Inside Money, Procyclical Leverage, and Banking Catastrophes

We explore a model of the interaction between banks and outside investors in which the ability of banks to issue inside money (short-term liabilities believed to be convertible into currency at par) can generate a collapse in asset prices and widespread bank insolvency. The banks and investors share a common belief about the future value of certain long-term assets, but they have different objective functions; changes to this common belief result in portfolio adjustments and trade. Positive belief shocks induce banks to buy risky assets from investors, and the banks finance those purchases by issuing new short-term liabilities. Negative belief shocks induce banks to sell assets in order to reduce their chance of insolvency to a tolerably low level, and they supply more assets at lower prices, which can result in multiple market-clearing prices. A sufficiently severe negative shock causes the set of equilibrium prices to contract (in a manner given by a cusp catastrophe), causing prices to plummet discontinuously and banks to become insolvent. Successive positive and negative shocks of equal magnitude do not cancel; rather, a banking catastrophe can occur even if beliefs simply return to their initial state. Capital requirements can prevent crises by curtailing the expansion of balance sheets when beliefs become more optimistic, but they can also force larger price declines. Emergency asset price supports can be understood as attempts by a central bank to coordinate expectations on an equilibrium with solvency.Comment: 31 pages, 10 figure

Development of CubeSat Vibration Testing Capabilities for the Naval Postgraduate School and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo

The Naval Postgraduate School is currently developing their first CubeSat, the Solar Cell Array Tester CubeSat, or NPS-SCAT. Launching a CubeSat, such as NPS-SCAT, requires environmental testing to ensure not only the success of the mission, but also the safety of other CubeSats housed in the same deployer. This thesis will address the development of CubeSat vibration testing methodology at NPS, including subsystem testing, engineering unit qualification, and flight unit testing. In addition, the new Cal Poly CubeSat Test POD Mk III will be introduced and evaluated based upon comparison with the Poly Picosatellite Orbital Deployer (P-POD). Using examples from the development of NPS-SCAT and test data from Cal Poly’s Test POD Mk III and P-POD, the current CubeSat testing methodology will be verified and an improved method for NPS CubeSat subsystem testing will be presented

‘Harry Potter and the Transmedia Wizarding World’: Paratexts of the Harry Potter Franchise, 2011-17

This doctoral thesis examines five Harry Potter paratexts created between 2011-17 and seeks to understand their impact upon the franchise’s trajectory following the end of the Potter books (in 2007) and films (in 2011). As a piece of long-form analysis, the research represents a significant addition to scholarship on contemporary film franchising and Harry Potter more specifically. The following work shows how the Potter franchise has been purposely sustained, extended and reworked as a result of the proliferation of paratexts, and explores the production contexts of those paratexts as well as their structuring textual concerns. The thesis takes a case study approach of five paratexts created between 2011-17. Although each chapter is dedicated to a specific paratext, the discussions in these chapters are interconnected due to what I note is an increasingly coherent transmedia strategy across the Harry Potter franchise during this period. The first chapter will examine Pottermore (2011—), a website and e-bookstore owned by J.K. Rowling. The second will discuss the ‘Wizarding World of Harry Potter’ theme parks (2011—), spaces that replicate the Hogsmeade and Diagon Alley film sets. The third will look at the ‘Warner Bros. Studio Tour, London: The Making of Harry Potter’ (2012—), a museum and interactive experience based at Warner Bros. Studios, Leavesden. The fourth is dedicated to Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them(2016), the first instalment in a five-film blockbuster series.Finally, the fifth chapter explores the stageplay Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (2016)and its status as a transitional franchising text. This research utilises two methodological frameworks, textual analysis and empirical research, in order to shed light on the importance of paratexts – traditionally considered “ancillary materials” – in understanding how contemporary franchising works. I use Jonathan Gray’s work as a springboard to consider the role of paratexts in transforming the Harry Potter franchise from an adaptation-based phenomenon into a transmedia world-building commercial force

Character Consciousness in Modernist and Postmodernist Plays: An Exploration Through Playwriting

In extracting the textual basis from which these effects are derived, an examination of the literary and social context in which these works emerged is likewise offered as a means of gleaning a sense of why such characters emerged as they did in this period of theatre’s evolution. Resulting from this dissection, a taxonomy of these specific traits have then been compiled as a sort of template upon which to build characters or a similar effect and affect through the practice of playwriting. Ultimately, these components then serve as the foundation for two original dramatic works meant to represent these abstractions made through analysis in the practiced form of playwriting. Each dramatic work is accompanied by a reflective analysis of the process of creative writing and an assessment of discoveries made about the construction of character consciousness