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This paper explores how an agent's incentives map into her performance. We let the agent choose how much effort to invest and which project to implement. We show that the relationship between an agent's incentives to perform and her expected performance could be negative and we characterize alternative conditions for a negative relationship. This also holds true when the principal instead of the agent makes the project choice. We thereby show that the you-get-what-you-pay-for principle is not robust and offer a non-behavioral explanation for the failure of incentives. The results have implications for regulation and ownership structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To maximize aggregate effort, a principal allocates agents to a given graph of roles where each agent's reward is exogenously fixed and increases in the aggregate effort of their immediate neighbourhood. Effort is costly for individual agents, thus forming a local public goods game. Agents can be selfish or stubborn (following Kantian imperatives that maximize agent welfare). For regular graphs, we provide conditions under which Kantians are located in clusters or are far apart. When Kantian and isolated-selfish efforts are close, the principal's optimal allocation also maximizes agent welfare. We discuss difficulties surrounding the notion of Kantian imperatives on non-regular graphs and solve the principal's problem on graphs where roles are entirely based on degree. Our results show that, compared to standard public goods games over complete networks, organizations with Kantian agents suffer from both over- and under-provision of public goods when the underlying graph becomes relevant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Engineering Management / Gongcheng Guanli Xuebao is the property of Journal of Engineering Management Editorial Office and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

What can organizations do to minimize wasteful year‐end spending? I introduce a two‐period model to derive optimal budget roll‐over and audit rules. A principal tasks an agent with using a budget to fulfill the organization's spending needs, which are private information of the agent. The agent can misuse funds for private benefit. The optimal rules allow the agent to roll‐over a share of the unused funds, but not necessarily the full share, and in most cases to audit only sufficiently large spending. The optimal audit rule can change once fund roll‐over is allowed. Strategically underfunding the agent can be optimal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dead Inside by Laura D'Angelo illustrates the outstanding clinical treatment of a highly traumatized young woman who, thru D'Angelo's devoted work. is transformed from a debilitating self disorder reflected in depression and impoverished self regard , into a self confident woman who can both more accurately value her own competence and capacity to create. The change in the patient's confidence in her own being took many years, and went through many permutations. The principal agent of change was to me clearly the relationship Laura established with her, taking her very seriously as a person of worth whose lack of pleasure and appreciation for herself and her talents was a manifestation of the treatment she received from her mother who had looked to the patient for any capacity to see herself as worthy and deserving of respect. The patient became her mother's only vehicle for pride in herself, so the discipline she imposed and the impossible standards for the patient's behavior and achievement were impossible to reach. Laura understood her well and worked hard to create the relationsihip that proved invaluable to her patient's well being and emerging self pride. Laura's use of self psychology along with her offering the patient a fully present, fully alive other. Laura's use of her own self in her work was invaluable to the cure she achieved with her patient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout the past decades, the EU's agency landscape has continuously expanded in size and scope. In this article, we address the lack of longitudinal data on EU agencies' formal independence. We introduce a newly revised index to measure the formal independence of EU agencies from other EU institutions over time. Applying a rules‐as‐data approach we coded 206 regulations and amendments to develop a new dataset covering the formal independence of all 39 EU agencies from 1975 to 2022. This longitudinal overview provides first insights about the development of formal independence at the case and population levels. At the case level we identify frequent, albeit gradual reforms of EU agencies' independence. At the population level, we observe remarkable stability in overall independence, but find stark variation across different independence dimensions. Overall, EU‐level principals have shifted over time from controlling individual decisions to controlling the agencies' general decision‐making apparatus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: Understanding how covert networks are formed is key to disrupting the operation of illicit activities. Applying standard network measures to a covert network, while useful, is limited in identifying the peculiar properties of the network in question. It is important that we compare the covert network against a benchmark, be it random networks or, more ideally, the counterpart (overt) network in the same context. We report a study in collaboration with law enforcement agency to examine the co-voyage network of criminals and non-criminals. A comparison of the two groups of actors in their network positions allows us to test whether criminals tend to blend in or hide out from the population of non-criminals. Methods: Drawing on data on maritime activities in Taiwan recorded from years 2016 to 2018, we map a maritime co-voyage network of 53,009 nodes and 2,592,288 weighted links. We follow a bootstrap resampling procedure to estimate the structural features of the