed and variable components of the price plays a significant role and a simple change of the electricity tari may bring significant savings and shorten the payback time of the PVP investment. However, this is a complex issue and requires several other factors to be considered, too. The most important ones are the fixed component of the electricity price, household consumption diagram and the distribution system to which the household is connected.

On Total Least Squares Estimation for Longitudinal Errors-in-Variables Models

The objective of this study is to evaluate the total least squares (TLS) estimator for the linear mixed model when the design matrix is subject to measurement errors, with special focus on models for longitudinal or repeated-measures data. We consider measurement errors only in the design matrix concerning the fixed part of the model and estimate its corresponding parameter vector under the TLS set up. After treating two variants of the general case, the random coefficient model is discussed as a special case. We evaluate conditions, on the design matrices as well as on variance component parameters, under which a reasonable TLS estimator can be expected in such models. Analysis of a real data example is also provided.

On a Limiting Passage as the Thickness of a Rigid Inclusions in an Equilibrium Problem for a Kirchhoff-Love Plate with a Crack

The paper considers equilibrium models of Kirchhoff-Love plates with rigid inclusions of two types. The first type of inclusion is described by three-dimensional sets, the second one corresponds to a cylindrical rigid inclusion, which is perpendicular to the plate’s median plane in the initial state. For both models, we suppose that there is a through crack along a fixed part of the inclusion’s boundary. On the crack non-penetration conditions are prescribed which correspond to a certain known configuration bending near the crack. The uniqueness solvability of a new problems for a Kirchhoff-Love plate with a flat rigid inclusion is proved. It is proved that when a thickness parameter tends to zero, the problem for a flat rigid inclusion can be represented as a limiting task for a family of variational problems concerning the inclusions of the first type. A solvability of an optimal control problem with a control given by the size of inclusions is proved