Bank relationships and firms’ financial performance: the Italian experience

We examine the connection between the number of bank relationships and firms’ performance using a unique data set on Italian small firms for which banks are a major source of financing. Our evidence indicates that return on equity and return on assets decrease as the number of bank relationships increases, the effects being stronger for small firms than for large firms. We also find that the ratio of interest expense to assets increases as the number of relationships increases. Particularly for small firms, these results are consistent with finding that suggest that having fewer bank relationships reduces the information asymmetries and agency problems and outweighs the hold-up problems.bank relationships; small business lending; firms’ performance

Bank relationships and small firms’ financial performance

We examine the relationship between the number of bank relationships and firms’ performance, evaluating possible differential effects related to firms’ size. Our sample of firms from Italy includes many small firms, 99 percent of which are not listed and for which bank debt is a major source of financing. In the sample, 4 percent of the firms have a single bank relationship, and 66 percent of them have five or fewer relationships. We find that return on equity and return on assets decrease as the number of bank relationships increases, with a stronger relationship for small firms than for large firms. We also find that interest expense over assets increases as the number of relationships increases. Particularly for small firms, our results are consistent with analyses indicating that fewer bank relationships reduce information asymmetries and agency problems, which outweigh negative effects connected to holdup problems.

A multi-material transport problem and its convex relaxation via rectifiable GG-currents

In this paper we study a variant of the branched transportation problem, that we call multi-material transport problem. This is a transportation problem, where distinct commodities are transported simultaneously along a network. The cost of the transportation depends on the network used to move the masses, as it is common in models studied in branched transportation. The main novelty is that in our model the cost per unit length of the network does not depend only on the total flow, but on the actual quantity of each commodity. This allows to take into account different interactions between the transported goods. We propose an Eulerian formulation of the discrete problem, describing the flow of each commodity through every point of the network. We provide minimal assumptions on the cost, under which existence of solutions can be proved. Moreover, we prove that, under mild additional assumptions, the problem can be rephrased as a mass minimization problem in a class of rectifiable currents with coefficients in a group, allowing to introduce a notion of calibration. The latter result is new even in the well studied framework of the "single-material" branched transportation.Comment: Accepted: SIAM J. Math. Ana

Spin network setting of topological quantum computation

The spin network simulator model represents a bridge between (generalised) circuit schemes for standard quantum computation and approaches based on notions from Topological Quantum Field Theories (TQFTs). The key tool is provided by the fiber space structure underlying the model which exhibits combinatorial properties closely related to SU(2) state sum models, widely employed in discretizing TQFTs and quantum gravity in low spacetime dimensions.Comment: Proc. "Foundations of Quantum Information", Camerino (Italy), 16-19 April 2004, to be published in Int. J. of Quantum Informatio

Kinematic decomposition of IllustrisTNG disk galaxies: morphology and relation with morphological structures

We recently developed an automated method, auto-GMM to decompose simulated galaxies. It extracts kinematic structures in an accurate, efficient, and unsupervised way. We use auto-GMM to study the stellar kinematic structures of disk galaxies from the TNG100 run of IllustrisTNG. We identify four to five structures that are commonly present among the diverse galaxy population. Structures having strong to moderate rotation are defined as cold and warm disks, respectively. Spheroidal structures dominated by random motions are classified as bulges or stellar halos, depending on how tightly bound they are. Disky bulges are structures that have moderate rotation but compact morphology. Across all disky galaxies and accounting for the stellar mass within 3 half-mass radii, the kinematic spheroidal structures, obtained by summing up stars of bulges and halos, contribute ~45% of the total stellar mass, while the disky structures constitute 55%. This study also provides important insights about the relationship between kinematically and morphologically derived galactic structures. Comparing the morphology of kinematic structures with that of traditional bulge+disk decomposition, we conclude: (1) the morphologically decomposed bulges are composite structures comprised of a slowly rotating bulge, an inner halo, and a disky bulge; (2) kinematically disky bulges, akin to what are commonly called pseudo bulges in observations, are compact disk-like components that have rotation similar to warm disks; (3) halos contribute almost 30% of the surface density of the outer part of morphological disks when viewed face-on; and (4) both cold and warm disks are often truncated in central regions.Comment: 20 pages, 14 figures. Accepted for publication in ApJ. The mass fraction catalogue and images of the kinematically derived galactic structures are publicly available (https://www.tng-project.org/data/docs/specifications/#sec5m

Problematic phosphatic plates from the Silurian-Early Devonian of Bohemia, Czech Republic

