Family Law

Family La

Rating Agencies in the Face of Regulation

This paper develops a theoretical framework to shed light on variation in credit rating standards over time and across asset classes. Ratings issued by credit rating agencies serve a dual role: they provide information to investors and are used to regulate institutional investors. We show that introducing rating-contingent regulation that favors highly rated securities may increase or decrease rating informativeness, but unambiguously increases the volume of highly rated securities. If the regulatory advantage of highly rated securities is sufficiently large, delegated information acquisition is unsustainable, since the rating agency prefers to facilitate regulatory arbitrage by inflating ratings. Our model relates rating informativeness to the quality distribution of issuers, the complexity of assets, and issuers\u27 outside options. We reconcile our results with the existing empirical literature and highlight new, testable implications, such as repercussions of the Dodd-Frank Act

Geographische Beiträge zur abiotischen Ausstattung des Biosphärenreservats Rhön

Durch die Untersuchungen zur abiotischen Ausstattung im Biosphärenreservat Rhön wurden neue wissenschaftliche Kenntnisse und Erkenntnisse erarbeitet, die auch für die biotische Forschung sowie den Arten- und Biotopschutz von großer Bedeutung sind. Durch eine Integration abiotischer und biotischer Forschungsansätze, wie sie gerade für Biosphärenreservate typisch sein sollte (SCHAAF 1998), sind noch weit mehr neue, z.T. sogar spektakuläre Erkenntnisse, z.B. über Reliktarten und die Artenevolution, zu erwarten. Andererseits stellen die hier kurz vorgestellten Ergebnisse zur abiotischen Ausstattung im Biosphärenreservat wichtige Informationen für die Öffentlichkeitsarbeit des Biosphärenreservats und der gesamten Region dar. Eine anschauliche Präsentation von mehr abiotischen Besonderheiten vor Ort und in geeigneten Informationsmedien dürfte zur Erhöhung der Attraktivität und damit auch zu mehr Besuchern in der Region beitragen

The Word and the Flesh: Religion, Medicine, and Protestant Faith Healing Narratives in North America, 1880-1910

In the last two decades of the nineteenth century, a veritable explosion of narratives appeared detailing experiences of faith healing. Because these narratives were written as first-person testimonials to faith healing and published in religious journals, they have been neglected as a potential source for exploring late-Victorian perceptions of medical culture, health, and the body. An examination of Protestant healing testimonials and their relationship to the medical culture of North America between 1880 and 1910 indicates that faith healing was not isolated from broader social trends, nor was it a backward reaction. While medicine attempted to distance itself from religion, these personal narratives bridged the two realms, shaping a new understanding of the body and creating a legitimate space for the expression of a personal voice within the context of a transforming medical culture.Durant les deux dernières décennies du XIXe siècle, les écrits relatant des expériences de guérison par la foi ont connu une véritable explosion. Comme ces écrits étaient rédigés sous forme de témoignages à la première personne d’expériences de guérison par la foi et paraissaient dans des revues religieuses, on les a négligés comme piste d’exploration possible des perceptions de fin d’époque victorienne de la culture médicale, de la santé et du corps. Il ressort d’un examen des témoignages de Protestants sur la guérison et de leur rapport avec la culture médicale nordaméricaine entre 1880 et 1910 que la guérison par la foi n’était ni un phénomène en marge des tendances sociales, ni une réaction arriérée. Si la médecine tentait de se distancer de la religion, ces écrits personnels, eux, faisaient le pont entre les deux royaumes, façonnant une nouvelle compréhension du corps et créant un espace légitime pour l’expression d’une voix personnelle dans le contexte d’une culture médicale en transformation

Cross-Functional Partnering and Empowerment in Storagetek Business Unit: Action Research Project

Employees in Corporate Printing, Literature Distribution, and Software Manufacturing at StorageTek believed empowerment and cross-functional partnering was not meeting their expectations. Based on this information, an action research project was executed to look at the reasons for this feedback, and recommend corrective action to this issue. The process started with the facilitator of the project creating a collaborative team. The team used secondary data, and collected data through individual interviews, group interviews, and focus group meetings. The data analysis resulted in the recommendation that changes to training, goal defining, job titles, task clarification, and to the rewards and recognition be implemented to improve empowerment and cross-functional partnering in the departments

Family Law

Family La

Intertemporal Information Acquisition and Investment Dynamics

This paper studies intertemporal information acquisition by agents that are rational Bayesian learners and that dynamically optimize over consumption, investment in capital, and investment in information. The model predicts that investors acquire more information in times when future capital productivity is expected to be high, the cost of capital is low, new technologies are expected to have a persistent impact on productivity, and the scalability of investments is expected to be high. My results shed light on the economic mechanisms behind various dynamic aspects of information production by the financial sector, such as the sources of variation in returns on information acquisition for investment banks or private equity funds

Letter Granting Delta Psi Omega Charter, 1951

A letter granting the Northwestern Junior College theater department a charter of Delta Psi Omega.https://nwcommons.nwciowa.edu/theoracorrespondence/1000/thumbnail.jp

Learning, Active Investors, and the Returns of Financially Distressed Firms

I develop an analytically tractable dynamic asset pricing model to study expected returns of financially distressed firms in the presence of learning about firm fundamentals and endogenous information acquisition by active investors. The model reveals that learning and information acquisition critically affect lowfrequency risk exposures close to default and can, counter to standard models, rationalize low and even negative expected return premia for firms with high default risk. Similar to Schumpeter’s (1934) argument that recessions have a positive, cleansing effect on the economy, the model reveals that equity holders naturally benefit from an increased speed of learning about truly insolvent firms in downturns, which positively affects the value of their default option in these times. Equity holders’ option value is similarly enhanced by the ability to partially freeride on active investors’ information acquisition. Learning thus dynamically affects distressed firms’ exposures to business-cycle frequency risks and can rationalize striking, momentum-type dynamics in risk premia