co-voyage networks of criminals and non-criminals. Results: Criminals are more likely to co-voyage with their own type than non-criminals. Similarly, criminals are more clustered in the co-voyage network than non-criminals. Conclusions: It is more supported that criminals segregate from than blend in non-criminals in the co-voyage network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rationale: Nicotine is a principal psychoactive agent in tobacco, contributing to tobacco's addictive potential. Preclinical studies on the effects of voluntary nicotine intake typically use self-administration procedures that provide continuous nicotine access during each self-administration session. However, many smokers consume cigarettes intermittently rather than continuously throughout each day. For drugs including cocaine and opioids, research in laboratory rats shows that intermittent intake can be more effective than continuous intake in producing patterns of drug use relevant to addiction. Objective: We determined how intermittent versus continuous nicotine self-administration influences nicotine seeking and taking behaviours. Methods: Female and male rats had continuous (i.e., Long Access; LgA, 6 h/day) or intermittent (IntA; 12 min ON, 60 min OFF, for 6 h/day) access to intravenous nicotine (15 µg/kg/infusion), for 12 daily sessions. We then assessed intake, responding for nicotine under a progressive ratio schedule of drug reinforcement and cue- and nicotine-induced reinstatement of drug seeking. We also estimated nicotine pharmacokinetic parameters during LgA and IntA self-administration. Results: Overall, LgA rats took twice more nicotine than did IntA rats, yielding more sustained increases in estimated brain concentrations of the drug. However, the two groups showed similar motivation to seek and take nicotine, as measured using reinstatement and progressive ratio procedures, respectively. Conclusions: Intermittent nicotine use is just as effective as continuous use in producing addiction-relevant behaviours, despite significantly less nicotine exposure. This has implications for modeling nicotine self-administration patterns in human smokers and resulting effects on brain and behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Anbar University for Law & Political Sciences is the property of Republic of Iraq Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific Research (MOHESR) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The Consumer Dispute Resolution Agency (BPSK) was established as a solution to avoid resolving consumer disputes through general courts. Proceeding in the general court takes a long time and costs a lot of money, whereas resolving consumer disputes requires fast and cheap procedural law. Consumer Dispute Resolution Agency Provisions in Law Number 8 of 1999 concerning consumer protection which strictly regulates consumer rights that consumers have the right to correct, clear and honest information regarding the actual condition and guarantee of goods/services, of course the Consumer Protection Law accommodating legal certainty for consumers to obtain the rights to everything they want or buy, so that legal certainty for consumers if they do not get clear and correct information from developers or business actors for consumers who buy a house or place to live can be guaranteed if their rights their rights are not fulfilled. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Business activities often involve a common agent managing a variety of projects on behalf of investors with potentially conflicting interests. The extent of the agent's actions is also often unknown to investors, who have to design contracts that provide incentives to the manager despite this lack of crucial knowledge. We consider a game between several principals and a common agent, where principals know only a subset of the actions available to the agent. Principals demand robustness and evaluate contracts on a worst‐case basis. This robust approach allows for a crisp characterization of the equilibrium contracts and payoffs and provides a novel proof of equilibrium existence in common agency by constructing a pseudo‐potential for the game. Robust contracts make explicit how the efficiency of the equilibrium outcome relative to collusion among principals depends on the principals' ability to extract payments from the agent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a class of reinsurance contracting problems is examined under a continuous-time principal–agent framework with mean-variance criteria, where a reinsurer and an insurer are assigned the roles of the principal and the agent, respectively. Both parties can manage their insurance risk by investing in a financial portfolio comprising a risk-free asset and a risky asset. It has been assumed that both the insurer and the reinsurer are concerned about model uncertainty and that they aim to find a robust reinsurance contract and robust investment strategies by maximizing their respective mean-variance cost functionals taking sets of probability scenarios into account. To articulate the time-inconsistency issue attributed to the mean-variance optimization criteria, the optimization procedure of each decision-maker has been formulated as a non-cooperative game and discussed by using an extended HJB equation, which is consistent with the extant work on time-consistent control. Moreover, explicit expressions for the robust reinsurance contract, the robust investment strategies and the value functions of the insurer and reinsurer have been obtained and presented. The numerical results and their economic interpretations are then discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Staphylococcus aureus, the principal causative agent of osteomyelitis, can be internalized by osteoblasts and thereby escape from immune phagocytes and many kinds of antibiotics. To deliver antibiotics into osteoblasts to kill S. aureus in the intracellular environment, we developed gentamicin-loaded chitosan nanoparticles and evaluated their intracellular bactericidal