Black Hole Mass, Host galaxy classification and AGN activity
  We investigate the role of host galaxy classification and black hole mass in
a heterogeneous sample of 276 mostly nearby (z<0.1) X-ray and IR selected AGN.
Around 90% of Seyfert 1 AGN in bulge-dominated host galaxies (without disk
contamination) span a very narrow range in the observed 12um to 2-10keV
luminosity ratio (1<R_{IR/X}<7). This narrow dispersion incorporates all
possible variations among AGN central engines, including accretion mechanism
and efficiency, disk opening angle, orientation to sightline, covering fraction
of absorbing material, patchiness of X-ray corona and measured variability. As
a result, all models of X-ray and IR production in AGN are very strongly
constrained. Among Seyfert 1 AGN, median X-ray and IR luminosities increase
with black hole mass at >99% confidence. Using ring morphology of the host
galaxy as a proxy for lack of tidal interaction, we find that AGN luminosity in
host galaxies within 70Mpc is independent of host galaxy interaction for $\sim$
Gyrs, suggesting that the timescale of AGN activity due to secular evolution is
much shorter than that due to tidal interactions. We find that LINER hosts have
lower 12um luminosity than the median 12um luminosity of normal disk- and
bulge-dominated galaxies which may represent observational evidence for past
epochs of feedback that supressed star formation in LINER host galaxies. We
propose that nuclear ULXs may account for the X-ray emission from LINER 2s
without flat-spectrum, compact radio cores. We confirmed the robustness of our
results in X-rays by comparing them with the 14-195keV 22-month BAT survey of
AGN, which is all-sky and unbiased by photoelectric absorption.
