Protection for whom? creditor conflicts in bankruptcy

Revised. In this article we provide a rationale for bankruptcy law that is based on the conflicts among creditors that occur when a debtor’s liabilities exceed its assets. In the absence of a bankruptcy law, the private debt-collection remedies that creditors pursue when a debtor is insolvent result in an ad hoc disposal of the debtor’s assets, thereby reducing the aggregate value of creditors’ claims. We show that coordination clauses can be used by creditors in their loan agreements that will result in coordination, ex post. Although all creditors would benefit from including these clauses in their contracts, they nevertheless choose not to in precisely those circumstances in which it is desirable to coordinate. This is an important insight because previous theories supporting a role for bankruptcy law are based on the notion that creditors want to contract about bankruptcy, but cannot. In contract, we demonstrate that creditors will choose not to coordinate ex ante, even though it is in their best interest ex post. ; We also examine a variety of other contractual mechanisms, including covenants and seniority, and show that although including these terms in loan contracts can improve creditors’ incentives to write coordination clauses, they do so only in special circumstances. Our analysis of creditor conflicts and the potential for private contracting remedies provides an economic rationale for the existence of a bankruptcy law that mandates ex post coordination among the creditors of an insolvent debtor.Bankruptcy

Self-selection and discrimination in credit markets

This paper increases understanding of the causes and consequences of discrimination in credit markets. It develops an underwriting model in which lenders use a simple Bayesian updating process to evaluate applicant creditworthiness. It also models individuals' self-selection behavior to show how market frictions can affect application decisions.Mortgages ; Discrimination in consumer credit

Beneath the rhetoric: clarifying the debate on mortgage lending discrimination

The authors' simple model of the mortgage underwriting process provides a framework within which to define discrimination and various notions of the default rate. By providing those with differing views a common framework for discussing their positions, the model clarifies and reconciles some of the most controversial issues in the debate over mortgage discrimination. It also shows how this theoretical framework can help in the design of practical policy responses to this vexing social problem.Discrimination in mortgage loans ; Mortgages

Tropical Geometry and the Motivic Nearby Fiber

We construct motivic invariants of a subvariety of an algebraic torus from its tropicalization and initial degenerations. More specifically, we introduce an invariant of a compactification of such a variety called the "tropical motivic nearby fiber." This invariant specializes in the schon case to the Hodge-Deligne polynomial of the limit mixed Hodge structure of a corresponding degeneration. We give purely combinatorial expressions for this Hodge-Deligne polynomial in the cases of schon hypersurfaces and smooth tropical varieties. We also deduce a formula for the Euler characteristic of a general fiber of the degeneration.Comment: 27 pages. Compositio Mathematica, to appea

The absorption principle and E-type anaphora

The Absorption Principle is a principle of situation theory which restricts the kinds of parametric information which is available. In particular it rules out abstraction over variable occurrences in parametric restrictions (unless the parameter itself is included). In "Anaphora and Quantification in Situation Semantics", Gawron and Peters showed that the Absorption Principle has intuitively correct consequences in applications to quantificational and anaphoric semantics, but Sem, Saebo, Verne and Vestre (1990) point out cases of incorrect consequences. The present paper provides an analysis of the problematic cases in which the Absorption Principle is maintained. A key part of the analysis is the postulation that anaphors may have quantified NPs as antecedents, a position which has been vigorously advocated by Evans (1980). As a consequence, anaphors of this type are called E-Type\u27. We argue that the pronoun it\u27 in the following discourse must be analyzed as E-Type: Tom has exactly one car. It is red. We provide an analysis of E-Type anaphora with the following properties: (i) the type of the anaphor is derived from the conservative scope of its antecedent; (ii) its semantics is provided by a choice function; and (iii) there is a pragmatic condition that the choice function not be controlled either by speaker or hearer in the discourse. We demonstrate how this accounts for a wide range of facts, including apparently varying quantificational force

Speaker commitments: Presupposition

The view that presuppositions are a variety of speaker commitment is supported by showing that deviance results from presupposing something while undertaking incompatible commitments. Similarities and differences in projection patterns of presuppositions and conversational implicatures, which are not speaker commitments, reveal the ease with which projected conversational implicatures can be mistaken for presuppositions and also the importance of not confounding the two. Some predictions of recent proposals for a unitary account of all projective content (Simons et al. 2010, 2015) are examined, and criticism of some predictions is presented along with some counterevidence. The conclusion is that any theory of presupposition must respect the fact that presuppositions are speaker commitments

Potential Celecoxib analogue precursors derived via Aldol condensation

https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/student_scholarship_posters/1080/thumbnail.jp

Statistical mechanics in the context of special relativity

In the present effort we show that $S_{\kappa}=-k_B \int d^3p (n^{1+\kappa}-n^{1-\kappa})/(2\kappa)$ is the unique existing entropy obtained by a continuous deformation of the Shannon-Boltzmann entropy $S_0=-k_B \int d^3p n \ln n$ and preserving unaltered its fundamental properties of concavity, additivity and extensivity. Subsequently, we explain the origin of the deformation mechanism introduced by $\kappa$ and show that this deformation emerges naturally within the Einstein special relativity. Furthermore, we extend the theory in order to treat statistical systems in a time dependent and relativistic context. Then, we show that it is possible to determine in a self consistent scheme within the special relativity the values of the free parameter $\kappa$ which results to depend on the light speed $c$ and reduces to zero as $c \to \infty$ recovering in this way the ordinary statistical mechanics and thermodynamics. The novel statistical mechanics constructed starting from the above entropy, preserves unaltered the mathematical and epistemological structure of the ordinary statistical mechanics and is suitable to describe a very large class of experimentally observed phenomena in low and high energy physics and in natural, economic and social sciences. Finally, in order to test the correctness and predictability of the theory, as working example we consider the cosmic rays spectrum, which spans 13 decades in energy and 33 decades in flux, finding a high quality agreement between our predictions and observed data. PACS number(s): 05.20.-y, 51.10.+y, 03.30.+p, 02.20.-aComment: 17 pages (two columns), 5 figures, RevTeX4, minor typing correction