The Creditors' Financial Reorganization Decision: New Evidence from Canadian Data

The paper examines a data set of 338 randomly selected financial reorganization plans filed in Canada during the period 1978-87. Creditors reject roughly 25% of reorganization plans, while about 20% of the plans creditors accept fail before completion, providing evidence of filtering failure in the reorganization process. A logit model of the creditors' reorganization decision produces two interesting results. Plans offering a high proportion of cash payments are more likely to be accepted by creditors, which we interpret as evidence that cash is a signal of financial viability. Plans with high ratios of secured debt are more likely to be accepted, which we interpret as evidence that secured creditors with insider knowledge signal information about the financial viability of firms to unsecured creditors. Ce document a pour but d'étudier le processus de réorganisation financière au Canada sur la base d'un échantillon de 338 propositions de réorganisations commerciales au cours de la période 1978-1987. Les données démontrent que 25 % des propositions sont rejetées par les créanciers non-garantis et qu'environ 20 % des propositions acceptées résultent éventuellement en un échec. Une analyse du comportement des créanciers lors du vote sur une proposition génère deux résultats intéressants. Premièrement, la probabilité d'acceptation d'une proposition augmente avec la proportion des paiements comptants fait aux créanciers. L'utilisation de paiements comptants est interprêtée comme un signal quand à la viabilité d'une firme. Deuxièmement, la probabilité d'acceptation d'une proposition augmente avec la proportion des créances garanties à l'intérieur de la firme. Ce résultat supporte la thèse à l'effet que les banques possèdent de l'information privilégiée sur la viabilité des entreprises et fournit une nouvelle évidence quant au rôle des banques dans la transmission de cette information vers les créanciers non-garantis.Financial reorganization; Creditors; Financial viability of firms, Réorganisation financière ; Créanciers ; Viabilité des entreprises

Should We Abolish Chapter 11 : Evidence from Canada

Over the last decade, Chapter 11 has been the brunt of serious criticism. Some American jurists arguing in favor of revising Chapter 11 have raised the possibility that the Canadian reorganization system might be a good alternative to the existing U.S. system. This article argues that there are fruitful lessons to be learned from the Canadian experience with court-supervised reorganization. Canadian evidence shows that acceptance, confirmation, and consummation rates of proposals are very high. Moreover, firms reorganizing in Canada are almost ten times more likely to survive reorganization than their American counterparts. Furthermore, Canadian data yield no support for the claim that problems with bankruptcy law result from an over-abundance of small firms in reorganization. The analysis also shows that the Canadian reorganization procedure offers a very rapid solution to financial distress and that creditors gain, in expected value terms, from reorganization over liquidation. Based on our evaluation of the relative performance of both systems, we argue that Chapter 11 be revised rather than repealed. Au cours de la dernière décennie, le Chapitre 11 du U.S. Bankruptcy Code a été l'objet de critiques importantes de la part de juristes et d'économistes américains. Récemment, un certain nombre de ces juristes ont soulevé la possibilité de réformer le Chapitre 11 sur la base du système canadien en matière de réorganisation commerciale. Le but du présent article est de démontrer que l'expérience canadienne en matière de réorganisation commerciale est révélatrice sur les réformes potentielles à apporter au Chapitre 11. Les données canadiennes montrent clairement que les taux d'acceptation, de confirmation et de succès des propositions commerciales sont très élevés. De plus, la probabilité de survie des firmes canadiennes en réorganisation est de dix fois supérieure à celle des firmes américaines. Les données canadiennes permettent également de rejeter l'affirmation selon laquelle l'échec de la procédure de réorganisation origine de son utilisation par les petites entreprises. Qui plus est, la procédure canadienne offre une solution rapide aux entreprises en difficultés financières et un rendement espéré aux créanciers supérieur par rapport à la procédure de liquidation. Sur la base de notre évaluation comparative des deux systèmes d'insolvabilité, nous suggérons la révision plutôt que l'abolition du Chapitre 11.Bankruptcy, Reorganization, Chapter 11, Bankruptcy Act, Faillite, Réorganisation, Chapitre 11, Loi sur la faillite

The Emergence of the Thick Disk in a CDM Universe II: Colors and Abundance Patterns

The recently emerging conviction that thick disks are prevalent in disk galaxies, and their seemingly ubiquitous old ages, means that the formation of the thick disk, perhaps more than any other component, holds the key to unravelling the evolution of the Milky Way, and indeed all disk galaxies. In Paper I, we proposed that the thick disk was formed in an epoch of gas rich mergers, at high redshift. This hypothesis was based on comparing N-body/SPH simulations to a variety of Galactic and extragalactic observations, including stellar kinematics, ages and chemical properties.Here examine our thick disk formation scenario in light of the most recent observations of extragalactic thick disks. In agreement, our simulted thick disks are old and relatively metal rich, with V-I colors that do not vary significantly with distance from the plane. Further, we show that our proposal results in an enhancement of alpha-elements in thick disk stars as compared with thin disk stars, consistent with observations of the relevant populations of the Milky Way. We also find that our scenario naturally leads to the formation of an old metal weak stellar halo population with high alpha-element abundances.Comment: submitted to Ap

Influence of single-neutron stripping on near-barrier ⁶He+²⁰⁸Pb and ⁸He+²⁰⁸Pb elastic scattering

