Sovereign debt restructuring : the judge, the vultures and creditor rights

What role did the US courts play in the Argentine debt swap of 2005? What implications does this have for the future of creditor rights in sovereign bond markets? The judge in the Argentine case has, it appears, deftly exploited creditor heterogeneity – between holdouts seeking capital gains and institutional investors wanting a settlement – to promote a swap with a supermajority of creditors. Our analysis of Argentine debt litigation reveals a ‘judge-mediated’ sovereign debt restructuring, which resolves the key issues of Transition and Aggregation - two of the tasks envisaged for the IMF’s still-born Sovereign Debt Restructuring Mechanism. For the future, we discuss how judge-mediated sovereign debt restructuring (together with creditor committees) could complement the alternative promoted by the US Treasury, namely collective action clauses in sovereign bond contracts

Constraints to the sustainability of a ‘systematised’ approach to livestock marketing amongst smallholder cattle producers in South Africa

Commercialization of smallholder agriculture in South Africa is underpinned by reforms to improve livestock off-take in communal areas and engage smallholder farmers with formal markets. To achieve this, Custom Feeding Programmes (CFPs) were established to improve the condition of communal cattle prior to their sale into formal markets and to ‘systematise’ the informal marketing of cattle in communal areas by enabling participants to achieve higher informal market prices. We evaluate the sustainability of eight CFPs located in Eastern Cape Province in terms of their ability to add value to smallholder cattle production and encourage market participation. Communities with CFPs achieved a 16.6% mean cattle off-take rate, substantially higher than in most communal systems. Furthermore, cattle sold through CFPs attained a 17% higher mean selling price than those sold through other marketing channels. However, these benefits were mainly realized by better-off farmers with larger cattle herds and greater ability to transport animals to and from CFPs. More marginalized farmers, particularly women, had low participation. CFPs also face challenges to their sustainability, including inconsistent feed and water supplies, poor infrastructure and high staff turnover. Key to enhancing participation in CFPs, will be improving the way they are supported and embedded within communities

Geo-additive models of Childhood Undernutrition in three Sub-Saharan African Countries

We investigate the geographical and socioeconomic determinants of childhood undernutrition in Malawi, Tanzania and Zambia, three neighboring countries in Southern Africa using the 1992 Demographic and Health Surveys. We estimate models of undernutrition jointly for the three countries to explore regional patterns of undernutrition that transcend boundaries, while allowing for country-specific interactions. We use semiparametric models to flexibly model the effects of selected so-cioeconomic covariates and spatial effects. Our spatial analysis is based on a flexible geo-additive model using the district as the geographic unit of anal-ysis, which allows to separate smooth structured spatial effects from random effect. Inference is fully Bayesian and uses recent Markov chain Monte Carlo techniques. While the socioeconomic determinants generally confirm what is known in the literature, we find distinct residual spatial patterns that are not explained by the socioeconomic determinants. In particular, there appears to be a belt run-ning from Southern Tanzania to Northeastern Zambia which exhibits much worse undernutrition, even after controlling for socioeconomic effects. These effects do transcend borders between the countries, but to a varying degree. These findings have important implications for targeting policy as well as the search for left-out variables that might account for these residual spatial patterns

A Toy Model for Testing Finite Element Methods to Simulate Extreme-Mass-Ratio Binary Systems

Extreme mass ratio binary systems, binaries involving stellar mass objects orbiting massive black holes, are considered to be a primary source of gravitational radiation to be detected by the space-based interferometer LISA. The numerical modelling of these binary systems is extremely challenging because the scales involved expand over several orders of magnitude. One needs to handle large wavelength scales comparable to the size of the massive black hole and, at the same time, to resolve the scales in the vicinity of the small companion where radiation reaction effects play a crucial role. Adaptive finite element methods, in which quantitative control of errors is achieved automatically by finite element mesh adaptivity based on posteriori error estimation, are a natural choice that has great potential for achieving the high level of adaptivity required in these simulations. To demonstrate this, we present the results of simulations of a toy model, consisting of a point-like source orbiting a black hole under the action of a scalar gravitational field.Comment: 29 pages, 37 figures. RevTeX 4.0. Minor changes to match the published versio

