On Debt Service and Renegotiation when Debt-holders Are More Strategic

The contingent claims analysis of the firm financing often presents a debt renegotiation game with a passive bank which does not use strategically its capability to force liquidation, contrary towhat is observed in practice. The first purpose of this paper is to introduce more strategic bank behaviour into the continuous-time model developed by Mella-Barral and Perraudin (1997) and Hackbarth, Hennessy, and Leland (2007). Its second purpose is to account for variations in the information obtained by the parties during the contract period. We show that with public information and private debt only, the optimal probability of debt renegotiation is fixed by the firm's anticipated liquidation value. When we add public debt and asymmetric information, the good-type firm may be tempted to mimic the bad-type to reduce its debt service. We show that to deter such mimicking, banks may sometimes refuse to renegotiate with strong firms having a low liquidation value. Our results are in line with the empirical observation that recovery rate at emergence of bankruptcy is function of the share of private debt in all the firm's debt and is relatively low.Debt service, debt renegotiation, recovery rate, strategic bank, bankruptcy, contingent claim

Investissement en incertitude : extension du problème de la taille optimale d’une usine

Dans cet article, nous présentons un problème de choix d’investissement en incertitude. Au moment de prendre leurs décisions, les administrateurs ne connaissent pas la taille du marché (volume des ventes) mais connaissent le prix de vente du produit et la distribution a priori du niveau des ventes. Nous comparons le comportement des entreprises neutres au risque à celui des entreprises riscophobes. Un résultat intéressant est que les entreprises neutres au risque ne sont pas indifférentes à l’introduction et à la variation du risque. Nous présentons plusieurs extensions au problème initial dont la prise en compte de la valeur d’une étude de marché et le changement de la distribution a priori des ventes.In this article, we present a problem of investment under uncertainty. When the managers make investment decisions they do not know the market (sales opportunities); however they know the price and the a priori distribution of sales. We compare the behavior of risk averse firms to that of risk neutral firms. One interesting result in that risk neutral firms are not indifferent to the introduction of risk and to the change in risk. We present many extensions of the initial problem. Two of them are the consideration of market studies and the change of the a priori distribution of sales

Entry, Imperfect Competition, and Futures Market for the Input

We analyze firms’ production and hedging decisions under imperfect competition with potential entry. Specifically, we consider an oligopoly industry producing a homogeneous output in which risk-averse firms incur a sunk cost upon entering the industry, and, then, compete in Cournot with one another. Each firm faces uncertainty in the input cost when making production decision, and has access to the futures market to hedge its random cost. We provide two sets of results. First, we show that there exists a unique equilibrium in which, in contrast to previous results in the literature, production and output price depend on the distribution of the spot price and risk aversion, i.e., there is no separation when the firms have access to the futures market. Second, we study the effect of access to the futures market on entry, production, and prices. The effect of access to the futures market on the number of firms is ambiguous depending on the value of the futures price and the parameters of the model. We also show that hedging induces the risk-averse firm to produce more, while speculating reduces production

Investissement en incertitude : extension du problème de la taille optimale d’une usine

In this article, we present a problem of investment under uncertainty. When the managers make investment decisions they do not know the market (sales opportunities); however they know the price and the a priori distribution of sales. We compare the behavior of risk averse firms to that of risk neutral firms. One interesting result in that risk neutral firms are not indifferent to the introduction of risk and to the change in risk. We present many extensions of the initial problem. Two of them are the consideration of market studies and the change of the a priori distribution of sales. Dans cet article, nous présentons un problème de choix d’investissement en incertitude. Au moment de prendre leurs décisions, les administrateurs ne connaissent pas la taille du marché (volume des ventes) mais connaissent le prix de vente du produit et la distribution a priori du niveau des ventes. Nous comparons le comportement des entreprises neutres au risque à celui des entreprises riscophobes. Un résultat intéressant est que les entreprises neutres au risque ne sont pas indifférentes à l’introduction et à la variation du risque. Nous présentons plusieurs extensions au problème initial dont la prise en compte de la valeur d’une étude de marché et le changement de la distribution a priori des ventes.

