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Once a year, the SC conferences present a unique opportunity to create and build one of the most complex and highest performance networks in the world. At SC2000, large-scale and complex local and wide area networking connections were demonstrated, including large-scale distributed applications running on different architectures. This project was designed to use the unique opportunity presented at SC2000 to create a testbed network environment and then use that network to demonstrate and evaluate high performance computational and communication applications. This testbed was designed to incorporate many interoperable systems and services and was designed for measurement from the very beginning. The end results were key insights into how to use novel, high performance networking technologies and to accumulate measurements that will give insights into the networks of the future.

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jfineco.2005.01.003 Byline: Raghuram G. Rajan (a)(b), Julie Wulf (c) Keywords: Perquisites; Executive compensation; Private benefits Abstract: A widespread view is that executive perks exemplify agency problems -- they are a route through which managers misappropriate a firm's surplus. Accordingly, firms with high free cash flow, operating in industries with limited investment prospects, should offer more perks, and firms subject to more external monitoring should offer fewer perks. The evidence for agency as an explanation of perks is, at best, mixed. Perks are, however, offered in situations in which they enhance managerial productivity. While we cannot rule out the occasional aberration, and while we have little to say on the overall level of perks, our findings suggest that treating perks purely as managerial excess is incorrect. Author Affiliation: (a) University of Chicago, 1101 East 58th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA (b) The International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC, USA (c) Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, 2000 Steinberg Hall-Dietrich Hall, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, USA Article History: Received 8 April 2004; Accepted 14 January 2005 Article Note: (footnote) [star] We are grateful to Katie Donohue for assistance in data collection on perquisites and to Severin Borenstein for the airline data, and we would like to thank both for helpful comments. We also would like to thank Carliss Baldwin, Wayne Guay, Charlie Himmelberg, Bob Inman, Ulrike Malmendier, Felix Oberholzer-Gee, Paul Oyer, Reed Shuldiner, Adrian Tschoegl, Premal Vora, Joel Waldfogel, David Yermack, Peter Zemsky, an anonymous referee, and seminar participants at the NBER Corporate Finance Summer Institute, American Economic Association Annual Meeting, Harvard Business School Strategy Conference, Harvard Business School Seminar, University of Minnesota, Philadelphia Federal Reserve, University of Chicago, and Wharton. Wulf acknowledges research support from the Reginald H. Jones Center for Management Policy, Strategy and Organization at the Wharton School and Rajan thanks the National Science Foundation for research support.

For decades, management consultants and the popular business press have urged large firms to flatten their hierarchies. Flattening (or delayering) typically refers to the elimination of layers in a firm's hierarchy and the broadening of managers' spans of control. The alleged benefits flow primarily from pushing decisions downward to enhance market responsiveness and improve accountability and morale. Has flattening delivered on its promise? This article demonstrates that flattening management layers can have the opposite effect from their intention. In fact, flattened firms typically exhibit more control and decision making at the top. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]