The influence of single-neutron stripping on the near-barrier elastic scattering angular distributions for the 6,8He+208Pb systems is investigated through coupled reaction channels (CRC) calculations fitting recently published data to explore the differences in the absorptive potential found in the scattering of these two neutron-rich nuclei. The inclusion of the coupling reduces the elastic cross section in the Coulomb-nuclear interference region for 8He scattering, whereas for 6He its major impact is on the large-angle elastic scattering. The real and imaginary dynamic polarization potentials are obtained by inverting the CRC elastic scattering S-matrix elements. These show that the main absorptive features occur between 11 and 12 fm for both projectiles, while the attractive features are separated by about 1 fm, with their main structures occurring at 10.5 fm for 6He and 11.5 fm for 8He

Positron-neutrino correlations in 32Ar and 33Ar Decays: Probes of Scalar weak currents and nuclear isospin mixing

The positron-neutrino correlation in the 0^+ \to 0^+ \beta decay of ^{32}Ar was measured at ISOLDE by analyzing the effect of lepton recoil on the shape of the narrow proton group following the superallowed decay. Our result is consistent with the Standard Model prediction; for vanishing Fierz interference we find a=0.9989 \pm 0.0052 \pm 0.0036. Our result leads to improved constraints on scalar weak interactions. The positron-neutrino correlation in ^{33}Ar decay was measured in the same experiment; for vanishing Fierz interference we find a=0.944 \pm 0.002 \pm 0.003. The ^{32}Ar and ^{33}Ar correlations, in combination with precision measurements of the half-lives, superallowed branching ratios and beta endpoint energies, will determine the isospin impurities of the superallowed transitions. These will provide useful tests of isospin-violation corrections used in deducing |V_{\rm ud}| which currently indicates non-unitarity of the KM matrix.Comment: 15 pages, 6 figure

Temporal behavior of two-wave-mixing in photorefractive InP:Fe versus temperature

The temporal response of two-wave-mixing in photorefractive InP:Fe under a dc electric field at different temperatures has been studied. In particular, the temperature dependence of the characteristic time constant has been studied both theoretically and experimentally, showing a strongly decreasing time constant with increasing temperature

Experimental study of a liquid Xenon PET prototype module

A detector using liquid Xenon in the scintillation mode is studied for Positron Emission Tomography (PET). The specific design aims at taking full advantage of the liquid Xenon properties. It does feature a promising insensitive to any parallax effect. This work reports on the performances of the first LXe prototype module, equipped with a position sensitive PMT operating in the VUV range (178 nm).Comment: Proc. of the 7th International Workshops on Radiation Imaging Detectors (IWORID-7), Grenoble, France 4-7 July 200

Non-volatile molecular memory elements based on ambipolar nanotube field effect transistors

We have fabricated air-stable n-type, ambipolar carbon nanotube field effect transistors (CNFETs), and used them in nanoscale memory cells. N-type transistors are achieved by annealing of nanotubes in hydrogen gas and contacting them by cobalt electrodes. Scanning gate microscopy reveals that the bulk response of these devices is similar to gold-contacted p-CNFETs, confirming that Schottky barrier formation at the contact interface determines accessibility of electron and hole transport regimes. The transfer characteristics and Coulomb Blockade (CB) spectroscopy in ambipolar devices show strongly enhanced gate coupling, most likely due to reduction of defect density at the silicon/silicon-dioxide interface during hydrogen anneal. The CB data in the ``on''-state indicates that these CNFETs are nearly ballistic conductors at high electrostatic doping. Due to their nanoscale capacitance, CNFETs are extremely sensitive to presence of individual charge around the channel. We demonstrate that this property can be harnessed to construct data storage elements that operate at the few-electron level.Comment: 6 pages text, 3 figures and 1 table of content graphic; available as NanoLetters ASAP article on the we

Exploring the Moon: A teacher's guide with activities for Earth and space sciences

This guide contains educational materials designed for use in upper elementary through high schools with the Lunar Sample Disk. A set of thirty-six 35-mm slides complements the activities in this guidebook. The book contains: (1) information on the Lunar Sample Disk; (2) a curriculum content matrix; (3) a teacher's guide; (4) moon ABC's fact sheet; (5) rock ABC's fact sheet; (6) progress in Lunar Science chart; (7) seventeen activities; (8) a resource section for each unit; (9) a glossary; and (10) a list of NASA educational resources

Spectrum analysis of strong motion earthquakes

The problem of the dynamic response of a structure to an earthquake has been formulated in a manner which permits separation of the characteristics of particular structures from the characteristics of the earthquake. The expression involving the characteristics of the earthquake is defined as the "spectrum" of the earthquake and it is shown that the spectrum is simply a plot of the response of a simple oscillator versus the period of the oscillator. Eighty-eight such spectra were computed by means of an electric analog computer and are presented in this report. It is found that damping is a very important parameter in the overall problem; relatively small amounts of damping reduce structural response sharply. It is shown that, when damping is considered, the spectra are consistent with the hypothesis of a distribution about a mean value. It is concluded that the concept of a "dominant ground period" is not valid for the purpose of aseismic structural design. Further research on damping in buildings is recommended, and it is proposed that the mean value of a damped spectrum be used as a quantitative measure of earthquake intensity