Scoring methods in script concordance tests : an exploratory psychometric study

BACKGROUND:Despite the increasingly popular role of script concordance test (SCT) scoring methods in the evaluation of clinical reasoning, studies examining these methods in nursing are relatively scarce. This study explored the psychometric properties of five SCT scoring methods. METHOD:An SCT was administered to 12 experts and 43 learners. Scores were calculated using five methods and descriptive statistics. Differences in scores were assessed with the Mann-Whitney U test, and Spearman correlation coefficients were calculated for the different methods. RESULTS:The median scores of both experts and learners differed substantially according to the scoring method used. Learners' scores were statistically different from experts' scores (p < .01) for each method. Spearman coefficients (range, 0.44 to 0.95) were positive for the different methods. CONCLUSION:Further research is needed to refine the influence of SCT scoring methods for use in certifying assessment of clinical reasoning in nursing. [J Nurs Educ. 2023;62(10):549–555.

Assessment, Intervention, and Training Needs of Service Providers for Children with Intellectual Disabilities or Autism Spectrum Disorders and Concurrent Problem Behaviours

This study documented the perceived needs of therapists, specialists, and managers who work with children with intellectual disabilities (ID) and/or autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and concurrent problem behaviours (PBs). Seventy-five respondents from specialized PB and early childhood programs within eight public rehabilitation centres were surveyed. They were asked to describe current practices and perceived needs in terms of assessment, intervention, and training with respect to the target population. Overall, the perceptions of staff were consistent with the results of previous studies examining families’ perspectives. Salient themes include the need for specialized assessments for PBs in young children, collaboration between multiple service providers and families, and additional staff training in child development and interventions for PBs. These findings underscore the importance of offering diversified services adapted to the needs of children with PBs, their families, and their service providers

A Specific Primed Immune Response in Drosophila Is Dependent on Phagocytes

Drosophila melanogaster, like other invertebrates, relies solely on its innate immune response to fight invading microbes; by definition, innate immunity lacks adaptive characteristics. However, we show here that priming Drosophila with a sublethal dose of Streptococcus pneumoniae protects against an otherwise-lethal second challenge of S. pneumoniae. This protective effect exhibits coarse specificity for S. pneumoniae and persists for the life of the fly. Although not all microbial challenges induced this specific primed response, we find that a similar specific protection can be elicited by Beauveria bassiana, a natural fly pathogen. To characterize this primed response, we focused on S. pneumoniae–induced protection. The mechanism underlying this protective effect requires phagocytes and the Toll pathway. However, activation of the Toll pathway is not sufficient for priming-induced protection. This work contradicts the paradigm that insect immune responses cannot adapt and will promote the search for similar responses overlooked in organisms with an adaptive immune response

Adjusting for sampling variability in sparse data: geostatistical approaches to disease mapping

Abstract Background Disease maps of crude rates from routinely collected health data indexed at a small geographical resolution pose specific statistical problems due to the sparse nature of the data. Spatial smoothers allow areas to borrow strength from neighboring regions to produce a more stable estimate of the areal value. Geostatistical smoothers are able to quantify the uncertainty in smoothed rate estimates without a high computational burden. In this paper, we introduce a uniform model extension of Bayesian Maximum Entropy (UMBME) and compare its performance to that of Poisson kriging in measures of smoothing strength and estimation accuracy as applied to simulated data and the real data example of HIV infection in North Carolina. The aim is to produce more reliable maps of disease rates in small areas to improve identification of spatial trends at the local level. Results In all data environments, Poisson kriging exhibited greater smoothing strength than UMBME. With the simulated data where the true latent rate of infection was known, Poisson kriging resulted in greater estimation accuracy with data that displayed low spatial autocorrelation, while UMBME provided more accurate estimators with data that displayed higher spatial autocorrelation. With the HIV data, UMBME performed slightly better than Poisson kriging in cross-validatory predictive checks, with both models performing better than the observed data model with no smoothing. Conclusions Smoothing methods have different advantages depending upon both internal model assumptions that affect smoothing strength and external data environments, such as spatial correlation of the observed data. Further model comparisons in different data environments are required to provide public health practitioners with guidelines needed in choosing the most appropriate smoothing method for their particular health dataset