Does Corporate Governance Matter in Deposit Insurance? DI and Moral Hazard in Joint Stock and Mutual Financial Intermediaries

In this paper, we analyze the differences of effects of a deposit insurance schemes on financial cooperative and joint stock banks risk taking. We develop a methodology which includes the specifics of the utility function for the financial cooperative and we compare the results to a similar profit maximizing joint stock bank. We find that the introduction of deposit insurance does in fact increase optimal risk level for the financial cooperative but less so than the stock bank. Thus, corporate governance does matter in the level of risk exposure of a deposit insurance scheme. Further, like in joint stock banks, this moral hazard can be curbed through incentives such as risk adjusted premias, risk adjusted regulatory capital and possibly reserve requirements.

When For-Profit Companies Evaluate Potential Nonprofit Partners Focused on Youth Development, what is the Role of Symbolic Brand Association in that Evaluation?

Literature suggests that, “symbolic associations refer to the abstract cognitions that translate the values of the organization, personality traits associated with the brand and even emotions” (Michaelidou, Micevski, & Cadogan, 2015, p. 1658). Here, in order to measure the value of clear and powerful symbolic brand associations for nonprofits as they seek corporate support, commercial managers evaluated the symbolic brand associations of five nonprofit organizations devoted to youth development through sport. This type of commercial-nonprofit linkage warranted analysis due to the association benefits offered by both sport and youth. Professionals in this sector, standard literature from both commercial and nonprofit sectors, and current professional resources give us a background on the intricacies of the partnership marketplace as it exists today, offering potential reasons for each sector to engage in mutual partnership. This research adds to the literature by helping us determine the role that symbolic brand associations have in this intersection and by helping nonprofit managers understand the value of such associations in a process full of brief psychological judgment. Usefulness, efficiency, dynamism, affect, reliability, ethicality, and typicality were the measured associations. Affect (compassionate, favorable, friendly) and reliability (responsible, reputable, sincere) of the nonprofit were the two associations that correlated most strongly with corporate engagement (money, time, resources, partnership, leveraging). This correlation underscores the value of clearly articulated symbolic brand associations. Strategies from literature and examples from successful corporate development teams in the nonprofit sector begin to help us understand how symbolic associations are used to create relevance for nonprofits that can use these associations to find connections and grow their corporate alliances

The Effects of Applied Technology Instruction on Mathematics Achievement and Career Interests of Urban Seventh-Grade Students

The present study has been implemented to provide insight as to how, given limited resources, Technology Education curricula might be developed to best support the unique goals of an urban middle school aerospace magnet program. It was hypothesized that applied academic strategies, including interdisciplinary hands-on aerospace and computer-assisted instructional activities, would affect larger gains in mathematics achievement and would enhance career-interest development of urban seventh-grade students to a greater degree than would non-participation in such instruction. A randomized subjects, pretest-posttest control group design was used to assess treatment effects upon 71 urban seventh-grade students. Dependent variables were measured using the The Metropolitan Achievement Test, Sixth Edition-Mathematics Survey Tests (MAT6)\sp\circler and the Interest Determination, Exploration and Assessment System\sp\circler. Significant gains in mathematics achievement were made in applying mathematical concepts and computational processes to the solution of mathematical problems as a result of treatment conditions only. Measures of career interests indicated significant decreases in interest levels of treatment subjects in Social and Conventional themes which included the fields of Community Service, Educating, Child Care, and Office Practices. However, inferences were inconsistent and more research has been recommended

A Study Comparing the Design and Engineering Problem-solving Abilities of Students that have Received Varying Amounts of Prior Mathematical Instruction

The problem of this study was to compare the problem solving abilities of students in grades nine through twelve that have completed either one, two, or three, thirty-six week courses in the subject area of mathematics in order to determine how much mathematical instruction is necessary as a prerequisite to the successful completion of instructional activities integral to the contemporary high school technology education curricula

An Understanding of the Shoulder of Giants: Jovian Planets around Late K Dwarf Stars and the Trend with Stellar Mass

