Does Informal Finance Help Formal Finance? Evidence from Third Party Loan Guarantees in China

Building on the important study by Allen, Qian and Qian (2005) and Ayyagari, Demirgüc-Kunt and Maksimovic (2010), we examine whether third party guarantors play an effective role in assessing loan risk. Using a proprietary database of third party loan guarantees in China, we find strong evidence that guarantors and banks disagree on pricing loan risk, and that banks can better predict loan defaults than guarantors. We also find that the probability of loan default is affected by the capability of guarantor officers. Our findings question the contribution of soft information in the improvement of credit scoring and support the view that informal finance should be limited. This paper also supports the implications of studies on human capital in financial intermediation.published_or_final_versio

Liquid-gas Phase Transition in Strange Hadronic Matter with Weak Y-Y Interaction

The liquid-gas phase transition in strange hadronic matter is reexamined by using the new parameters about the $\Lambda - \Lambda$ interaction deduced from recent observation of $^{6}_{\Lambda\Lambda}He$ double hypernucleus. The extended Furnstahl-Serot-Tang model with nucleons and hyperons is utilized. The binodal surface, the limit pressure, the entropy, the specific heat capacity and the Caloric curves are addressed. We find that the liquid-gas phase transition can occur more easily in strange hadronic matter with weak Y-Y interaction than that of the strong Y-Y interaction.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figure

Design of a Novel High Frequency Ultrasound Annular Array

AbstractThe design of a novel 50MHz 7-elment annular array is described. Equal-width electrodes are deposited on the rear face of piezoelectric layer to form a kerfless array, instead of mechanical cutting. Compared with equal-area designs, much better performance is achieved by the novel design. The cross talk is down to -20dB, the -6dB bandwidth and insertion loss are 41% and 18dB, respectively. The pulse responses are largely improved compared with conventional kerfless annular arrays. Furthermore, no pre-focus lens for the central element is required in this array, promising simplified fabrication