Anticipating the Stock Market Crash of 1929: The View from the Floor of the Stock Exchange

In the months prior to the stock market crash of 1929, the price of a seat on the New York Stock Exchange was abnormally low. Rising stock prices and volume should have driven up seat prices during the boom of 1929; instead there were negative cumulative abnormal returns to seats of approximately 20 percent in the months just before the crash. At the same time, trading nearly ceased in the thin markets for seats on the regional exchanges. Brokers appear thus to have anticipated the October 1929 crash, although investors in the market apparently did not recognize this information.

Helium mining on the Moon: Site selection and evaluation

The feasibility of recovering helium (He) from the Moon as a source of fusion energy on Earth is currently being studied at the University of Wisconsin. Part of this study is selection and evaluation of potential sites for lunar He mining. Selection and evaluation of potential mining sites are based on four salient findings by various investigators of lunar samples: (1) Regoliths from areas underlain by highland materials contain less than 20 wppm He; (2) Certain maria regoliths contain less than 20 wppm He, but other contain 25 to 49 wppm; (3) The He content of a mare regolith is a function of its composition; regoliths rich in Ti are relatively rich in He; and (4) He is concentrated in the less than 100-micron size fractions of regoliths. The first three findings suggest that maria are the most promising mining sites, specifically, those that have high-Ti regoliths. Information on the regional distribution and extent of high-Ti regoliths comes mainly from two sources: direct sampling by various Apollo and Luna missions, and remote sensing by gamma-ray spectroscopy and Earth-based measurements of lunar spectral reflectance. Sampling provides essential control on calibration and interpretation of data from remote sensing. These data indicate that Mare Tranquillitatis is the principal area of high-Ti regolith of the eastern nearside, but large areas of high-Ti regolith are indicated in the Imbrium and Procellarum regions. Recovery of significant amounts of He-3 will require mining billions of tonnes of regolith. Large individual areas suitable for mining must therefore be delineated. The concentration of He in the finer size fractions and considerations of ease of mining mean that mining areas must be as free as possible of sizable craters and blocks of rock. Pending additional lunar missions, information regarding these features must be obtained from lunar photographs, photogeologic maps, and radar surveys. The present study is decidedly preliminary; available information is much to limited to permit even a close approach to final evaluations. As a prelude to recovery of He from the Moon, systematic exploration and sampling of high-Ti regoliths should therefore have a high priority in future lunar missions

Were banks special intermediaries in late nineteenth century America?

Banks and banking - History

The energy source of the interplanetary medium and the heliosphere

The activity of the interplanetary medium arises from occasional transient outbursts of the active corona and, for the most part, from the interaction of fast and slow streams in the solar wind. The basic driver is the heat input to the corona, both transient and steady. The fast streams issue from coronal holes where the heat input may be Alfven waves with root mean squared (rms) fluid velocities of nearly 100 km/sec or may be wholly or in part the waves refracted into the hole from neighboring active regions. If the latter, then the character of the wind from the coronal hole depends upon the proximity and vigor of active regions, with significant differences between the polar and low altitude solar wind. In any case, there is no observational support for any of these ideas, so that the primary cause of the wind from the Sun, as well as any other similar star is not without mystery. It is to be hoped that ground-based observations together with the input from the Solar Optical Telescope and the International Solar Polar Mission may in time succeed in clearing up some of the basic questions

California Banking in the Nineteenth Century: The Art and Method of the Bank of A. Levy

An 1890s loan book of the Bank A. Levy permits a detailed examination of the lending operations of a private bank in California during the National Banking Era (1864-1914). This period has been intensively analyzed at the macroeconomic level, but there are few microeconomic studies of banks. This unregulated bank was well integrated into national money markets and lent to a broad cross section of the community. Although the bank appeared to adhere to the real bills doctrine, it provided medium term uncollateralized financing to business. The bank priced risk carefully, offering rates equal to the lowest in the country to its best customers while charging extraordinarily high rates to borrowers deemed risky. In the absence of modern accounting, close scrutiny of borrowers' businesses and personal lives overcame the asymmetry of information between borrower and lender, enabling the bank to fulfill a special intermediary role.

Adapting Corporate Social Responsibility Programs to Risk Management: A Model for Multinational Organizations in Nigeria

This paper advocates that by integrating the business sense, learning and innovations garnered from CSR programmes, multinational companies in Nigeria can better manage risks and subsequently ameliorate the impacts of their economic, social and environmental activities successfully. The paper recommends that organizational leaders to proactively manage risks and take advantage of opportunities inherent in the environment to enhance stakeholders engagement and corporate reputation

Building an Optimal Census of the Solar Neighborhood with Pan-STARRS Data

We estimate the fidelity of solar neighborhood (D < 100 pc) catalogs soon to be derived from Pan-STARRS astrometric data. We explore two quantities used to measure catalog quality: completeness, the fraction of desired sources included in a catalog; and reliability, the fraction of entries corresponding to desired sources. We show that the main challenge in identifying nearby objects with Pan-STARRS will be reliably distinguishing these objects from distant stars, which are vastly more numerous. We explore how joint cuts on proper motion and parallax will impact catalog reliability and completeness. Using synthesized astrometry catalogs, we derive optimum parallax and proper motion cuts to build a census of the solar neighborhood with the Pan-STARRS 3 Pi Survey. Depending on the Galactic latitude, a parallax cut pi / sigma pi > 5 combined with a proper motion cut ranging from mu / sigma mu > 1-8 achieves 99% reliability and 60% completeness.Comment: 7 Pages, 4 Figures, 3 Tables. PASP in pres