effect. We found decreased numbers of S. aureus cells in infected osteoblasts treated with gentamicin-loaded chitosan nanoparticles. The cytotoxicity of the nanoparticles was evaluated by CCK-8 assay. There was no significant viability decrease at all tested concentrations. In conclusion, our results provide evidence for the potential use of gentamicin-loaded chitosan nanoparticles to enhance the delivery of gentamicin into cells and for their antibacterial effect against internalized S. aureus in the intracellular environment of osteoblasts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider a dynamic principal‐agent problem, where the sole instrument the principal has to incentivize the agent is the disclosure of information. The principal aims at maximizing the (discounted) number of times the agent chooses the principal's preferred action. We show that there exists an optimal policy, where the principal recommends its most preferred action and discloses information as a reward in the next period, until either this action becomes statically optimal for the agent or the agent perfectly learns the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A principal incentivizes an agent to maintain compliance and to truthfully announce any breaches of compliance. Compliance is imperfectly controlled by the agent's private effort choices, is partially persistent, and is verifiable by the principal only through costly inspections. We show that in principal‐optimal equilibria, the principal enforces maximum compliance using deterministic inspections. Periodic inspection cycles are suspended during periods of self‐reported noncompliance, during which the agent is fined. We show how commitment to random inspections would benefit the principal, and discuss possible ways for the principal to overcome her commitment problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Restorative justice in cases of gender-based violence against women: perspectives on shame, symbolic interactionism and agency This article addresses the debated issue of the appropriateness of restorative justice programmes in cases of gender-based violence against women perpetrated by men. After brief references to the literature on the topic, a few points for reflection will be offered combining different perspectives. Some concern the role of shame, from the victim blaming phenomenon – which often affects women victims of gender-based violence – to the so-called 'reintegrative shaming' of the offender theorised by Braithwaite. Others are drawn from symbolic interactionism, applied to restorative processes involving these types of crime. Finally, the importance of agency – a key point in restorative practices – is emphasised as it fosters the self-esteem of the victim and the rehabilitation of the perpetrator. These perspectives support the conclusion that there are no valid reasons to exclude restorative justice in cases of gender-based violence against women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, policymakers and scholars argued that state education agencies (SEAs) should move away from simply acting as compliance monitors and take on more prominent roles as providers of technical support to schools and school districts. Scholars find that SEAs have struggled to do so, yet there is little empirical work to explain what SEAs do or why they struggle. This study looks at Michigan's Partnership model for School and District turnaround, which began in 2018 and includes the Michigan Department of Education (MDE) as a formal partner in building the capacity of school districts to craft and meet ambitious student learning targets. Analyzing interviews with MDE "liaisons" and turnaround leaders, I find that Partnership leaders reported a deeper sense of trust with the SEA compared to prior years because liaisons were more focused on support and understanding individual school/district contexts. However, supports were generally "passive" (e.g., sending standardized emails with resources/links; helping navigate compliance issues) rather than targeted technical assistance that helped Partnership leaders build capacity. I argue that this was in part due to the SEA's conflicting role as both accountability monitor and technical assistance provider. I show how SEAs navigated this dynamic and provide suggestions for how SEAs can balance district autonomy with support through trust building, ideas of "controlled autonomy," and "flexible specificity," which recommends highly specific technical guidance paired with ongoing processes of feedback and experimentation from implementers so that guidance matches context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article outlines the issues that will determine the future of the major questions doctrine (MQD), one of the most controversial doctrines in the administrative law canon. Topics discussed include the best attribute of MQD, MQD's triggers and ontologies, and the pending domain issues including guidance documents, enforcement actions, and agency adjudications.

A variety of empirical papers document the coexistence of exclusive and nonexclusive contracts within a given market across a multitude of industries. However, the theoretical literature has not been able to generate a differentiable model with the coexistence of these contracts. I rectify the gap in the literature by developing a theoretical model of two-sided matching, in which principals and agents choose between exclusive and nonexclusive contracts with cost-of-effort inefficiencies. I find that the coexistence of contracts relies on cost-sharing between principals, relative bargaining power, and an endogenous outside option. I also find that the pattern of contracts is monotonic with respect to the type distributions of principals and agents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global problems, such as pandemics and climate change, require rapid international coordination and diffusion of policy. These phenomena are rare however, with one notable example being the international policy response to