Problematic phosphatic elements are reported for the first time from Bohemia, Czech Republic, and are attributed to Eurytholia bohemica n. sp. Similar mineralized elements, interpreted as sclerites, were known only in a very narrow interval from Middle-Late Ordovician beds bordering the Iapetus Ocean. This new report comes from the Silurian and Early Devonian and provides a significant range extension for these Problematica as well as an enlargement of their geographic extent. Comments open new perspectives in the interpretation of these elements

Advances in understanding large-scale responses of the water cycle to climate change

Globally, thermodynamics explains an increase in atmospheric water vapor with warming of around 7%/°C near to the surface. In contrast, global precipitation and evaporation are constrained by the Earth's energy balance to increase at ∼2–3%/°C. However, this rate of increase is suppressed by rapid atmospheric adjustments in response to greenhouse gases and absorbing aerosols that directly alter the atmospheric energy budget. Rapid adjustments to forcings, cooling effects from scattering aerosol, and observational uncertainty can explain why observed global precipitation responses are currently difficult to detect but are expected to emerge and accelerate as warming increases and aerosol forcing diminishes. Precipitation increases with warming are expected to be smaller over land than ocean due to limitations on moisture convergence, exacerbated by feedbacks and affected by rapid adjustments. Thermodynamic increases in atmospheric moisture fluxes amplify wet and dry events, driving an intensification of precipitation extremes. The rate of intensification can deviate from a simple thermodynamic response due to in‐storm and larger‐scale feedback processes, while changes in large‐scale dynamics and catchment characteristics further modulate the frequency of flooding in response to precipitation increases. Changes in atmospheric circulation in response to radiative forcing and evolving surface temperature patterns are capable of dominating water cycle changes in some regions. Moreover, the direct impact of human activities on the water cycle through water abstraction, irrigation, and land use change is already a significant component of regional water cycle change and is expected to further increase in importance as water demand grows with global population

First results from the IllustrisTNG simulations: A tale of two elements -- chemical evolution of magnesium and europium

The distribution of elements in galaxies provides a wealth of information about their production sites and their subsequent mixing into the interstellar medium. Here we investigate the distribution of elements within stars in the IllustrisTNG simulations. In particular, we analyze the abundance ratios of magnesium and europium in Milky Way-like galaxies from the TNG100 simulation (stellar masses ${\log} (M_\star / {\rm M}_\odot) \sim 9.7 - 11.2$). As abundances of magnesium and europium for individual stars in the Milky Way are observed across a variety of spatial locations and metallicities, comparison with the stellar abundances in our more than $850$ Milky Way-like galaxies provides stringent constraints on our chemical evolutionary methods. To this end we use the magnesium to iron ratio as a proxy for the effects of our SNII and SNIa metal return prescription, and a means to compare our simulated abundances to a wide variety of galactic observations. The europium to iron ratio tracks the rare ejecta from neutron star -- neutron star mergers, the assumed primary site of europium production in our models, which in turn is a sensitive probe of the effects of metal diffusion within the gas in our simulations. We find that europium abundances in Milky Way-like galaxies show no correlation with assembly history, present day galactic properties, and average galactic stellar population age. In general, we reproduce the europium to iron spread at low metallicities observed in the Milky Way, with the level of enhancement being sensitive to gas properties during redshifts $z \approx 2-4$. We show that while the overall normalization of [Eu/Fe] is susceptible to resolution and post-processing assumptions, the relatively large spread of [Eu/Fe] at low [Fe/H] when compared to that at high [Fe/H] is very robust.Comment: 18 pages, 14 figures, accepted to MNRA

Lagrangian spin parameter and coherent structures from trajectories released in a high-resolution ocean model

A study of the mesoscale eddy field in the presence of coherent vortices, by means of Lagrangian trajectories released in a high-resolution ocean model, is presented in this paper. The investigation confirms previous results drawn from real float data statistics (Veneziani et al., 2004) that the eddy field characteristics are due to the superposition of two distinct regimes associated with strong coherent vortices and with a typically more quiescent background eddy flow. The former gives rise to looping trajectories characterized by subdiffusivity properties due to the trapping effect of the vortices, while the latter produces nonlooping floats characterized by simple diffusivity features. Moreover, the present work completes the study by Veneziani et al. (2004) in regard to the nature of the spin parameter Ω, which was used in the Lagrangian stochastic model that best described the observed eddy statistics.The main result is that the spin obtained from the looping trajectories not only represents a good estimate of the relative vorticity of the vortex core in which the loopers are embedded, but it is also able to follow the vortex temporal evolution. The Lagrangian parameter Ω is then directly connected to the underlying Eulerian structure and could be used as a proxy for the relative vorticity field of coherent vortices