Analyses of exoplanet statistics suggest a trend of giant planet occurrence with host star mass, a clue to how planets like Jupiter form. One missing piece of the puzzle is the occurrence around late K dwarf stars (masses of 0.5-0.75Msun and effective temperatures of 3900-4800K). We analyzed four years of Doppler radial velocities data of 110 late K dwarfs, one of which hosts two previously reported giant planets. We estimate that 4.0+/-2.3% of these stars have Saturn-mass or larger planets with orbital periods <245d, depending on the planet mass distribution and RV variability of stars without giant planets. We also estimate that 0.7+/-0.5% of similar stars observed by Kepler have giant planets. This Kepler rate is significantly (99% confidence) lower than that derived from our Doppler survey, but the difference vanishes if only the single Doppler system (HIP 57274) with completely resolved orbits is considered. The difference could also be explained by the exclusion of close binaries (without giant planets) from the Doppler but not Kepler surveys, the effect of long-period companions and stellar noise on the Doppler data, or an intrinsic difference between the two populations. Our estimates for late K dwarfs bridge those for solar-type stars and M dwarfs and support a positive trend with stellar mass. Small sample size precludes statements about finer structure, e.g. a "shoulder" in the distribution of giant planets with stellar mass. Future surveys such as the Next Generation Transit Survey and the Transiting Exoplanet Satellite Survey will ameliorate this deficiency.Comment: Accepted to The Astrophysical Journa

Glacial/interglacial changes in mineral dust and sea-salt records in polar ice cores: sources, transport, and deposition

Sea salt and mineral dust records as represented by Na+ and Ca2+ concentrations, respectively, in Greenland and Antarctic ice cores show pronounced glacial/interglacial variations. For the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) mineral dust (sea salt) concentrations in Greenland show an increase of a factor of approximately 80 (15) compared to the Holocene and significant shifts by a factor of 15 (5) during Dansgaard Oeschger events. In Antarctica, the dust (sea salt) flux is enhanced by a factor of 15 (3) during the LGM compared to the Holocene and variations by approximately a factor of 8 (1-2) exist in parallel to Antarctic warm events. Primary glacial dust sources are the Asian deserts for Greenland and Patagonia for Antarctica. Ice core evidence and model results show that both changes in source strength as well as atmospheric transport and lifetime contributed to the observed changes in Greenland ice cores. In Antarctica changes in ice core fluxes are in large parts related to source variations both for sea salt and dust, where the formation of sea salt aerosol from sea ice may play a pivotal role. Summarizing our latest estimates on changes in sources, transport and deposition these processes are roughly able to explain the glacial increase in sea salt in both polar regions while they fall short by at least a factor of 4-7 for mineral dust. Future improvements in model resolution and in the formulation of source and transport processes together with new ice core records, e.g. on dust size distributions, will eventually allow to converge models and observations

Cavity-Catalyzed Hydrogen Transfer Dynamics in an Entangled Molecular Ensemble under Vibrational Strong Coupling

Microcavities have been shown to influence the reactivity of molecular ensembles by strong coupling of molecular vibrations to quantized cavity modes. In quantum mechanical treatments of such scenarios, frequently idealized models with single molecules and scaled, effective molecule-cavity interactions or alternatively ensemble models with simplified model Hamiltonians are used. In this work, we go beyond these models by applying an ensemble variant of the Pauli-Fierz Hamiltonian for vibro-polaritonic chemistry and numerically solve the underlying time-dependent Schr\"odinger equation to study the cavity-induced quantum dynamics in an ensemble of thioacetylacetone (TAA) molecules undergoing hydrogen transfer under vibrational strong coupling (VSC) conditions. Beginning with a single molecule coupled to a single cavity mode, we show that the cavity indeed enforces hydrogen transfer from an enol to an enethiol configuration with transfer rates significantly increasing with light-matter interaction strength. This positive effect of the cavity on reaction rates is different from several other systems studied so far, where a retarding effect of the cavity on rates was found. It is argued that the cavity ``catalyzes'' the reaction by transfer of virtual photons to the molecule. The same concept applies to ensembles with up to $N=20$ TAA molecules coupled to a single cavity mode, where an additional, significant, ensemble-induced collective isomerization rate enhancement is found. The latter is traced back to complex entanglement dynamics of the ensemble, which we quantify by means of von Neumann-entropies. A non-trivial dependence of the dynamics on ensemble size is found, clearly beyond scaled single-molecule models, which we interpret as transition from a multi-mode Rabi to a system-bath-type regime as $N$ increases.Comment: Manuscript 9 pages, 5 figures (minor changes in v2). Supplementary Information 7 pages, 5 figures (Section III rewritten in v2 after peer-review