Bankruptcy around the world - explanations of its relative use

The recent literature on law and finance has drawn attention to the importance of creditor rights in influencing the development of financial systems and in affecting firm corporate governance and financing patterns. Recent financial crises have also highlighted the importance of insolvency systems to resolve corporate sector financial distress. The literature and crises have emphasized the complex role of creditor rights, affecting not only the efficiency of ex-post resolution of distressed corporations, but also influencing ex-ante risk-taking incentives and an economy's degree of entrepreneurship more generally. The authors document how often bankruptcy is actually being used for a panel of 35 countries. Next they investigate the effects of specific design features of insolvency regimes in relation to the quality of the countries'overall judicial systems on the use of bankruptcy. The authors find, correcting for overall financial development and macroeconomic shocks, that bankruptcies are higher in Anglo-Saxon countries and in market-oriented financial systems characterized by weaker and multiple banking relationships. They also find that greater judicial efficiency is associated with more use of bankruptcy, but that the combination of stronger creditor rights with greater judicial efficiency leads to less use. The authors find that the presence of a"stay on assets"leads to fewer bankruptcies independent of the efficiency of the judicial system. These findings suggest that there are important incentive effects of insolvency systems encouraging less risky behavior and more out-of-court settlements.Labor Policies,International Terrorism&Counterterrorism,Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Strategic Debt Management,Banks&Banking Reform,Strategic Debt Management,Banks&Banking Reform,Housing Finance,Economic Theory&Research,Legal Products

Forecasting volatility in commodity markets

Commodity prices have historically been among the most volatile of international prices. Measured volatility (the standard deviation of price changes) has not been below 15 percent and at times has been more than 50 percent. Often the volatility of commodity prices has exceeded that of exchange rates and interest rates. The large price variations are caused by disturbances in demand and supply. Stockholding leads to some price smoothing, but when stocks are low, prices can jump sharply. As a result, commodity price series are not stationary and in some periods they jump abruptly to high levels or fall precipitously to low levels relative to their long-run average. Thus it is difficult to determine long-term price trends and the underlying distribution of prices. The volatility of commodity prices makes price forecasting difficult. Indeed, realized prices often deviate greatly from forecasted prices, which has led to the practice of giving forecasts probability ranges. But assigning probability ranges requires forecasting future price volatility, which, given uncertainties about true price distribution, is difficult. One potentially useful source of information for forecasting volatility is the volatility forecasts imbedded in the prices of options written on commodities traded in exchanges. Options give the holder the right to buy (call) or sell (put) a certain commodity at a certain date at a fixed (exercise) price. Options prices depend on several variables, one of which is the expected volatility up to the maturity date. Given a specific theoretical model, the market prices of options can be used to derive the market's expectations about price volatility and the price distribution. The authors systematically analyze different methods'abilities to forecast commodity price volatility (for several commodities). They collected the daily prices of commodity options and other variables for seven commodities (cocoa, corn, cotton, gold, silver, sugar, and wheat). They extracted the volatility forecasts implicit in options prices using several techniques. They compared several volatility forecasting methods, divided into three categories: (1) forecasts using only expectations derived form options prices; (2) forecasts using only time-series modeling; (3) forecasts that combine market expectations and time-series modeling (a new method devised for this purpose). They find that the volatility forecasts produced by method 3 outperform the first two as well as the naive forecast based on historical volatility. This result holds both in and out of sample for almost all commodities considered.Markets and Market Access,Access to Markets,Economic Theory&Research,Economic Forecasting,Science Education

Nonaffine rubber elasticity for stiff polymer networks

We present a theory for the elasticity of cross-linked stiff polymer networks. Stiff polymers, unlike their flexible counterparts, are highly anisotropic elastic objects. Similar to mechanical beams stiff polymers easily deform in bending, while they are much stiffer with respect to tensile forces (``stretching''). Unlike in previous approaches, where network elasticity is derived from the stretching mode, our theory properly accounts for the soft bending response. A self-consistent effective medium approach is used to calculate the macroscopic elastic moduli starting from a microscopic characterization of the deformation field in terms of ``floppy modes'' -- low-energy bending excitations that retain a high degree of non-affinity. The length-scale characterizing the emergent non-affinity is given by the ``fiber length'' $l_f$, defined as the scale over which the polymers remain straight. The calculated scaling properties for the shear modulus are in excellent agreement with the results of recent simulations obtained in two-dimensional model networks. Furthermore, our theory can be applied to rationalize bulk rheological data in reconstituted actin networks.Comment: 12 pages, 10 figures, revised Section II

(Dodecafluorosubphthalocyaninato)(4-methylphenolato)boron(III)

