Translating Beyond Culture: My Study Abroad Experience in Chile

Latin American Studie

Third-Party Bankruptcy Releases: An Analysis of Consent Through the Lenses of Due Process and Contract Law

Bankruptcy courts disagree on the use of third-party releases in Chapter 11 bankruptcy plans, the different factors that circuit courts consider when deciding whether to approve a third-party release, and the impact of the various consent definitions on whether a release is or should be binding on the creditor. Affirmative consent, “deemed consent,” and silence are important elements in this discussion. Both contract law and due process provide lenses to evaluate consent definitions to determine whether nondebtor third-party releases should bind certain creditor groups. This Note proposes a solution that follows an affirmative consent approach to protect against due process violations and promote consistency across bankruptcy courts

Overcoming Troublesome Knowledge in Threshold Concepts Learning: The Case of Theoretical Reasoning in Undergraduate Political Studies

This paper investigates the challenges posed by troublesome knowledge in undergraduate politics learning. Theoretical reasoning is taken as the chief example of troublesome threshold concept in politics, and the problem of crossing the ‘liminal space’ is discussed. The pedagogy of games is offered as a model for overcoming the learner’s anxiety in crossing the threshold. A literature review on the pedagogy of games suggests that games make the liminal space less problematic. First, during a game the tacit rules of reasoning are uncovered and become the rules of the game itself. Second, the humorous environment reduces learners’ anxiety in dealing with troublesome knowledge. Reflective analysis on two episodes in an undergraduate class corroborates the finding of the literature, and highlights one further element of game and playfulness that makes the rite of passage more pleasant and productive: games are also a gateway for social cohesion and reciprocal trust, increasing the intimacy among students through playful teasing and imagination. The paper concludes that teaching styles that encourage reciprocal approachability are most effective in helping learners to comprehend threshold concepts.Final Published versio

Perverse cross-subsidization in the credit market

We show how asymmetric information and borrowers' heterogeneity in wealth may produce equilibria in which, due to decreasing absolute risk aversion, hard working poor borrowers subsidize richer borrowers. In particular, a model of adverse selection and moral hazard in a competitive credit market is developed with private information on borrowers' wealth. Because of the ambiguous effect of decreasing risk aversion on the willingness to post collateral, both separating and pooling equilibria are possible in principle. Under separation the poor borrowers bear the cost of separation in terms of excessive risk taking. In a more likely pooling equilibrium poor hard-working borrowers subsidize richer ones

Observations of nonlinear run-up patterns on plane and rhythmic beach morphology

Application of non-linear forecasting and bispectral analysis to video observations of run-up over cuspate topography shows that these alongshore patterns in the morphology are accompanied by changes to the fundamental behaviour of the run-up timeseries. Nonlinear forecasting indicates that at beach cusp horns, the behaviour of swash flow is more predictable and global (meaning that characteristics of individual swash events are well represented by the behaviour of the timeseries as a whole). Conversely, at beach cusp bays, the behaviour of swash flow is less predictable and more local (meaning that the characteristics of individual swash events are best represented by the behaviour of a small fraction of the timeseries). Bispectral analysis indicates that there is a nonlinear transfer of energy from the incident wave frequency f to infragravity frequency ~f/2 which only occurs in the bay, suggesting that the local behaviour is caused by interactions between successive swash cycles which are magnified by channelling caused by the beach cusp geometry. The local behaviour and the bispectral signatures are not present in offshore measurements, and are not present in runup timeseries collected when the beach was planar. These results provide evidence that interactions between successive run-ups are a fundamental characteristic of beach cusp bays. Ultimately, these interactions could lead to the growth of an infragravity wave with an alongshore wavelength forced by the presence of beach cusps

Inequality of Opportunity in the Credit Market

Credit market imperfections can prevent the poor from making profitable investments. Under asymmetric information observable features, such as wealth and collateral, play an important role in determining who gets credit, in violation of the Equality of Opportunity principle. We define equality of opportunity as the equal possibility of getting credit for a given aversion to effort. We first establish that, due to larger cross subsidization in high collateral classes of borrow- ers, richer individuals are more likely to get credit for a given aversion to effort. Our second result is that Inequality of Opportunity is associated with an inefficient allocation of resources among classes of borrowers. The marginal borrower in classes that post more collateral exerts less effort in equilibrium (and therefore produces lower aggregate surplus) than the marginal borrower in lower collateral classes. This suggests that public credit policies should be targeted at poorer classes of would be borrowers both for equity and efficiency reasons, which rarely occurs in practice.equality of opportunity; credit; moral hazard; crosssubsidization; collateral

Inequality of opportunity in the credit market

Credit market imperfections can prevent the poor from making pro table investments. Under asymmetric information observable features, such as wealth and collateral, play an important role in determining who gets credit, in violation of the Equality of Opportunity principle. We de ne equality of opportunity as the equal possibility of getting credit for a given aversion to e¤ort. We rst establish that, due to larger cross subsidization in high collateral classes of borrowers, richer individuals are more likely to get credit for a given aversion to e¤ort. Our second result is that Inequality of Opportunity is associated with an ine¢ cient allocation of resources among classes of borrowers. The marginal borrower in classes that post more collateral exerts less e¤ort in equilibrium (and therefore produces lower aggregate surplus) than the marginal borrower in lower collateral classes. This suggests that public credit policies should be targeted at poorer classes of would be borrowers both for equity and e¢ ciency reasons, which rarely occurs in practice.equality of opportunity; credit; moral hazard; cross subsidization; collateral.