bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
EVA AND THE “NEW ECONOMY”
Authors: Milano Gregory V. 
Published: April 2005

Some have observed that the new economy means the end of the EVA performance measurement and incentive compensation system. They claim that although the EVA system is useful for oldline companies with heavy investments in fixed assets, the efficient management of investor capital is no longer an imperative for newage firms that operate largely without buildings and machinery–and, in some cases, with negative working capital.This article argues that EVA is not only suitable for the emerging companies that lead the new economy, but even more important for such firms than for their “rust belt” predecessors. While there may be a new economy in terms of trade in new products and services, there is no new economics– the principles of economic valuation remain the same. As in the past, companies will create value in the future only insofar as they promise to produce returns on investor capital that exceed the cost of capital.It has made for sensational journalism to speak of companies with high valuations and no earnings, but this is in large part the result of an accounting framework that is systematically flawed. New economy companies spend much of their capital on R&D, marketing, and advertising. By treating these outlays as expenses against current profits, GAAP accounting presents a grossly distorted picture of both current and future profitability. By contrast, an EVA system capitalizes such investments and amortizes them over their expected useful life.For new economy companies, the effect of such adjustments on profitability can be significant. For example, in applying EVA accounting to Real Networks, Inc., the author shows that although the company reported increasing losses in recent years, its EVA has been steadily rising–a pattern of profitability that corresponds much more directly to the change in the company's market value over the same period.Thus, for stock analysts that follow new economy companies, the use of EVA will get you closer to current market values than GAAP accounting. And for companies intent on ensuring the right level of investment in intangibles– neither too much nor too little– EVA is likely to send the right message to managers and employees. The recent decline in the Nasdaq suggests that stock market investors are starting to look for the kind of capital efficiency encouraged by an EVA system.
FREE CASH FLOW AND PUBLIC GOVERNANCE: THE CASE OF ALASKA
Authors: Lee Dwight R. , Verbrugge James A. 
Published: April 2005

In a widely cited 1986 article in the American Economic Review, Michael Jensen gave the concept of free cash flow (FCF) a new twist by redefining it as cash flow in excess of that required to fund all projects with positive net present values. Put another way, FCF represents funds available in the firm that managers may choose to hold as idle cash, return to shareholders, or invest in projects with returns below the firm's cost of capital. In redefining FCF in this way, Jensen converted FCF from a measure of economic income and value into a measure of corporate assets available for discretionary, and potentially value‐destroying, use by firm managers. And, as he argued in his important article, managers in mature businesses with substantial free cash flow have a tendency to destroy value by plowing too much capital back into those businesses or, often worse, making ill‐advised acquisitions in unrelated businesses.Several methods have been developed in financial markets and internal corporate governance systems to discourage managers from wasting FCF. Better monitoring by boards of directors, large ownership blocks, and properly aligned management compensation contracts are all parts of the solution. And the extraordinary increase in stock repurchases in recent years, invariably applauded by investors, is another illustration of the market's success in encouraging companies to address their free cash flow problems.But if the “FCF problem” of the private sector has attracted considerable attention from finance scholars, the problem is even more acute in the public sector, where FCF can be thought of as tax revenue in excess of what is required to finance well‐defined and generally accepted levels of public services. Unlike the private sector, in the public sector there are neither measures nor mechanisms by which to monitor and constrain wasteful spending by elected officials. In this article, the authors attempt to measure the costs to taxpayers of government FCF using the case of Alaska, which since 1969 has received a huge windfall of tax revenue from North Slope oil leases. After examining the state's public finances from 1968 through 1993, the authors offer $25 billion as a conservative estimate of the social losses from Alaska's waste of free cash flow during that 25‐year period.
STRATEGIC PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT SYSTEMS: TRANSLATING STRATEGY INTO RESULTS
Authors: Gates Stephen 
Published: April 2005

A large and growing number of companies worldwide are adopting strategic performance measurement (SPM) systems to help them execute their business strategies. SPM systems use some combination of financial, strategic, and operating measures to evaluate management's success in improving operating efficiency and adding value for shareholders. In many cases, the SPMs also provide the primary basis for rewarding top management, divisional operating managers, and, increasingly, rank‐and‐file employees. Some SPM systems are based entirely on a financial measure like economic value added (or EVA), which encourages managers to consider the opportunity cost of investor capital in making all operating and investment decisions. Other systems are based heavily on nonfinancial considerations, such as the balanced scorecard's emphasis on customer and employee satisfaction, operational excellence, and new product introduction.In this article, the author uses the findings of his recent survey of 113 North American and European companies to shed light on a number of questions: What are the most popular measures in such systems—are they primarily financial, nonfinancial, or amix of the two? To what extent is incentive compensation tied to such measures—and how far down in the organization are such measures (and incentives) extended? What are the most formidable challenges to implementing SPM systems in large corporations, with often diverse collections of businesses and tens if not hundreds of thousands of employees?Among the article's most notable conclusions, a majority of companies expect in the next three years to publish SPM targets and results in their annual reports. The most commonly cited financial SPMs will be cash flow, return on capital employed, and other variations of EVA. The most frequently cited nonfinancial SPMs are customer satisfaction, market share, and new product development. The greatest challenge in implementing SPMs is translating the vision and strategic objectives at the corporate level into performance measures that are relevant to activities at the business unit level, and securing buy‐in from business unit managers and employees.
THE VIABLE EVA CENTER (OR, HOW TO SLICE A COMPANY SO IT DOESN'T BLEED)
Authors: Hodak Marc 
Published: April 2005

