Essays in Household Finance

In recent years, the analysis of household financial decision making has become the main focus for both policymakers and academics. Hence this thesis first sets out to investigate the role of household financial literacy and psychological characteristics in household financial decisions. The results suggest that financial literacy is significantly associated with household financial management and practices such as credit management, cash flow management, retirement saving and investment. Further, while exploring the importance of stock market literacy on household decision to participate in the stock market, it is found that stock market literacy and trust distinctly influence the probability of household participation in the stock market. Furthermore, stock market literacy not only increases the likelihood of participation but also influences the share of wealth invested in the stock market. Also, economic shocks and future expectations are the key psychological characteristics that explain household decision to invest in stocks. However, upon participation, a larger set of psychological characteristics such as, past economic shock, future expectations, self-confidence, and time preference influence a household decision on how much to invest in stocks. Finally, the thesis examines the unwise financial decisions of households in unsecured debt management, credit card debt, mortgage debt management and investment diversification. The results show that financial distress and poverty increase the likelihood of households making unwise financial decisions. However, financial distress is found to outperform poverty in explaining the unwise financial decision of the households. Thus, the thesis brings to light the importance of financial literacy, psychological characteristics and financial distress for understanding household financial decision making

A report on child cycling safety

The research project identifies and examines various issues related to the cycling safety of urban school children in Hamilton aged between eight and 15 years of age in Hamilton. The report outlines, discusses and evaluates the various negative and positive variables that affect the level of cycling safety experienced by urban school children. Research-based recommendations are provided with three purposes in mind. First, some are intended immediately to enhance the effectiveness of existing physical and educational provisions. Second, some are intended to promote discussion of possible amendments to the strategies and overall structure of responsibility and authority of bodies of control, such as local and regional authorities, as well as interest and advocacy groups with a view to achieving enhanced safety provisions through new ideas and approaches . Third, and most fundamentally, these two kinds of recommendations are designed to achieve short-term and sustained long-term reductions in the rates of cycling accidents involving urban school children. As such, the underpinning objective of this report is to create an accessible resource of information and recommendations relevant to any party interested in the safety of child cyclists in urban areas

Essays on Finance and Macroeconomics

My dissertation studies the impact of banks on macroeconomic outcomes. Chapter 1 explores the effects of bond market growth on the financing decisions of firms, the lending behavior of banks, and the resulting equilibrium allocation of credit and capital. This chapter makes three contributions to understand the impact of bond market liberalization. First, using evidence from reforms in Japan that gave borrowers selective access to bond markets during the 1980s, it shows that firms that obtained access to the bond market used bond issuance to pay back bank debt. More importantly, this large, positive funding shock led banks to increase lending to small and medium enterprises and real estate firms. Second, it proposes a model of financial frictions that is consistent with the empirical findings, and uses the model to derive general conditions under which bond liberalization has this effect on banks. The model predicts that bond liberalization can significantly worsen the quality of the pool of bank borrowers, and so lower bank profitability. These results suggest that Japan's bond market liberalization contributed to both the real estate bubble in the 1980s and bank problems in the 1990s. Third, the model implies that bond markets amplify the effects of shocks to the risk-free rate and firm borrowing, in addition to attenuating the effects of financial shocks. In Chapter 2, I explore how the incentives of domestic banks and sovereign governments interact. I build a model of government default and banks that invest in the debt of their own sovereign. In the model, banks demand safe assets to use as collateral, and default affects bank equity. These losses inhibit banks' ability to attract deposits, leading to lower private credit provision, and lower output. This disincentivizes the sovereign from defaulting. The extent of output losses depends on characteristics of the banking system, including sovereign exposures, equity, and deposits. In turn, bank exposures are affected by default risk. The model is also used to show that policies such as financial repression can improve welfare, but worsen output losses in the event of default, and may also worsen losses in some non-default states. Underlying much research on the role of financial intermediaries in macroeconomics is an implicit recognition that there is matching between banks and firms, which I turn to in Chapter 3. Matching between banks and firms has implications for both the transmission of macroeconomic shocks and for empirical estimates of the effects of such shocks. This paper presents a theory of matching in corporate loan markets, between heterogeneous banks and heterogenous firms. The model demonstrates how assortative matching can cause shocks to have distributional consequences, where particular types of banks and firms are disproportionately affected. The framework is used to show (1) why growth without financial development is limited, (2) how capital inflows affect bank and firm outcomes, and (3) how financial regulation for certain banks also has implications for other borrowers and lenders. Further, this theory demonstrates that matching in corporate lending markets is analytically tractable, and generates predictions that are consistent with existing empirical evidence