Vertical Field-Effect Transistor Based on Wavefunction Extension

We demonstrate a mechanism for a dual layer, vertical field-effect transistor, in which nearly-depleting one layer will extend its wavefunction to overlap the other layer and increase tunnel current. We characterize this effect in a specially designed GaAs/AlGaAs device, observing a tunnel current increase of two orders of magnitude at cryogenic temperatures, and we suggest extrapolations of the design to other material systems such as graphene

How To Get Your Clinical Teaching Team Ready For Curriculum Change: A Practical Guide

Our health care system is constantly adapting to change at an increasingly rapid pace. Unavoidably, this also applies to the field of medical education. As a result, clinical teaching teams face the challenging task of successfully implementing the proposed changes in daily practice. It goes without saying that implementing change takes time and that you need to be patient. However, a successful change process needs more than that. Change models or strategies could offer a helping hand. The questionnaire Specialty training’s Organizational Readiness for curriculum Change (STORC) is a tool aiming to do just that. With a focus on readiness for change, this questionnaire tries to support implementation efforts in PGME. Additionally, since change is a team effort, it focusses on clinical teaching teams particularly. In this paper, we offer a practical guide for clinical teaching teams on how to deal with any concerns or hurdles detected in any of the core elements of readiness for change, in order to smoothen and support the educational change processes these teams are confronted with

Inequality and violent crime: evidence from data on robbery and violent theft

This article argues that the link between income inequality and violent property crime might be spurious, complementing a similar argument in prior analysis by the author on the determinants of homicide. In contrast, Fajnzylber, Lederman & Loayza (1998; 2002a, b) provide seemingly strong and robust evidence that inequality causes a higher rate of both homicide and robbery/violent theft even after controlling for country-specific fixed effects. Our results suggest that inequality is not a statistically significant determinant, unless either country-specific effects are not controlled for or the sample is artificially restricted to a small number of countries. The reason why the link between inequality and violent property crime might be spurious is that income inequality is likely to be strongly correlated with country-specific fixed effects such as cultural differences. A high degree of inequality might be socially undesirable for any number of reasons, but that it causes violent crime is far from proven

Capital structure and its determinants in the United Kingdom – a decompositional analysis

Prior research on capital structure by Rajan and Zingales (1995) suggests that the level of gearing in UK companies is positively related to size and tangibility, and negatively correlated with profitability and the level of growth opportunities. However, as argued by Harris and Raviv (1991), 'The interpretation of results must be tempered by an awareness of the difficulties involved in measuring both leverage and the explanatory variables of interest'. In this study the focus is on the difficulties of measuring gearing, and the sensitivity of Rajan and Zingales' results to variations in gearing measures are tested. Based on an analysis of the capital structure of 822 UK companies, Rajan and Zingales' results are found to be highly definitional-dependent. The determinants of gearing appear to vary significantly, depending upon which component of debt is being analysed. In particular, significant differences are found in the determinants of long- and short-term forms of debt. Given that trade credit and equivalent, on average, accounts for more than 62% of total debt, the results are particularly sensitive to whether such debt is included in the gearing measure. It is argued, therefore, that analysis of capital structure is incomplete without a detailed examination of all forms of corporate debt

Strategic responses to global challenges: The case of European banking, 1973–2000

In applying a strategy, structure, ownership and performance (SSOP) framework to three major clearing banks (ABN AMRO, UBS, Barclays), this article debates whether the conclusions generated by Whittington and Mayer about European manufacturing industry can be applied to the financial services sector. While European integration plays a key role in determining strategy, it is clear that global factors were far more important in determining management actions, leading to significant differences in structural adaptation. The article also debates whether this has led to improved performance, given the problems experienced with both geographical dispersion and diversification, bringing into question the quality of decision-making over the long term