Publications
NIBIOs employees contribute to several hundred scientific articles and research reports every year. You can browse or search in our collection which contains references and links to these publications as well as other research and dissemination activities. The collection is continously updated with new and historical material.
2017
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Authors
Michela Zanetti Corrado Costa Rosa Greco Stefano Grigolato Giovanna Ottaviani Aalmo Raffaele CavalliAbstract
The quality requirements of wood biofuels are regulated by a series of harmonized international standards. These standards define the technical parameter limits that influence the quality of solid biomass as a fuel. In 2014 the European reference standard for solid biofuel was replaced by the International ISO standard. In the case of wood chips, the main difference between the European and International standards is the definition of particle size distribution classes. In this context, this study analyses the quality of wood chips and its variation over the years according to the “former” (EN 14691-4) and “in force” (ISO 17225-4) standards. A Soft Independent Modelling of Class Analogy (SIMCA) model was built to predict the best quality of wood chips and to clarify the relationship between quality and standard parameters, time and changes in the standard regulations. The results show that, compared to the EN standards, classification with the ISO standards increases the samples belonging to the best quality classes and decreases the not classified samples. Furthermore, all the SIMCA models have a high sensitivity (>90%), reflect the differences introduced to the quality standards and are therefore suitable for monitoring the quality of wood chips and their changes.
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This study deals with the composition of corporate boards and examines the impact of independent (outside) and inside directors. We analyze the effect of independent and representative board members on firm performance and shareholder protection. Overseeing the CEO to ensure value maximization is one of the key functions of boards. Hence, boards appear as a protective mechanism that protects shareholder rights. With this reasoning regulators promote independent directors at boardrooms. The literature corroborates the notion that independent directors are instrumental in mitigating agency problems. At the same time, increasing worker representation has been considered as a mechanism to contain, or balance the power of controlling shareholders for big companies. In Norway, employee representation in boards has been promoted by the legislation long before. Employee representatives have insider information about the companies and leaves little room for executives to mislead the board. For companies that adopt the gender balance law, and change their boards, we look at the impact of outsiders. We take the insiders into consideration by controlling for the board ownership, and use the incremental effect of female additions to the board as variable capturing the outsider impact. We examine the explanatory power of outsiders at board over the value and tax returns of the company. Conversely, we try to see how the employee representatives are related with firm fundamentals. For the companies that change their organizational form, we gauge the differential impact of employee representation when we control for other factors. The key posits are that employee representatives can protect employee rights, alleviate layoffs, and moderate the executive pay. This view has found audience among policy makers recently. Preliminary results demonstrate that increasing outside and independent directors have a positive effect on the firm value. Furthermore, independent board directors are essential in promoting efficient outcomes. Further, they are instrumental in returning the value to shareholders, limiting the executive compensation, and curbing the relative tax burden.
Abstract
No abstract has been registered