In the title compound, C31H7BF12N6O, mol­ecules are arranged into one-dimensional columns with an inter­molecular B⋯B distance of 5.3176 (8) Å. Bowl-shaped mol­ecules are arranged within the columns in a concave bowl-to-ligand arrangement separated by a ring centroid distance of 3.532 (2) Å between the benzene ring of the 4-methyl­phen­oxy ligand and one of the three five-membered rings of a symmetry-related mol­ecule

Patching in reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatographic materials studied by solid-state NMR spectrometry

The distribution of silane chains over the silica gel surface in reversed-phase high-performance liq. chromatog. (RP-HPLC) phases was studied with special attention being paid to surface homogeneity: there might be areas with high coverage and areas with low coverage of silane chains, hence clustering or patching of the silane chains can occur. Two RP phases were studied before and after well conditioned aging, together with 4 silylated silica gels (serving as models). Two solid-state NMR techniques (e.g.,1H-29Si dipolar dephasing 29Si cross-polarization magic angle spinning NMR and 13C spin-lattice relaxation in the rotating frame) were used. For the 4 model compds. with varying degrees of coverage, only differences in the NMR time consts. were obsd. between the maximally covered phase and the 3 less densely covered silica gels. This proves that silane chains on an RP phase with max. coverage are restricted in their mobilities with respect to the less densely packed materials. For the 2 non-aged RP phases, the silane chains are probably homogeneously distributed over the silica gel surface. Further, the non-aged RP phases were compared with their counterparts, aged under well defined exptl. conditions. After aging, no differences were found between the original and the aged phases, now indicating however, that patching had developed upon agein

ASSESSING CLIMATE CHANGE IMPACTS AND ADAPTATION STRATEGIES FOR SMALLHOLDER AGRICULTURAL SYSTEMS IN UGANDA

The debate on whether climate change will impact on peoples\u2019 livelihoods and, hence, the need to act is essentially over and has instead shifted to the development of strategies needed by different regions and countries to adapt to climate change effects. However, there is still scanty information necessary to ably address climate change related issues. There is a considerable knowledge gap with respect to climate change impact, vulnerability and adaptation to increased climate variability and change. In this paper, using the trade off analysis model, the impact of climate change on peoples\u2019 livelihoods and possible adaptation strategies to increase the resilience and sustainability of agricultural systems in three regions of Uganda (central, Masaka and southwest) are analysed. The results show that 70-97% of households will be adversely affected by climate change in Uganda. The southwest will be most affected due to smaller farm sizes and limited livelihood alternatives. There will be no positive gains from encroaching on swamps, which is one of the reported adaptation strategies to climate related stresses. Improving productivity of important crops (bananas for southwest, and sweet potatoes and bananas for central region), in addition to adoption of grade cattle will likely be a better adaptation strategy for climate change.Le d\ue9bat sur le fait que le changement climatique pourra affecter le mode de vie des populations et, ainsi la n\ue9cessit\ue9 d\u2019agir est arriv\ue9 et consiste \ue0 d\ue9velopper des strat\ue9gies en rapport avec les besoins de diff\ue9rentes r\ue9gions et pays pour l\u2019adaptation aux effets du changement climatique. Cependant, les informations disponibles sont encore insuffisantes afin d\u2019adresser correctement les probl\ue8mes y relatifs. Il existe tant de lacunes sur les connaissances en rapport avec les impacts du changement climatique, la vuln\ue9rabilit\ue9 et l\u2019adaptation \ue0 la variabilit\ue9 et changement climatique accrus. En utilisant le mod\ue8le du trade off analysis, cet article a analys\ue9 l\u2019impact du changement climatique sur le mode de vie des populations et des strat\ue9gies possibles d\u2019adaptation, afin d\u2019am\ue9liorer la r\ue9silience et la durabilit\ue9 des syst\ue8mes culturaux dans les trois r\ue9gions de l\u2019Ouganda (Centre, Masaka et sud- ouest). Les r\ue9sultats montrent que 70-97% des m\ue9nages seront touch\ue9s par des effets du changement climatique en Ouganda. Le sud-ouest sera le plus affect\ue9 par suite de tailles petites de ses exploitations et son mode de vie \ue0 moyens alternatifs limit\ue9s. L\u2019invasion des marais ne rapportera aucun gain positif qui est une des strat\ue9gies d\u2019adaptation indiqu\ue9es au stress climatique relatif. L\u2019am\ue9lioration de la productivit\ue9 des cultures importantes (bananiers au Sud-ouest, et les patates douces et le bananier dans la r\ue9gion centrale) en plus de l\u2019adoption des vaches am\ue9lior\ue9es pourra serait une meilleur strat\ue9gie d\u2019adaptation au changement climatique