How a company is sliced, or broken up into divisions of various sorts, has a huge effect on the accountability and hence the behavior of its managers. Senior management faces a tradeoff between delegating authority to subordinates who have the best information for specific decisions, and maintaining authority to avoid parochial behavior that might hurt the organization as a whole. Divisions exist within companies to provide a framework for such delegation. A divisional structure allows decision‐making authority to be pushed down along with accountability for results. Thus, how divisions are established is critical to decision‐making, motivation, and accountability.The ultimate test of a well‐formed division is a high degree of correspondence between division financial results and financial results for the company as a whole. When an increase in divisional EVA can contribute to a decline in company‐wide EVA, this is evidence of a poorly formed division, or what the author calls a “non‐viable” EVA center. This article provides a framework for defining a “viable EVA center” as well as three ways of making existing divisions more viable: (1) use of transfer pricing and intrafirm charges; (2) reorganization; and (3) aggregation of divisional results.
THE GROWTH OF INSTITUTIONAL STOCK OWNERSHIP: A PROMISE UNFULFILLED
Authors: Edwards Franklin R. , Hubbard R. Glenn 
Published: April 2005

Despite the substantial growth of institutional ownership of U.S. corporations in the past 20 years, there is little evidence that institutional investors have acquired the kind of concentrated ownership positions required to be able to play a dominant role in the corporate governance process. Institutional ownership remains widely dispersed among firms and institutions in large part because of significant legal obstacles that discourage institutional investors both from taking large block positions and from exercising large ownership positions to control corporate managers. Thus, although much of the growth of institutional ownership since 1980 has been accounted for by the growth of mutual funds and private pension funds, there continue to be strong deterrents to the accumulation and use of large ownership positions to influence corporate managers.Another potentially important factor discouraging concentrated investments are incentive schemes that effectively reward money managers for producing returns that do not vary much from the S&P 500 (or whatever sector the manager is supposed to be representing). Using a very different incentive scheme that offers managers a share of the excess returns (as well as penalties for failure to meet benchmarks), a relatively new class of “hedge funds” has emerged that provides both more concentrated ownership positions and higher risk‐adjusted rates of return.To encourage mutual funds to take a more activist corporate governance role and to behave more like hedge funds, the authors recommend that current legal restrictions on mutual funds be relaxed so that mutual funds have a greater incentive to hold large ownership positions in companies and to use those positions to more effectively monitor corporate managers. In particular, the “five and ten” portfolio rules applicable to mutual funds could be repealed and replaced with a standard of prudence and diligence more in keeping with portfolio theory; mutual funds could be given greater freedom to adopt redemption policies that would be more conducive to holding larger ownership positions; and institutional investors could be permitted to employ a variety of incentive fee structures to encourage fund managers to pursue more pro‐active investment strategies. The prospect of actively involving institutional fund managers in the corporate governance process may be our best hope for improving U.S. corporate governance.
THE RISE IN MANAGERIAL STOCK OWNERSHIP
Authors: Holderness Clifford G. , Kroszner Randall S. , Sheenan Dennis P. 
Published: April 2005

