Market Timing and Corporate Debt Issuance

This thesis comprehensively examInes the relationship between corporate debt issuance and market timing. The focus is on the different issues of debt market timing across the different stages of corporate debt issuance from pre-issue considerations, to implementation and post-issue influences. It also covers different aspects of debt issue decisions including maturity, yield type and issue volume. The thesis starts with an investigation of what motivates debt issue decisions based on the framework of risk management, and finds that timing the debt market rather than hedging the interest rate exposure is the primary motivation for firms choosing yield types and maturities for their newly issued debt. The thesis then explores the information and mechanism behind debt market timing implementation, and finds that managerial market timings of debt issuances are simply responses to fluctuations in market conditions, while their predictions of future market variations are generally unsuccessful. Finally, the thesis examines the influences of debt market timing on capital structure of firms. It was found that, although debt market timing of issue volume results in the abnormal deviation of the debt ratio and impacts on firms' capital structures in both the short and long-term, managers appear to make no effort to reverse the deviations of capital structure. Rather, they continue to time the market afterwards. Therefore, as regards the implications for capital structure, market timing has a long-term influence.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Measurement of the Charged Multiplicities in b, c and Light Quark Events from Z0 Decays

Average charged multiplicities have been measured separately in $b$, $c$ and light quark ($u,d,s$) events from $Z^0$ decays measured in the SLD experiment. Impact parameters of charged tracks were used to select enriched samples of $b$ and light quark events, and reconstructed charmed mesons were used to select $c$ quark events. We measured the charged multiplicities: $\bar{n}_{uds} = 20.21 \pm 0.10 (\rm{stat.})\pm 0.22(\rm{syst.})$, $\bar{n}_{c} = 21.28 \pm 0.46(\rm{stat.}) ^{+0.41}_{-0.36}(\rm{syst.})$ $\bar{n}_{b} = 23.14 \pm 0.10(\rm{stat.}) ^{+0.38}_{-0.37}(\rm{syst.})$, from which we derived the differences between the total average charged multiplicities of $c$ or $b$ quark events and light quark events: $\Delta \bar{n}_c = 1.07 \pm 0.47(\rm{stat.})^{+0.36}_{-0.30}(\rm{syst.})$ and $\Delta \bar{n}_b = 2.93 \pm 0.14(\rm{stat.})^{+0.30}_{-0.29}(\rm{syst.})$. We compared these measurements with those at lower center-of-mass energies and with perturbative QCD predictions. These combined results are in agreement with the QCD expectations and disfavor the hypothesis of flavor-independent fragmentation.Comment: 19 pages LaTex, 4 EPS figures, to appear in Physics Letters

A Search for Jet Handedness in Hadronic Z0Z^0 Decays

We have searched for signatures of polarization in hadronic jets from $Z^0 \to q \bar{q}$ decays using the ``jet handedness'' method. The polar angle asymmetry induced by the high SLC electron-beam polarization was used to separate quark jets from antiquark jets, expected to be left- and right-polarized, respectively. We find no evidence for jet handedness in our global sample or in a sample of light quark jets and we set upper limits at the 95% C.L. of 0.063 and 0.099 respectively on the magnitude of the analyzing power of the method proposed by Efremov {\it et al.}Comment: Revtex, 8 pages, 2 figure

Внедрение и принцип работы системы сейсмического мониторинга горного массива для работы в условиях ООО "Шахта "Усковская"

The status of the Silicon Microvertex Detector (SMD) and its installation into the LEP-L3 experiment are presented, highlighting novel features and sophisticated techniques. Preliminary results based on 1993 data are given and compared with Monte Carlo predictions, to understand the detector performances and its tracking capabilities

Search for neutral charmless B decays at LEP

A search for rare charmless decays of \Bd and \Bs mesons has been performed in the exclusive channels \Bd_{(\mathrm s)}\ra\eta\eta, \Bd_{(\mathrm s)}\ra\eta\pio and \Bd_{(\mathrm s)}\ra\pio\pio. The data sample consisted of three million hadronic \Zo decays collected by the L3 experiment at LEP from 1991 through 1994. No candidate event has been observed and the following upper limits at 90\% confidence level on the branching ratios have been set \begin{displaymath} \mathrm{Br}(\Bd\ra\eta\eta)<4.1\times 10^{-4},\,\, \mathrm{Br}(\Bs\ra\eta\eta)<1.5\times 10^{-3},\,\, \end{displaymath} \begin{displaymath} \mathrm{Br}(\Bd\ra\eta\pio)<2.5\times 10^{-4},\,\, \mathrm{Br}(\Bs\ra\eta\pio)<1.0\times 10^{-3},\,\, \end{displaymath} \begin{displaymath} \mathrm{Br}(\Bd\ra\pio\pio)<6.0\times 10^{-5},\,\, \mathrm{Br}(\Bs\ra\pio\pio)<2.1\times 10^{-4}. \end{displaymath} These are the first experimental limits on \Bd\ra\eta\eta and on the \Bs neutral charmless modes

Determination of the number of light neutrino species from single photon production at LEP

A determination of the number of light neutrino families performed by measuring the cross section of single photon production in \ee\ collision near the \Zo\ resonance is reported. From an integrated luminosity of $100~\mathrm{pb^{-1}}$, collected during the years 1991--94, we have observed 2091 single photon candidates with an energy above 1~\GeV\ in the polar angular region $45^\circ < \theta_\gamma < 135^\circ$. From a maximum likelihood fit to the single photon cross section, the \Zo\ decay width into invisible particles is measured to be \Ginv = 498 \pm 12 \mathrm{(stat)} \pm 12 \mathrm{(sys)~MeV}. Using the Standard Model couplings of neutrinos to the \Zo, the number of light neutrino species is determined to be $N_\nu = 2.98 \pm 0.07 (\mathrm{stat}) \pm 0.07 (\mathrm{sys}).