The Life Cycle Effects of Corporate Takeover Defenses

We document that the relation between firm value and the use of takeover defenses is positive for young firms but becomes negative as firms age. This value reversal pattern reflects specific changes in the costs and benefits of takeover defenses as firms age and arises because defenses are sticky and rarely removed. Firms can attenuate the value reversal by removing defenses, but do so only when the defenses become very costly and adjustment costs are low. The value reversal explains previous mixed evidence about takeover defenses and implies that firm age proxies for takeover defenses’ heterogeneous impacts on firm value.

The Life Cycle Effects of Corporate Takeover Defenses

We document that the relation between firm value and the use of takeover defenses is positive for young firms but becomes negative as firms age. This value reversal pattern reflects specific changes in the costs and benefits of takeover defenses as firms age and arises because defenses are sticky and rarely removed. Firms can attenuate the value reversal by removing defenses, but do so only when the defenses become very costly and adjustment costs are low. The value reversal explains previous mixed evidence about takeover defenses and implies that firm age proxies for takeover defenses’ heterogeneous impacts on firm value.

Beyond millennials v baby boomers: Using kindness to assess generationalism across four age cohorts in Australia

Today’s young people (youth and young adults) are routinely understood in generational terms, constructed as narcissistic and selfish in comparison with their predecessors. Despite announcements of a weakening commitment to values of kindness and generosity, there is little empirical research that examines these trends. The Australian Survey of Social Attitudes shows that young people are more likely to be kind but are less likely to think most Australians are kind. This article investigates this tension using focus groups with Australians of different ages (corresponding to major generational groupings) and drawing on the sociology of generations. To differentiate between generation, period and age/life-cycle effects requires longitudinal methods. However, these qualitative data suggest that a ‘generationalist’ discourse of young people as narcissistic is powerful in Australia and that young people are both internalising and challenging this framing. They appear to be responding to common experiences of growing up with the social and economic uncertainties of an ‘until-further-notice’ world and express strong support for values of kindness and openness to difference.

Value Shift: Immigration Attitudes and the Sociocultural Divide

The sociocultural divide in Western Europe is increasingly focused on issues of national identity, namely immigration. It is commonly assumed that opponents of immigration also exhibit conservatism on other sociocultural issues. Yet recent research suggests that general social conservatism is declining in the region. Do immigration attitudes fit squarely into the sociocultural dimension? Using survey data from eleven West European countries, as well as a Dutch household panel from 2007–2019, this study finds that gender attitudes, a key sociocultural issue, are subject to change through both cohort and life cycle effects, while immigration attitudes are stable over the course of the panel and exhibit little variation across cohorts. Immigration attitudes also appear to be immune to period effects resulting from the 2015 refugee crisis. Further, those born during and after the ‘post-materialist revolution’ have weakened associations between these two attitudes, while older individuals' attitudes are strongly correlated. The combination of gender egalitarianism and anti-immigrant sentiment may become increasingly common as acceptance of the former spreads, while immigration remains a hotly contested issue.

Social Mobility in Chilean Youth and Their Parents: A Generational Analysis from the Perspective of Social Reproduction

Recent studies on Chile agree that the country’s youth enjoy greater social mobility than previous generations. This has been attributed either to their greater access to higher education or to life-cycle effects on occupation. A test of these two hypotheses by estimating the socioeconomic positions of four generations of Chileans using a model of analysis based on the social reproduction paradigm shows that younger generations of Chileans have a lower level of social inheritance than the rest of the population only during their initial years in the labor market. Therefore, the greater social mobility observed in them is temporary and is explained by life-cycle effects on occupation. Estudios recientes sobre Chile coinciden en que la actual juventud chilena goza de una mayor movilidad social que las generaciones anteriores. Esto se ha atribuido a su mayor acceso a la educación superior o a los efectos del ciclo de vida en la ocupación. Aquí se examinan estas dos hipótesis a partir de una aproximación en torno a las posiciones socioeconómicas de cuatro generaciones chilenas. Se utiliza un modelo analítico asentado en el paradigma de la reproducción social, el cual nos muestra que las generaciones más jóvenes tienen un grado de herencia social más bajo que el resto de la población tan sólo durante sus primeros años como participantes en el mercado laboral. Por lo tanto, su mayor movilidad social es temporal y se explica a partir de los efectos del ciclo de vida en la ocupación.

Impact Assessment

In municipalities and rural areas, biogas is a growing form of energy production and is also a feasible waste management option. Biogas manufacturing, in terms of environmental life cycle assessments, appears to have a remarkable opportunity to mix fertilizer recovery with energy generation utilizing different underused methods including urban biowastes or manure. Biogas production life cycle assessments suggest benefits such as CO2 reductions and chemical fertilizer replacement. Established biogas plants have specific biogas processing activities and life-cycle effects are affected by regulations, environmental conditions and biogas production objectives. This chapter describes and examines important biogas problems.