the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020. Here we build an agent-based model of this rapid policy diffusion, where countries constitute the agents and with the principal mechanism for diffusion being peer mimicry. Since it is challenging to predict accurately the policy diffusion curve, we utilize data assimilation, that is an “on-line” feed of data to constrain the model against observations. The specific data assimilation algorithm we apply is a particle filter because of its convenient implementation, its ability to handle categorical variables and because the model is not overly computationally expensive, hence a more efficient algorithm is not required. We find that the model alone is able to predict the policy diffusion relatively well with an ensemble of at least 100 simulation runs. The particle filter however improves the fit to the data, reliably so from 500 runs upwards, and increasing filtering frequency results in improved prediction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Oral biofilms are considered the principal etiological agent in the development of periodontitis. Novel species that may contribute to periodontitis and dysbiosis have been identified recently. The study aims to evaluate the presence of F. alocis and D. pneumosintes in healthy and diseased patients and their association with clinical parameters and with red complex bacteria. The study included 60 subjects, with 30 patients each in the healthy and periodontitis groups. The clinical parameters were noted, and samples were subjected to DNA extraction followed by a polymerase chain reaction. Statistical analysis was performed using the Graph Pad Prism software. Results: F. alocis and D. pneumosintes were detected at a significantly higher percentage in the periodontitis group compared to the healthy group (p < 0.05). D. pneumosintes was significantly associated with T. forsythia in the periodontitis group (p < 0.05). Both of these organisms were present in sites with higher clinical attachment loss (p < 0.05). This study demonstrated that both F. alocis and D. pneumosintes were detected at a significantly higher percentage in periodontitis subjects and were detected more frequently in sites with a greater clinical attachment loss. It was also evident that both F. alocis and D. pneumosintes can be present independently of other putative periodontal pathogens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Law enforcement officers (LEOs) must maintain a certain level of physical fitness to perform occupational tasks successfully. Because of the wide variation among operators, there does not appear to be a standard fitness test battery that is appropriate to assess occupational fitness for different groups of law enforcement officers. Therefore, multi-faceted fitness assessments are important to evaluate tactical personnel's various essential fitness components, which are often unique to each environment. Fitness standards and training protocols must be developed for each law enforcement agency and customised to the specific audience. This article aims to systematically review the relevant literature to identify biomotor abilities associated with occupational physical ability. This study examined the results of 17 international studies to ultimately synthesise information that (i) aids in the selection of the most used biomotor abilities and occupational physical abilities for LEOs and (ii) serves as a starting point for the development of occupational physical abilities assessment protocols. In conclusion, this study underscores the complex and diverse physical demands on LEOs, advocating for tailored fitness programs and policy reforms to enhance their operational readiness and long-term health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of our research is to improve our understanding of the problematic relationship that exists between law enforcement agencies (LEAs) and African-American/Black communities in the United States of America. We focus on LEA support of anti-Black racism and seek to integrate research on the Trump effect into the guardian-officer vs. warrior-cop literature. On the basis that former U.S. President Donald J. Trump represented an anti-Black leader who (1) prioritized authoritarianism and (2) disregarded ethical norms, we rely on social cognitive theory to examine and clarify the relationship between LEA support for Trump (i.e., a proxy for anti-Black racism) and LEA policing style. In a sample of 376 self-identified Black adults, we find that as perceived LEA support for Trump increases, Black people are more likely to rate LEAs higher on LEA authoritarian policing style (aligns with the warrior-cop philosophy) and lower on LEA ethical policing style (aligns with the guardian-officer philosophy). We also position sex as a moderator and discuss when differences exist between Black men and Black women. Implications for theory and practice are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whose preferences influence the design of international institutions? Scholarship on the legalization of international politics and creation of international legal institutions largely adopts a state-centric perspective. Existing accounts, however, fail to recognize how states often delegate authority over institutional design tasks to independent legal experts whose preferences may diverge from those of states. We develop a principal–agent (PA) framework for theorizing relations between states (collective principals) and legal actors (agents) in the design process, and for explaining how legal actors influence the design of international institutions. The legal dimensions of the PA relationship increase the likelihood of preference divergence between the collective principal and the agent, but also create conditions that enable the agent to opportunistically advance its own design preferences. We argue that the more information on states' preferences the agent has, the more effectively it can exploit its legal expertise to strategically select and justify design choices that maximize its own