Evaluating the Government as a Source of Systemic Risk

In the wake of the financial crisis, the Dodd–Frank Act established the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) and the Office of Financial Research (OFR) to address the concern that policymakers lacked sufficient data to anticipate emerging threats to financial stability. Although most discussions about systemic risk have focused on the private sector, the U.S. Federal Government is the world’s largest and most interconnected financial institution, and through its activities — as a banker, rule-maker and regulator — represents a major source of systemic risk. This paper makes the qualitative and quantitative case that the government is a significant source of such risks, discusses the nature of the risks and offers suggestions for how the OFR, through its data initiatives and analyses, could help illuminate and mitigate those risks

Joint risk of DB pension underfunding and sponsor termination: incorporating option-based projections and valuations into PIMS

When a private pension plan sponsor with an underfunded plan becomes insolvent, the difference between the value of the plan's assets and its termination liabilities represents a liability for the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC). Hence, accurately modeling the joint statistical distribution over time of defined benefit pension underfunding and sponsor terminations is critical for estimating PBGC's prospective cash flows and evaluating its financial position. It appears that the current Pension Insurance Modeling System (PIMS) approach to modeling risk does a reasonable job of capturing its statistical properties effects on PBGC cash flows, although some of the aspects might be improved, and metrics expanded. The present paper outlines, how an option-based approach to modeling the joint distribution of defaults and underfunding in PIMS might be implemented, while preserving the strengths of the current model. Moving to an option-based approach would allow PIMS to be used to estimate the fair values of future liabilities. Such an approach could have a significant effect on the perceived financial position of PBGC.United States. Social Security Administration (Retirement Research Consortium)Wharton School. Pension Research Counci

Understanding Stock Price Behavior around the Time of Equity Issues

It is well-documented that stock prices rise significantly prior to an equity issue, and fall upon announcement of the issue. We expand on earlier studies by using a large sample which includes OTC firms, by examining the cross-sectional properties of the price rise, and by using accounting data to track the pattern of debt ratios and Tobin's q around the time of equity issues. We consider a number of explanations for our results, and conclude that the data is largely consistent with informational models in which managers are asymmetrically informed about the value of the firm. Surprisingly, debt ratios do not increase prior to equity issues, suggesting that strained debt capacity is not the main reason for equity issues. The behavior of Tobin's q is consistent with equity issues being used to finance new investments.

Successful treatment of a solitary skull metastasis in a child with Wilms' Tumor

This report presents the successful treatment of a child with a solitary metastatic lesion to the calvarium following treatment for Stage III anaplastic Wilms’ Tumor

The Circumstellar Disk of the Butterfly Star in Taurus

We present a model of the circumstellar environment of the so-called ``Butterfly Star'' in Taurus (IRAS 04302+2247). The appearance of this young stellar object is dominated by a large circumstellar disk seen edge-on and the light scattering lobes above the disk. The model is based on multi-wavelength continuum observations: Millimeter maps and high-resolution near-infrared images obtained with HST/NICMOS. It was found that the disk and envelope parameters are comparable with those of the circumstellar environment of other young stellar objects. A main result is that the dust properties must be different in the circumstellar disk and in the envelope: While a grain size distribution with grain radii up to 100 micron is required to reproduce the millimeter observations of the disk, the envelope is dominated by smaller grains similar to those of the interstellar medium. Preprint with high figure quality available at: http://spider.ipac.caltech.edu/staff/swolf/homepage/public/preprints/i04302.psComment: 32 pages, 9 figure

The Spitzer c2d Survey of Large, Nearby, Interstellar Clouds. VIII. Serpens Observed with MIPS

We present maps of 1.5 deg^2 of the Serpens dark cloud at 24, 70, and 160 μm observed with the Spitzer Space Telescope MIPS camera. We describe the observations and briefly discuss the data processing carried out by the c2d team on these data. More than 2400 compact sources have been extracted at 24 μm, nearly 100 at 70 μm, and four at 160 μm. We estimate completeness limits for our 24 μm survey from Monte Carlo tests with artificial sources inserted into the Spitzer maps. We compare source counts, colors, and magnitudes in the Serpens cloud to two reference data sets: a 0.50 deg^2 set on a low-extinction region near the dark cloud, and a 5.3 deg^2 subset of the SWIRE ELAIS N1 data that was processed through our pipeline. These results show that there is an easily identifiable population of young stellar object candidates in the Serpens cloud that is not present in either of the reference data sets. We also show a comparison of visual extinction and cool dust emission illustrating a close correlation between the two and find that the most embedded YSO candidates are located in the areas of highest visual extinction

The Spitzer c2d Survey of Weak-line T Tauri Stars II: New Constraints on the Timescale for Planet Building

One of the central goals of the Spitzer Legacy Project ``From Molecular Cores to Planet-forming Disks'' (c2d) is to determine the frequency of remnant circumstellar disks around weak-line T Tauri stars (wTTs) and to study the properties and evolutionary status of these disks. Here we present a census of disks for a sample of over 230 spectroscopically identified wTTs located in the c2d IRAC (3.6, 4.5, 4.8, and 8.0 um) and MIPS (24 um) maps of the Ophiuchus, Lupus, and Perseus Molecular Clouds. We find that ~20% of the wTTs in a magnitude limited subsample have noticeable IR-excesses at IRAC wavelengths indicating the presence of a circumstellar disk. The disk frequencies we find in these 3 regions are ~3-6 times larger than that recently found for a sample of 83 relatively isolated wTTs located, for the most part, outside the highest extinction regions covered by the c2d IRAC and MIPS maps. The disk fractions we find are more consistent with those obtained in recent Spitzer studies of wTTs in young clusters such as IC 348 and Tr 37. From their location in the H-R diagram, we find that, in our sample, the wTTs with excesses are among the younger part of the age distribution. Still, up to ~50% of the apparently youngest stars in the sample show no evidence of IR excess, suggesting that the circumstellar disks of a sizable fraction of pre-main-sequence stars dissipate in a timescale of ~1 Myr. We also find that none of the stars in our sample apparently older than ~10 Myrs have detectable circumstellar disks at wavelengths < 24 um. Also, we find that the wTTs disks in our sample exhibit a wide range of properties (SED morphology, inner radius, L_DISK/L*, etc) which bridge the gaps observed between the cTTs and the debris disk regimes.Comment: 54 pages, 13 figures, Accepted by Ap