Tool Macgyvering: Tool Construction Using Geometric Reasoning

MacGyvering is defined as creating or repairing something in an inventive or improvised way by utilizing objects that are available at hand. In this paper, we explore a subset of Macgyvering problems involving tool construction, i.e., creating tools from parts available in the environment. We formalize the overall problem domain of tool Macgyvering, introducing three levels of complexity for tool construction and substitution problems, and presenting a novel computational framework aimed at solving one level of the tool Macgyvering problem, specifically contributing a novel algorithm for tool construction based on geometric reasoning. We validate our approach by constructing three tools using a 7-DOF robot arm.Comment: Video demonstration available at: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxnm8iu1TS75YNXcAiI-nEw Conference: Accepted to International Conference on Robotics and Automation 201

Light exercise heart rate on-kinetics: a comparison of data fitted with sigmoidal and exponential functions and the impact of fitness and exercise intensity

This study examined the suitability of sigmoidal (SIG) and exponential (EXP) functions for modeling HR kinetics at the onset of a 5‐min low‐intensity cycling ergometer exercise test (5MT). The effects of training status, absolute and relative workloads, and high versus low workloads on the accuracy and reliability of these functions were also examined. Untrained participants (UTabs; n = 13) performed 5MTs at 100W. One group of trained participants (n = 10) also performed 5MTs at 100W (ETabs). Another group of trained participants (n = 9) performed 5MTs at 45% and 60% max (ET45 and ET60, respectively). SIG and EXP functions were fitted to HR data from 5MTs. A 30‐s lead‐in time was included when fitting SIG functions. Functions were compared using the standard error of the regression (SER), and test‐retest reliability of curve parameters. SER for EXP functions was significantly lower than for SIG functions across all groups. When residuals from the 30‐s lead‐in time were omitted, EXP functions only outperformed SIG functions in ET60 (EXP, 2.7 ± 1.2 beats·min−1; SIG, 3.1 ± 1.1 beats·min−1: P \u3c 0.05). Goodness of fit and test–retest reliability of curve parameters were best in ET60 and comparatively poor in UTabs. Overall, goodness of fit and test–retest reliability of curve parameters favored functions fitted to 5MTs performed by trained participants at a high and relative workload, while functions fitted to data from untrained participants exercising at a low and absolute workload were less accurate and reliable

A Simple Way to Incorporate Novelty Detection in World Models

Reinforcement learning (RL) using world models has found significant recent successes. However, when a sudden change to world mechanics or properties occurs then agent performance and reliability can dramatically decline. We refer to the sudden change in visual properties or state transitions as {\em novelties}. Implementing novelty detection within generated world model frameworks is a crucial task for protecting the agent when deployed. In this paper, we propose straightforward bounding approaches to incorporate novelty detection into world model RL agents, by utilizing the misalignment of the world model's hallucinated states and the true observed states as an anomaly score. We first provide an ontology of novelty detection relevant to sequential decision making, then we provide effective approaches to detecting novelties in a distribution of transitions learned by an agent in a world model. Finally, we show the advantage of our work in a novel environment compared to traditional machine learning novelty detection methods as well as currently accepted RL focused novelty detection algorithms

Structural elaboration of the surprising ortho-zincation of benzyl methyl ether

Breaking with convention, the reaction of the sodium zincate, [(TMEDA)Na(μ-TMP)(μ-tBu)Zn(tBu)] with benzyl methyl ether (PhCH2OMe) produces exclusively an ortho-zincated intermediate [(TMEDA)Na(μ-TMP)(μ-C6H4CH2OMe)Zn(tBu)] instead of the expected 'thermodynamic' α-metallated product