preferences and the likelihood of states' acceptance. Our analysis of two cases of delegated institutional design concerning international criminal law at the United Nations and the African Union supports our theoretical expectations. Extensive archival and interview data elucidate how agents' variable information on states' preferences affects their ability to effectively advance their design preferences. Our theory reveals how independent legal experts with delegated authority over design tasks influence institutional design processes and outcomes, which has practical and normative implications for the legalization of international politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Charter school authorizers shape which charter schools open, where they open, and who they serve. We draw on principal agent theory to investigate how the priorities and practices of nine authorizers intersected with charter school applications' attention to the needs of historically marginalized students. Using data from interviews and applications, we find authorizers vary in orientations toward equity and the ways in which they signal that orientation to charter applicants. Our analysis suggests a robust relationship between authorizer mission and the content found in charter applications, demonstrating the influence of authorizing practices on the contents of charter school applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a moral hazard framework, an agent considers undertaking a task of uncertain difficulty. An immediate disclosure of the task's difficulty by the principal convinces the agent to perform only easy tasks. By contrast, information design theory predicts that delayed disclosure can induce the agent to continue working even when the work turns out to be challenging. Our experimental evidence confirms that delayed disclosure outperforms immediate disclosure and no disclosure, as theory predicts, but only if immediate disclosure is not available. However, when the principal is faced with the choice between the two policies and chooses delayed disclosure over immediate disclosure, the superiority of delayed disclosure disappears due to the agent's intention-based reciprocity towards the principal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mannheimia haemolytica is the principal agent contributing to bovine respiratory disease and can form biofilms with increased resistance to antibiotic treatment and host immune defenses. To investigate the molecular mechanisms underlying M. haemolytica biofilm formation, transcriptomic analyses were performed with mRNAs sequenced from planktonic and biofilm cultures of pathogenic serotypes 1 (St 1; strain D153) and St 6 (strain D174), and St 2 (strain D35). The three M. haemolytica serotypes were cultured in two different media, Roswell Park Memorial Institute (RPMI) 1640 and brain heart infusion (BHI) to form the biofilms. Transcriptomic analyses revealed that the functions of the differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in biofilm associated cells were not significantly affected by the two media. A total of 476 to 662 DEGs were identified between biofilm associated cells and planktonic cells cultured under BHI medium. Functional analysis of the DEGs indicated that those genes were significantly enriched in translation and many biosynthetic processes. There were 234 DEGs identified in St 1 and 6, but not in St 2. The functions of the DEGs included structural constituents of ribosomes, transmembrane proton transportation, proton channels, and proton-transporting ATP synthase. Potentially, some of the DEGs identified in this study provide insight into the design of new M. haemolytica vaccine candidates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Amazon vans and Uber drivers frequently crash into other cars. Despite the many injuries and deaths that result from these accidents, Amazon and Uber deny responsibility for such claims because they categorize their drivers as "independent contractors." But this contractor defense distorts the basic rules of agency law. Over a century ago, courts crafted agency standards that forced businesses to pay for the harms that their workers caused. Since that time, American firms have attempted to skirt this rule by labeling their workers as "contractors" rather than as "employees." Aware of this age-old tactic to avoid liability, courts historically built sufficient flexibility into agency standards to hold companies responsible for injuries to others, even when ostensible "contractors" committed those torts. In the years to come, a growing number of drivers for Amazon, Uber, and other on-demand firms will hit the road, make mistakes, and harm members of the public. Applying agency standards to this emerging problem, this Article develops a legal framework for determining when to hold on-demand firms accountable for the accidents that their contractors cause. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes how MNCs' intermediate units—those that exercise authority over other subsidiaries—apply specific control mechanisms: centralization, formalization, outcome control, and socialization. We combine agency and network theory to explain how intermediate units' dual agency role—as both principal and agent— and their network embeddedness form the choice of control mechanisms. More specifically, we propose hypotheses on how the intermediate units' internal and external relationships determine their choice of control mechanism. We study this issue in the context of Spanish intermediate units —owned by European MNCs— that exercise authority over subsidiaries in Latin America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Global Britain' is as much a governing instinct as it is a statement of current policy: an idea that animates the United Kingdom's international relations. And for nine decades the BBC World Service, Britain's principal agent of public diplomacy, has been its exemplar. With a reputation as a trusted source of reliable news in over forty languages, the international BBC sustains a global capacity for intercultural dialogue founded on evidence‐based journalism. At a time when digital media are rewriting the strategic communications playbook and reorganising our knowledge practices and behaviours, the BBC maintains a vital link between Britain and a transnational community of close to half a billion users. Yet, despite these evident strengths, recent confusion over the organisation and funding of the World Service means that its long‐term future is in doubt. This article asks how and why it has come to this and what might be done to preserve the journalistic integrity and 'soft power' of the BBC World Service. