Penalties and Optimality in Financial Contracts: Taking Stock

A popular view of limited liability in financial contracting is that it is the result of societal preferences against excessive penalties. The view of most financial economists is instead that limited liability emerged as an optimal institution when, in the absence of a clear limit on economic agents liability, the development of some economic activities might have been thwarted. Viewing the institution from the perspective of optimal legal system design allows us to better understand the current debate on it. We present a broad history of penalties in financial contracts to highlight the interactions between technology, legal environments, purpose of the financial relationship, and contractual provisions. We show that harsh monetary and non-pecuniary penalties are not mere relics from a bygone era and, at the same time, that limited liability is far from a recent institution. We then discuss trade-offs associated with legal mandates of either unlimited or limited liability, both for the contracting parties and for the rest of Society. We identify two broad patterns. First, the toughness of liability rules and bankruptcy laws decreases as exogenous sources of uncertainty become relatively more important, and increases with the opportunity for moral hazard (related to diligence, risk taking, or deception). Second, bankruptcy laws become more lenient as the scope for labor specialization and the returns to human capital or entrepreneurship increase.Limited Liability, Bankruptcy, Debt Bondage, Debtors' Prison, History

Should they stay or should they go? Reactivation and Termination of Low-Tier Customers: Effects on Satisfaction, Word-of-Mouth, and Purchases

Many companies face the problem of having a substantial number of low-tier customers ? clients at the bottom of the customer pyramid. For this segment, it is necessary to either reactivate or terminate the customer relationships to increase profitability. Managers seek to learn more about marketing actions targeted towards low-tier customers and their response towards these actions. Therefore, we conducted a large field experiment in which we implemented a ?last call? marketing action for a large sample of low-tier customers of a catalogue retailer (N = 12,000). The action aims at sales reactivation, but in case a customer should not react, the relationship will be terminated. We measure customer response in terms of satisfaction, (positive and negative) word-of-mouth, and purchase behavior. We find no harmful effects from relationship termination, such as dissatisfaction or negative word-of-mouth. The results indicate that the ?last call? marketing action reactivates a small fraction of the low-tier customers. These customers remain active in the months following the action period. We discuss managerial implications of our findings and future research on low-tier customer segments.

LE DÉTACHEMENT EST-IL UNE PROPRIÉTÉ BASIQUE<br />DE LA PRÉDICATION SECONDE?

International audienceLa prédication seconde est globalement caractérisée comme « un type de séquence qui, malgré son statut syntaxiquementintégré, exprime sémantiquement un contenu phrastique à l?intérieur même de la phrase » (Cadiot & Furukawa, 2000 : 3). Nous confronterons cette définition aux critères, proposés pour définir le détachement (en particulier dans Fradin, 1988, 1990 ; Combettes, 1998b ; Neveu, 2003c) afin d'évaluer dans quelle mesure ces deux notions recouvrent des propriétés identiques et sous quelles conditions elles peuvent se combiner

Mineração, estruturação e disseminação de conhecimento especializado em engenharia de petróleo

Orientadores: Celso Kazuyuki Morooka, Kazuo MiuraDissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Faculdade de Engenharia Mecânica e Instituto de GeociênciasResumo: A aquisição e transmissão de conhecimento são tarefas essenciais que todos os indivíduos e empresas devem enfrentar para subsistir e progredir. Na indústria do petróleo grandes quantidades de textos são estruturados diariamente para facilitar a disseminação de conhecimento, mas o ser humano não tem a habilidade de ler, compreender e lembrar tal quantidade de informação sem ajuda de sistemas computadorizados. Com o propósito de promover a disseminação de conhecimento sobre a engenharia petrolífera a dissertação propõe uma metodologia que permite a aquisição e a disseminação do conhecimento. A metodologia permite extrair os conhecimentos contidos em documentos textuais e mostrá-los graficamente usando mineração de textos e técnicas de visualização. Tal metodologia foi aplicada em duas bases de dados que são Alertas de Segurança da BSEE e teses de doutorado e dissertações de mestrado da UNICAMP as considerando repletas de conhecimento para a indústria de petróleo. A metodologia foi aplicada duas vezes na base de dados da BSEE. A primeira vez para conhecer o conteúdo geral e a segunda para especializar o conhecimento sobre a construção de poços. Os resultados obtidos são "conceitos relevantes" referentes à construção de poços sobre os quais foram construídas três estruturas de conhecimento. Estas estruturas evidenciam as relações existentes e a relevância desses conceitos. Os modelos de conhecimento estruturado obtidos podem ser utilizados para disseminar conhecimento, classificar lições aprendidas, treinar pessoal, visualizar e navegar em conteúdo. O resultado principal desta aplicação é um grafo de conhecimento multicamada que permite a busca por conteúdo e a eficiente recuperação de documentos. A qualidade dos resultados oriundos desta metodologia foram confirmados através de dois testes. O primeiro teste consistiu em buscar dentro da base de dados da UNICAMP, documentos relevantes para estudantes do programa de pós graduação em ciências e engenharia de petróleo (CEP) que estavam realizando trabalhos em diferentes linhas de pesquisa. O segundo teste incidiu em encontrar Alertas de Segurança utilizando palavras chaves idênticas por diferentes motores de busca (motor de busca da BSEE, Google e o método proposto). Os resultados obtidos em ambos os testes mostram a efetividade da metodologia proposta em processar bases de dados locais e especializadasAbstract: Acquisition and transmission of knowledge are essential tasks that all individual and enterprises face to subsist and progress. In the petroleum industry large amounts of texts are daily structured to facilitate the dissemination of knowledge but the human being does not have the ability to read, comprehend and remember such amount of information without the help of computerized systems. With the purpose of promoting the dissemination of knowledge about the petroleum engineering the dissertation proposes a methodology that allows acquisition and dissemination of knowledge. The methodology enables to extract the knowledge contained in textual documents and illustrates it in a graphical format, using text mining and visualization techniques. Such methodology has been applied in two databases, BSEE¿s Safety Alerts and doctoral thesis and master dissertations from CEP-UNICAMP, considering them meaningful sources of knowledge for petroleum industry. On BSEE's database, the methodology has been applied twice. The first time to notice the general content and the second time to specialize the knowledge on well construction. The results obtained are "relevant concepts" about well construction, with which were built three structures of knowledge. Those structures display the relevance and relationship between concepts and can be useful to disseminate knowledge, classify learned lessons, train personnel, visualize and navigate on content. The main result of application is a "Multilayer Knowledge Graph" that allows the research for contents and efficient documents recovery. The quality of results provided by the methodology were confirmed by two tests. The first test consisted to find relevant documents to graduate students of the CEP (Graduate program in petroleum science and engineering) from UNICAMP's database, who were carrying out works in different lines of research. The second test consisted to find Safety Alerts by using identical keywords but different search engines (BSEE's search engine, Google and the proposed method). Results obtained from both tests demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed methodology in processing local and specialized databasesMestradoExplotaçãoMestra em Ciências e Engenharia de Petróleo190568/2013-5CNP