Despite the widespread view from Berle and Means onward that ownership of U.S. companies has become increasingly separated from managerial control, the authors report that managerial ownership of public corporations is markedly higher today than in 1935. Using a comprehensive sample of the 1,500 publicly traded firms in 1935 and a comparable sample of 4,200 firms in 1995, their study finds that managerial ownership increased from an average of 13% in 1935 to 21% in 1995. In terms of real (1995) dollar values, average managerial ownership increased from $18 million to $73 million over the same 60‐year period.One potential explanation for this increase is that greater reliance on managerial ownership has substituted for less reliance on other incentive alignment devices, such as pay‐for performance and the market for corporate control. The authors, however, report just the opposite. The use of such other corporate governance mechanisms has generally also increased over time, suggesting that the top managements of today's publicly traded corporations face greater pressure from investors and boards of directors than managements earlier in the century.An alternative explanation concern possible changes over time in the effects of certain company characteristics on the costs and benefits of using managerial ownership as a control device. While most of the characteristics the authors examined had the same relationship to managerial ownership in both periods, the role of volatility was different. In 1935, managerial ownership was inversely related to firm volatility; that is, higher volatility was associated with lower managerial ownership. In 1995, however, the relationship of managerial ownership to volatility was “nonlinear”; managerial ownership was positively related to firm volatility at low and moderate levels of volatility but the relationship turns negative when firm volatility is high. The overall lower level of volatility today, together with advances in capital markets and financial theory that have reduced the costs of hedging, appear to have reduced the costs of managers holding large stakes in their firms.
Putative Polyketide Synthase and Laccase Genes for Biosynthesis of Aurofusarin in
Gibberella zeae
Authors: Kim Jung-Eun , Han Kap-Hoon , Jin Jianming , Kim Hun , Kim Jin-Cheol , Yun Sung-Hwan , Lee Yin-Won 
Published: April 2005

ABSTRACT

Mycelia of
Gibberella zeae
(anamorph,
Fusarium graminearum
), an important pathogen of cereal crops, are yellow to tan with white to carmine red margins. We isolated genes encoding the following two proteins that are required for aurofusarin biosynthesis from
G. zeae
: a type I polyketide synthase (PKS) and a putative laccase. Screening of insertional mutants of
G. zeae
, which were generated by using a restriction enzyme-mediated integration procedure, resulted in the isolation of mutant S4B3076, which is a pigment mutant. In a sexual cross of the mutant with a strain with normal pigmentation, the pigment mutation was linked to the inserted vector. The vector insertion site in S4B3076 was a HindIII site 38 bp upstream from an open reading frame (ORF) on contig 1.116 in the
F. graminearum
genome database. The ORF, designated
Gip1
(for
Gibberella zeae
pigment mutation 1), encodes a putative laccase. A 30-kb region surrounding the insertion site and
Gip1
contains 10 additional ORFs, including a putative ORF identified as
PKS12
whose product exhibits about 40% amino acid identity to the products of type I fungal
PKS
genes, which are involved in pigment biosynthesis. Targeted gene deletion and complementation analyses confirmed that both
Gip1
and
PKS12
are required for aurofusarin production in
G. zeae
. This information is the first information concerning the biosynthesis of these pigments by
G. zeae
and could help in studies of their toxicity in domesticated animals.
Incorporation of Glucose under Anoxic Conditions by Bacterioplankton from Coastal North Sea Surface Waters
Authors: Alonso Cecilia , Pernthaler Jakob 
Published: April 2005

ABSTRACT

It has been hypothesized that the potential for anaerobic metabolism might be a common feature of bacteria in coastal marine waters (L. Riemann and F. Azam, Appl. Environ. Microbiol.
68:
5554-5562, 2002). Therefore, we investigated whether different phylogenetic groups of heterotrophic picoplankton from the coastal North Sea were able to take up a simple carbon source under anoxic conditions. Oxic and anoxic incubations (4 h) or enrichments (24 h) of seawater with radiolabeled glucose were performed in July and August 2003. Bacteria with incorporated substrate were identified by using a novel protocol in which we combined fluorescence in situ hybridization and microautoradiography of cells on membrane filters. Incorporation of glucose under oxic and anoxic conditions was found in α-
Proteobacteria,
γ
-Proteobacteria
, and the
Cytophaga-Flavobacterium
cluster of the
Bacteroidetes
at both times, but not in marine
Euryarchaeota
. In July, the majority of cells belonging to the α-proteobacterial
Roseobacter
clade showed tracer incorporation both in oxic incubations and in oxic and anoxic enrichments. In August, only a minority of the
Roseobacter
cells, but most bacteria affiliated with
Vibrio
spp., were able to incorporate the tracer under either condition. A preference for glucose uptake under anoxic conditions was observed for bacteria related to
Alteromonas
and the
Pseudoalteromonas-Colwellia
group. These genera are commonly considered to be strictly aerobic, but facultatively fermentative strains have been described. Our findings suggest that the ability to incorporate substrates anaerobically is widespread in pelagic marine bacteria belonging to different phylogenetic groups. Such bacteria may be abundant in fully aerated coastal marine surface waters.
Biocatalytic Production of Perillyl Alcohol from Limonene by Using a Novel
Mycobacterium
sp. Cytochrome P450 Alkane Hydroxylase Expressed in
Pseudomonas putida
Authors: van Beilen Jan B. , Holtackers René , Lüscher Daniel , Bauer Ulrich , Witholt Bernard , Duetz Wouter A. 
Published: April 2005