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As law enforcement organizations report challenges surrounding recruitment, evidence-based practices are critical and cost-effective measures which fundamentally support and advance the policing profession. To combat a hiring crisis and remain competitive among endless options of agency vacancies, employers must recognize internal data resources at hand along with the advantages of researcher-practitioner partnerships. The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine the effectiveness of a single mid-size southeastern municipal law enforcement agency's recruitment program to identify unique indicators present within career decisions from the incoming officer workforce. Primary findings identified the recruitment process to play an integral role in the ultimate application and agency selection decision for participants, regardless of participant background. Further, participant interviews identified elements such as Responsiveness, Communication, Personal, and Timeliness critical to perceived success of the recruitment program. Regarding police staffing, this study introduces a self-sustaining model for agency-specific key motivating factors in recruit agency selection, to include application of strong recruitment practices and benchmark identification for sustained program effectiveness. Implications include the impact of customer-service approaches to police staffing and evidence-based strategies for agency-specific strengths during a nation-wide staffing crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study binary action network games with strategic complementarities. An agent acts if the aggregate social influence of her friends exceeds a transfer levied on the agent by a principal. The principal seeks to maximize her revenue while inducing everyone to act in a unique equilibrium. We characterize optimal transfers showing that agents who are more popular than their friends receive preferential treatment. Our main result is that under mild conditions complete core‐periphery networks deliver the highest revenue to the principal. Furthermore, we show that the revenue is higher in networks where links are allocated unequally across agents. Hence, the principal benefits from creating "influentials" by linking well‐connected hubs to less popular periphery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the delegation problem between a principal and an agent, who not only has better information about the performance of the available actions but also superior awareness of the set of actions that are actually feasible. We provide conditions under which the agent finds it optimal to leave the principal unaware of relevant options. By doing so, the agent increases the principal's cost of distorting the agent's choices and increases the principal's willingness to grant him higher information rents. We further show that the principal may use the option of renegotiation as a tool to implement actions that are not describable to her at the contracting stage. If the agent renegotiates, his proposal signals information about the payoff state. Due to her limited awareness, the principal makes a coarse inference from the agent's recommendations and, as a result, accepts a large number of the agent's proposals, which ultimately benefits both. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trust is the most important prerequisite for the emergence and effectiveness of interorganisational innovation cooperation, due to uncertainty and contract incompleteness. Nevertheless, little attention has been paid to the question of whether the trust of principals in a cooperation depends on different preconditions than that of agents. Based on a sample of 364 scientists from 100 German publicly funded interdisciplinary cooperations in medical research, we find that the trust of principals mainly depends on their partners' reputation of ability, whereas the trust of agents on their partners' reputation of benevolence. Surprisingly, culture- and personality-related factors prove to be ineffective. These results are of major relevance for the trust generation in innovation cooperation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are three distinctive authorities stipulated in all constitutions: the legislative authority, the executive authority, and the judicial authority. Each authority performs its role as stipulated in the Constitution. The executive authority is considered the actual authority in the parliamentary system, i.e. all executive powers are exercised under the leadership of the Prime Minister, consequently; there is an actual minister for each ministerial portfolio. In all systems, the position of the minister is considered the cornerstone in managing the affairs of the ministry, especially in drawing up its general policy. Indeed, the minister represents his ministry before all authorities in the state, not to mention his primary representation before the Parliament since it is the entity that grants him confidence after taking the constitutional oath. While taking office, the minister holds responsibility for all his actions and deeds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores cooperation in the circular agency problem. In circular agency, an agent has weak power in the face of its principal. This research explores a cooperation mechanism in which three participants simultaneously have the identity of