Texture Analysis with Arbitrarily Oriented Morphological Opening and Closing

13 pagesThis paper presents a fast, streaming algorithm for 1-D morphological opening on 2-D support. The algorithm is further extended to compute the complete size distribution during a single image run. The Structuring Element (SE) can be oriented under arbitrary angle that allows us to perform different orientation-involved image analysis, such as local angle extraction, directional granulometries, \etc The algorithm processes an image in constant time irrespective of the SE orientation and size, with a minimal latency and very low memory requirements. Regardless the SE orientation, it reads and writes data strictly sequentially in the horizontal scan order. Aforementioned properties allow an efficient implementation in embedded hardware platforms that opens a new opportunity of a parallel computation, and consequently, a significant speed-up

Inventing tradition

Die vorliegende Dissertation behandelt die vielfältigen Formen der Bezugnahme auf die Alten Meister in der österreichischen Malerei des 20. Jahrhunderts. Der Schwerpunkt der Untersuchung liegt in der Zwischenkriegszeit (1918-1938), wo dem Rückbezug auf die Kunst früherer Epochen besondere Bedeutung zukam. Neben der paraphrasierenden Auseinandersetzung mit berühmten Vorbildern, der Übernahme einzelner Motive und der stilistischen Angleichung in Form einer „Wahlverwandtschaft“ war der selektive Rückgriff auf die Vergangenheit vor allem ein Mittel zur Stiftung von (nationaler) Identität und Legitimation. Davon zeugt insbesondere der Topos des Barocks als österreichischer „Nationalstil“, dessen Wurzeln bis ins 19. Jahrhundert zurückreichen. Parallel zur kunsthistorischen Erforschung der Barockkunst in den Zwanziger- und Dreißigerjahren setzte sich in der Kunstkritik über zeitgenössische österreichische Künstler der Begriff des „barocken Erbes“ fest, dessen vielschichtige Bedeutung in der vorliegenden Arbeit analysiert wird. So galt der Ausdruck „Barock“ unter anderem als Synonym für „Expressionismus“ und diente der Betonung des „Österreichischen“ in Opposition zum deutschen „gotischen“ Expressionismus. Die Studie thematisiert, welche Rolle Kunstkritik und Künstler selbst bei der Konstruktion von Tradition spielten, und inwieweit eine kunsthistorische Neubewertung der Vorbilder in deren Rezeption Niederschlag fand. Das letzte Kapitel der Dissertation bietet einen Ausblick auf die künstlerische Auseinandersetzung mit den Alten Meistern nach 1945.The present dissertation discusses the diverse forms of reference to the old masters in the Austrian painting of the 20th Century. The focus of the investigation lies in the inter-war period (1918-1938), where the return to the art of earlier eras was particularly important. Among paraphrasing famous models, motivic borrowings and stylistic approximation in terms of an “elective affinity”, the selective reference to the past was a means of creating (national) identity and legitimacy. This becomes evident in the topos of the baroque as an Austrian "National Style", whose roots lie in the 19th century. Parallel to the art historical research on Baroque art in the 1920s and 1930s, in the arts criticism of contemporary Austrian artists established the concept of “baroque heritage”, whose multifaceted role is analyzed in the present thesis. The term "Baroque" was applied as a synonym for "expressionism" and served to highlight the "Austrian" in opposition to the German "Gothic" expressionism. The study focuses on the role of art critics and artists in the construction of tradition, and to what extent an art-historical revaluation of the old masters influenced their reception. The last chapter of the dissertation offers an outlook to the artistic references of the old masters after 1945