ABSTRACT

A number of oxygenated monoterpenes present at low concentrations in plant oils have anticarcinogenic properties. One of the most promising compounds in this respect is (−)-perillyl alcohol. Since this natural product is present only at low levels in a few plant oils, an alternative, synthetic source is desirable. Screening of 1,800 bacterial strains showed that many alkane degraders were able to specifically hydroxylate
l
-limonene in the 7 position to produce enantiopure (−)-perillyl alcohol. The oxygenase responsible for this was purified from the best-performing wild-type strain,
Mycobacterium
sp. strain HXN-1500. By using N-terminal sequence information, a 6.2-kb ApaI fragment was cloned, which encoded a cytochrome P450, a ferredoxin, and a ferredoxin reductase. The three genes were successfully coexpressed in
Pseudomonas putida
by using the broad-host-range vector pCom8, and the recombinant converted limonene to perillyl alcohol with a specific activity of 3 U/g (dry weight) of cells. The construct was subsequently used in a 2-liter bioreactor to produce perillyl alcohol on a scale of several grams.
Optimization of Cholesterol Removal by Probiotics in the Presence of Prebiotics by Using a Response Surface Method
Authors: Liong M. T. , Shah N. P. 
Published: April 2005

ABSTRACT

Lactobacillus casei
ASCC 292 was grown in the presence of six prebiotics, namely, sorbitol, mannitol, maltodextrin, high-amylose maize, fructooligosaccharide (FOS), and inulin, in order to determine the combination of probiotic and prebiotics that would remove the highest level of cholesterol. A first-order model showed that the combination of
L. casei
ASCC 292, FOS, and maltodextrin was the most efficient for the removal of cholesterol, and the optimum experimental region was developed by using the steepest ascent. This led to the middle points of probiotic (1.70% [wt/vol]), FOS (4.80% [wt/vol]), and maltodextrin (6.80% [wt/vol]) for the development of a central composite design for optimization. Perturbation plot, response surface, and coefficient estimates showed that all three factors had significant quadratic effects on cholesterol removal, with FOS showing the most conspicuous quadratic change. A second-order polynomial regression model estimated that the optimum condition of the factors for cholesterol removal by
L. casei
ASCC 292 is 1.71% (wt/vol) probiotic, 4.95% (wt/vol) FOS, and 6.62% (wt/vol) maltodextrin. Validation experiments showed that the predicted optimum conditions were more efficient than the high and low levels of the factors and the center points. A response surface method proved reliable for developing the model, optimizing factors, and analyzing interaction effects. Analyses of growth, substrate utilization, growth yield, mean doubling time, and short-chain fatty acid (SCFA) production by the use of quadratic models indicated that cholesterol removal was growth associated. The concentration of
L. casei
ASCC 292 had the most significant quadratic effect on all responses studied, except for substrate utilization and SCFA production, which were significantly (
P
< 0.05) influenced by the interactions between the probiotic and both prebiotics, indicating that they were closely associated with the uptake of prebiotics.
Web-Type Evolution of
Rhodococcus
Gene Clusters Associated with Utilization of Naphthalene
Authors: Kulakov Leonid A. , Chen Shenchang , Allen Christopher C. R. , Larkin Michael J. 
Published: April 2005

ABSTRACT

Clusters of genes which include determinants for the catalytic subunits of naphthalene dioxygenase (
narAa
and
narAb
) were analyzed in naphthalene-degrading
Rhodococcus
strains. We demonstrated (i) that in the region analyzed homologous gene clusters are separated from each other by nonhomologous DNA, (ii) that there are various degrees of homology between related genes, and (iii) that
nar
genes are located on plasmids in strains NCIMB12038 and P400 and on a chromosome in P200. These observations suggest that genetic exchange and reshuffling of genetic modules, as well as vertical descent of the genetic information, were the main routes in the evolution of naphthalene degradation in
Rhodococcus
. These conclusions were supported by studies of transcription patterns in the region analyzed. It was found that the
nar
region is not organized into a single operon but there are several transcription units which differ in the strains investigated. The
narA
and
narB
genes were found to be transcribed as a single unit in all strains analyzed, and their transcription was induced by naphthalene. The putative aldolase gene (
narC
) was found on the same transcript only in strains P200 and P400. In NCIMB12038 transcription of two more gene clusters was induced by growth on naphthalene. Transcription start sites for
narA
and
narB
were found to be different in all of the strains studied. Putative regulatory genes (
narR1
and
narR
2) were transcribed as a single mRNA in naphthalene-induced cells. At the same time, a number of the genes known to be essential for naphthalene catabolism in gram-negative bacteria were not found in the region analyzed.