principal and agent, in order to illuminate the power struggle between the board of directors, the external shareholder, and the manager of a company. We use the equilibrium results to explain the phenomenon of cooperation between members of the enterprise in practice. Our results have implications for firm governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent scholarship has emphasized professionalization within anthropology specific to forensic anthropology. In these debates, issues of certification, expertise, training, compensation, and job placement have been underscored. As research expands in biological, archaeological, and cultural issues pertinent to forensic anthropological work, the abilities and potential areas of specialization continue to rapidly expand. Yet, in the United States, many medical examiner's offices contract forensic anthropologists or individuals trained in a related field on a part-time basis. Here, this paper draws on existing literature and professional experience to put forth an alternative area of employment specifically for anthropologists - the law enforcement anthropologist. This paper argues for the use of full-time, civilian forensic anthropologists in law enforcement agencies that can collaborate with anthropologists associated with the medical examiner's office. It can be seen that law enforcement agency anthropologist can use anthropological training to increase success in search and recovery operations, securing fragile crime scenes (e.g., fatal fires), processing remains, consider biocultural issues, and assist in the identification process. Having an anthropologist situated within law enforcement not only provides another avenue of professional employment, but streamlines communication between law enforcement and the medical examiner's office, sensitizes law enforcement to the vital contributions of forensic anthropologists, and enhances the identification process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the synergistic or mutually exclusive relationship between corporate profits and innovation tasks, such that shareholders can predict these two scenarios, this study constructed a multitask principal-agent mode considering "the degree of synergy or mutual exclusion between profit and innovation," "salary reduction penalty," and other factors. Based on mathematical logic, we determined the correlation and influence of synergistic or mutually exclusive degrees on executive profitability compensation and salary reduction penalties. Based on the 2016–2022 annual reports of A-share listed companies registered in Shanghai and Shenzhen, China, this research empirically verifies the effects of the aforementioned degree of synergy and mutual exclusion on managers' compensation incentives. The research conclusions are stated as follows: (1) If shareholders can predict the synergy between profitability and innovation activities, then the salary reduction penalty (representing executive compensation stickiness) exhibits a significant negative correlation with the degree of synergy μ, whereas if the coefficient of executive profitability compensation β i (compensation sensitivity) bears a moderately positive relationship with μ, the shareholders will, to a certain extent, improve the performance-sharing coefficient of senior executives and reduce the penalty coefficient of salary reduction to increase the overall income level of senior executives via the incentive effect. (2) If shareholders can predict the mutually exclusive effect of profitability and innovation activities, the salary reduction penalty (representing executive compensation stickiness) is significantly positively correlated with the degree of mutual exclusion μ, whereas the coefficient of executive profitability compensation β i (compensation sensitivity) negatively affects the degree of synergy μ to a certain extent; however, this negative relationship is not prominent. This indicates that to avert the short-sighted behaviour of executives, shareholders will drive them toward investing in innovation by reducing the profitability compensation coefficient as well as increasing the innovative compensation coefficient. Simultaneously, the shareholders will increase the penalty coefficient of salary reduction to urge the executives to strengthen the operation and management of other profitable activities of the enterprise to maintain short-term performance at a reasonable level. (3) If shareholders cannot predict the synergy between profitability and innovation activities, they will attribute the source of excess earnings to the efforts of the senior executives. In particular, a greater degree of synergy is more likely to reduce the penalty for the senior executives. If the shareholders cannot predict the mutually exclusive effect of profitability and innovation tasks, the correlation between the penalty coefficient of salary reduction and the degree of mutual exclusion is related to the decline in performance. In such a scenario, the shareholders attribute the short-term deterioration in corporate performance to the negligence of the senior executives in corporate operations. Consequently, they urge senior executives to seriously operate the enterprise by increasing the penalty for senior executives. If the decline in performance exceeds the critical value, the shareholders will effectively motivate the senior executives by reducing the penalty coefficient of their salary reduction and moderately increasing their profit-making compensation sharing coefficient to avoid negative investment or their resignation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Early Pleistocene mammal communities of Europe are characterised by a great diversity of large carnivorans. Among them, the largest ever hyaenid, Pachycrocuta brevirostris, a fierce predator with great bone-cracking adaptations that has left its taphonomic signature on several fossiliferous sites. Here, we perform a rigorous taphonomic analysis focusing on bone surface modifications and damage patterns on large-sized ungulate bones from the site