Defaults in bank loans to SMEs during the financial crisis

We investigate the role of (business) collateral and (personal) guarantees alongside small and medium enterprise (SME), lending bank and loan characteristics, macroeconomic conditions, sectors, and geographic locations while controlling for unobserved time effects in predicting default at the peak of the financial crisis. First, we find a positive relation between collateral and default, and a negative relation between guarantees and default. Second, we find a negative relation between the joint influence of collateral and high credit score, and a positive relation between the joint influence of collateral and low credit score and default. We also find a negative relation between the joint influence of guarantees and high credit score. These findings are relevant for SME policies aimed at facilitating access to credit, reducing the cost of borrowing, and decreasing default; risk management of banks; and the application of theories of financial economics in the context of a financial crisis.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Credit risk, owner liability and bank loan maturities during the global financial crisis

We relate credit risk and owners’ personal guarantees to bank loan maturities during the global financial crisis. The findings, which remain robust to reverse causality, show that firms rated as low risk, with a strong relationship with the bank, whose owners provided personal guarantees and with large loan sizes obtained longer maturities. Banks with larger nonperforming loans provided loans with shorter maturities. Firms with low and high risk ratings that provided owners’ personal guarantees obtained longer maturities. These findings shed additional light on the relationship between risk and loan maturities and the role of personal guarantees in reducing information asymmetries.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Why discouraged borrowers exist? An empirical (re)examination from less developed countries

Using the fourth-round database of the Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey (2008/09 BEEPS), this study examines the determinants of discouragement in less developed countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. The results show that whereas firms' opaqueness, demographic factors, and distance between lenders and borrowers better explain the discouragement due to tough loan prices and/or loan application procedures, firm risk and banking concentration explain the incidence of discouraged borrowers due to the fear of rationing. Innovator status, the legal protection of creditors and lenders in the event of default, and the coverage of information sharing instruments help explain discouragement in a transversal way.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Trade-off analysis of a MAC protocol for wireless e-Emergency systems

Wireless sensor networks are envisioned to be deployed in healthcare. Since emergency and intensive care applications need to assure reliable and timely data delivery, they have increased demands for quality of service, including at the MAC layer. Amongst MAC protocols available for WSNs, the Low Power Real Time (LPRT) presents suitable characteristics to be deployed in emergency platforms due to its rational bandwidth allocation, low energy consumption, and bounded latency. Yet, this protocol may present a significant packet loss ratio in a wireless channel with bit error ratio. In order to define a MAC protocol more robust to bit error conditions and able to fulfill the required quality of service, solutions based on short size beacons and multiple retransmissions are proposed and tested. The results showed that such strategies led to meaningful improvements regarding packet loss ratio, without compromising significantly the energy consumption.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT

Wireless sensor networks with QoS for e-health and e-emergency applications

http://www.informatik.uni-trier.de/%7Eley/db/conf/icsoft/ehst2008.htmlMost body sensor networks (BSN) only offer best-effort service delivery, which may compromise the successful operation of emergency healthcare (e-emergency) applications. Due to its real-time nature, e-emergency systems must provide quality of service (QoS) support, in order to provide a pervasive, valuable and fully reliable assistance to patients with risk abnormalities. But what is the real meaning of QoS support within the e-emergency context? What benefits can QoS mechanisms bring to e-emergency systems, and how are they being deployed? In order to answer these questions, this paper firstly discusses the need of QoS in personal wireless healthcare systems, and then presents an overview of such systems with QoS. A case-study requiring QoS support, intended to be deployed in a healthcare unit, is presented, as well as an asynchronous medium access TDMA-based model

Cellulose-binding domains as a tool for paper recycling

Treatment of secondary paper fibres with cellulose-binding domains allows for improvements of pulp drainability and of paper mechanical properties. The interfacial system fibrewater- fibre, and after drying, fibre-air-fibre, may be affected by the CBD treatment, influencing the pulp and paper technical properties. Inverse Gas Chromatography provides experimental evidence that support this hypothesis

An improved MAC Protocol with reconfiguration scheme for Wireless e-Health Systems requiring quality of service

To provide a reliable assistance to patients, emergency and intensive care systems have increased demands for quality of service at different levels, including at the MAC layer. The Low Power Real Time (LPRT) MAC protocol presents suitable characteristics to address these demands due to its efficient bandwidth allocation, low energy consumption, and bounded latency. Yet, this MAC protocol may still present a significant packet loss ratio in a wireless channel affected by errors. In order to improve its robustness to bit error conditions, a solution based on short size beacons is proposed and tested. Results show that significant improvements regarding packet loss ratio and energy saving are obtained. A new reconfiguration scheme is also proposed so that a WSN using this solution may react optimally in accordance with the patients' clinical state.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) - SFRH/BD/34621/200

The COVID-19 impact on crowdfunding performance: Evidence from a peer to-peer lending platform

The COVID-19 impact on global poverty dragged another 97 million people into poverty in 2020. Nonetheless, there is scant evidence reporting on the impacts on alternative means of financing designed to enable the poor during this global health crisis. This paper addresses this gap of funding impoverished entrepreneurs by studying the changes in their successfully funded campaigns on the largest crowdfunding microfinance platform prior and during COVID-19. After collecting data from January 2018 to November 2021 for a total of 767,112 campaigns, we report that the COVID-19 pandemic positively impacts on the funding success of the crowdfunding campaigns. However, rises in the daily number of COVID-19 cases negatively associate with campaigns getting fully funded. The odds of campaigns being fully funded decrease by 4.4% for a one thousand increase in new cases.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Pathways to folding, nucleation events and native geometry

We perform extensive Monte Carlo simulations of a lattice model and the Go potential to investigate the existence of folding pathways at the level of contact cluster formation for two native structures with markedly different geometries. Our analysis of folding pathways revealed a common underlying folding mechanism, based on nucleation phenomena, for both protein models. However, folding to the more complex geometry (i.e. that with more non-local contacts) is driven by a folding nucleus whose geometric traits more closely resemble those of the native fold. For this geometry folding is clearly a more cooperative process.Comment: Accepted in J. Chem. Phy

Variabilidade genética em populações de milho de ciclo superprecoce. I. Estimação de parâmetros genéticos.

A estimacao de parametros geneticos em populacoes de milho permite obter informacoes sobre a natureza da acao dos genes envolvidos na heranca do carater estudado e estabelecer a base para a escolha dos metodos de melhoramento mais adequados. Objetivou-se estimar os parametros geneticos, produtividade media, herdabilidade no sentido restrito (b^2), indice de variacao (b^) e resposta a selecao, em sete populacoes de milho (Zea mays L.) de ciclo superprecoce (florescimento masculino inferior a 60 dias). O numero de progenies S1 variou de 196 a 400, avaliadas no CNPMS, Sete Lagoas-MG, em latice com duas repeticoes. A producao de espigas variou de 3,350 kg/ha (CMS 55) A 5.230 kg/ha (Across 8528). Os valores das estimativas aos encontrados na literatura. A CMS 37 apresentou os maiores valores para h2 (74,87 +/- 5,03). Quanto a resposta a selecao, os valores estimados mostraram variacoes de 12,720 g/pl (CMS 55) a 23,509 g/pl (CMS 37). As sete populacoes possuem variabilidade genetica suficiente para se obter progressos geneticos em programas de melhoramento usando-se metodos de selecao adequados