Nam Nguyen

We use variation in corruption convictions across judicial districts in the US to examine the relationship between political corruption and risk-taking of public firms. Firms headquartered in regions with high levels of political corruption have lower total risk and lower idiosyncratic risk on average. Further analysis shows that corruption tends to encourage firms to pursue risk-decreasing investments, lower the riskiness of their operations, and decrease asset liquidity. While managerial ownership is intended to align the interests of managers and shareholders, the presence of corruption appears to encourage undiversified managers to decrease risk-taking. Our evidence is consistent with agency theory and the asset-shielding argument that political corruption discourages managers from taking risks that expose firms to expropriation by politicians, resulting in suboptimal corporate policies.

Copyright © 2015 Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. All rights reserved.Objective: The primary aim of this trial was to assess the feasibility of minimally invasive esophagectomy in a multi-institutional setting. Background: Esophagectomy is an important, potentially curative treatment for localized esophageal cancer, but is a complex operation. MIEmay decrease the morbidity and mortality of resection and single-institution studies have demonstrated successful outcomes with MIE. Methods: We conducted a multicenter, phase II, prospective, cooperative group study to evaluate the feasibility of MIE. Patients with biopsy-proven high-grade dysplasia or esophageal cancer were enrolled at 17 credentialed sites. Protocol surgery consisted of either 3-stage MIE or Ivor Lewis MIE. The primary end point was 30-day mortality. Secondary end points included adverse events, duration of hospital-stay, and 3-year outcomes. Results: Protocol surgery was completed in 95 of the 104 patients eligible for the primary analysis. The 30-day mortality in eligible patients who underwentMIE was 2.1%; perioperative mortality in all registered patients eligible for primary analysis was 2.9%. Median intensive care unit and hospital stay were 2 and 9 days, respectively. Grade 3 or higher adverse events included anastomotic leak, acute respiratory distress syndrome, pneumonitis, and atrial fibrillation. At a median follow-up of 35.8 months, the estimated 3-year overall survival was 58.4%. Locoregional recurrence occurred in only 7 patients. Conclusions: This prospective multicenter study demonstrated that MIE is feasible and safe with low perioperative morbidity and mortality and good oncological results. This approach can be adopted by other centers with appropriate expertise in open esophagectomy and minimally invasive surgery.

Whether the self is situated in the semiotic community or in the encompassing realm of Existenz , an anthropocentric obsession with the self as the arbiter of knowledge has been continuously privileged. And whether located by modernism or dislocated by postmodernism, the anthropocentric self is still plagued with its own "crisis of subjectivity" . As a foundling within nature, the self is ontologically fissured. Ecstatic naturalism succinctly states: "At the heart of the self is a cleft, a wound that emerges with the first dawn of consciousness and remains with the self until its death." The self is but one frail perspective of and in nature. One way in which the so-called nature's "primal self" can be semiotically and metaphysically explored and examined is through the perspective of ecstatic naturalism, which probes into the ontological divide or difference between nature naturing and nature natured. Because both Peirce and Jaspers affirmed the anthropocentric principle, they ignored the self's metaphysical relations to the ontological difference of nature naturing and nature natured as profoundly and radically articulated by Corrington's ecstatic naturalism. Ecstatic naturalism, as a descriptive and revisionary metaphysics, is well equipped to probe deeply beneath the surface layers of the anthropocentric self theorized by Peirce and Jaspers in order to elicit the self's hidden origin, which is directly and infinitely sustained in its "primal ground," the unconscious of nature