Tsiotra Vryssi (1.78 to ~1.5 Ma; Mygdonia Basin, Greece), aiming to identify the main biotic agent responsible for the modifications. Results reveal significant carnivore ravaging of the assemblage, and selective consumption of bones/bone portions related to nutrient value. Comparisons with modifications on similar-sized ungulate carcasses produced by extant and extinct predators, and similarities with Pachycrocuta-modified assemblages, indicate that Pachycrocuta was the principal agent of modification. Overall, this study not only provides taphonomic evidence for the interpretation of Tsiotra Vryssi, but also offers insights into the palaeobiology, and particularly carcass consumption behaviour of the giant hyaena. Hence, it advances our knowledge on carnivoran guild dynamics and prey– predator relationships during this epoch and has important implications for the investigations of the subsistence behaviour of the meat-eating hominins, who entered Eurasia at ~1.8 Ma, roughly synchronously with Pachycrocuta. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A number of recent authors have argued for the problem of 'democratic dirty hands'. At least within a democracy, public officers can be rightly said to act in the name of the public; and thus, as agents to principals, the dirty hands of public officers are, ultimately attributable to that public. Even more troubling, so the argument goes, since dirty hands are necessary for public officers in any stable political order, then such democratic dirty hands are necessary for any stable democracy. Our dirt is the unavoidable cost of democratic survival. In this paper, I offer an argument against this disconcerting conclusion. My central claim is that proponents of 'democratic dirty hands' have missed the import of another feature of contemporary governance: public institutions. Public institutions, as organisational agents, intermediate the relationship between public officer and public; and in so doing, the dirt necessary for stability may be 'laundered': the public may still gain the benefit of a public officer's hands, but remain clean of the dirt. I illustrate this case by an extended discussion of the case of La Comisión Internacional contra la Impunidad en Guatemala ('CICIG'). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Employees often report being overloaded with routine tasks, which distracts them from more demanding and rewarding work. We analyze this in a multitasking model involving a verifiable routine task and a skill-dependent task characterized by moral hazard. Multitasking is costly so that high- and low-skilled employees specialize, and only employees with intermediate productivity handle both tasks. In the Nash bargaining solution of contract negotiations, work overload in the routine task is used to lower the informational rent from the non-verifiable task. Compared to the first-best solution, more employees perform both tasks and effort in the routine task is inefficiently large. Moreover, the payment structure is such that the employee would prefer to allocate more effort to the demanding task, which we interpret as a loss of control over work autonomy. Reducing employees' bargaining power exacerbates the problem, while the effects of improved monitoring are mixed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the role of law in global governance, specifically in the fields of algorithmic governance and finance. It argues that traditional legal categories and techniques have been overshadowed by the development of financialization and automated technologies, allowing private actors to shape new forms of social ordering. The authors emphasize the interplay between legal and technocratic aspects, as well as the global and local dimensions, in the creation of a "law beyond the state." The article also examines the challenges posed by advancements in finance and technology, and the need for legal scholars to adapt their research methods to study new legal objects. It highlights the impact of legal techniques in legitimizing normative solutions and addressing tensions arising from economic and technological developments. The authors discuss the use of analogy as a legal technique in algorithmic governance, revealing how it can erode the foundations of discrimination law and perpetuate social hierarchies. They also examine the role of legal techniques in the field of platform economy, particularly in relation to decentralized finance (DeFi), and question its ability to address socio-economic inequality. The article further explores the interaction between global and local regulatory levels in the law of financial services, emphasizing the political dimension of transnational financial law. It examines the global circulation of the legal technique of securitization and its role in transnational financial transactions. The authors argue that legal techniques and expert knowledge play a crucial role in shaping financial law and facilitating global financial transactions. They also discuss the impact of soft law, such as guidelines and [Extracted from the article]

Inspired by the work of Annelise Riles, this article invites legal scholars to 'take on the legal technicalities' of globalisation. Law and lawyers have a core role in the conception, the construction and the functioning of global regulatory settings. However, the study of legal technicalities has been overlooked, both by the theoretically-minded literature on law beyond the state and by those studying the actual workings of global governance. We argue that legal technique is too interesting to be reduced to a consequence of wider globalising trends or to a simple instrument of technocratic governance. The study of law as technique can offer insights into how law constitutes social, political or economic phenomena. This kind of self-consciousness and self-reflection is crucial in legal scholarship especially today, as it is a necessary step for opening the way to transformative politics in the field of global governance and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]