A beacon in the night : government certification of SMEs towards banks

Policymakers around the world have created several schemes to support financially constrained SMEs. However, whether these mechanisms improve the access to external sources of finance or on the contrary crowd out private players remains a relevant question. In this paper, we study the effectiveness of a recent form of government support, called participative loan, in improving recipient SMEs\u2019 access to external financial debt. Relying on the literature about the certification effect, we develop hypotheses on the conditions under which the improvement is stronger. The empirical analysis is based on a sample of 488 Spanish SMEs that received participative loans from a Spanish government agency and a control group of 719 matched twins. We show that the former register a significantly higher external financial debt (+31.5%). The effect is stronger for smaller firms, or for those operating in high-technology sectors, which suffer more acutely from information asymmetries, and negligible for firms that already received a support from another government-supported institution. After ruling out alternative explanations, we interpret this result as a positive evidence of government certification of SMEs towards banks

Bratteli diagrams where random orders are imperfect

For the simple Bratteli diagrams B where there is a single edge connecting any two vertices in consecutive levels, we show that a random order has uncountably many infinite paths if and only if the growth rate of the level-n vertex sets is super-linear. This gives us the dichotomy: a random order on a slowly growing Bratteli diagram admits a homeomorphism, while a random order on a quickly growing Bratteli diagram does not. We also show that for a large family of infinite rank Bratteli diagrams B, a random order on B does not admit a continuous Vershik map

What money cannot buy : a new approach to measure venture capital ability to add non-financial resources

Grounding our work on the resource-based view of the firm, we study and quantify the impact of non-financial resources added by venture capital (VC) on the growth performance of investee companies. While most of the literature compares VC-backed companies with similar companies that did not receive external financing, our originality stems from the use of a counterfactual of companies that received external quasi-equity financing (in the form of participative loans) but not non-financial resources. We use a difference-in-difference (DD) estimator to disentangle the effect of an injection of financial resources (which can be used by companies to acquire non-financial resources) from the contribution of the unique non-financial resources brought in by VC (which companies cannot otherwise acquire). Our results are based on a large sample of young Spanish SMEs that received either VC (915) or participative loans (1551) between 2005 and 2013 as first type of financing. We find that the contribution of the non-financial resources leads to yearly increases of 12.86% in employment, 38.13% in total assets, and 54.03% in sales. Furthermore, we find that only the most experienced VC firms contribute with valuable non-financial resources

Generation of measures on the torus with good sequences of integers

Let $S= (s_1<s_2<\dots)$ be a strictly increasing sequence of positive integers and denote $\mathbf{e}(\beta)=\mathrm{e}^{2\pi i \beta}$. We say $S$ is good if for every real $\alpha$ the limit $\lim_N \frac1N\sum_{n\le N} \mathbf{e}(s_n\alpha)$ exists. By the Riesz representation theorem, a sequence $S$ is good iff for every real $\alpha$ the sequence $(s_n\alpha)$ possesses an asymptotic distribution modulo 1. Another characterization of a good sequence follows from the spectral theorem: the sequence $S$ is good iff in any probability measure preserving system $(X,\mathbf{m},T)$ the limit $\lim_N \frac1N\sum_{n\le N}f\left(T^{s_n}x\right)$ exists in $L^2$-norm for $f\in L^2(X)$. Of these three characterization of a good set, the one about limit measures is the most suitable for us, and we are interested in finding out what the limit measure $\mu_{S,\alpha}= \lim_N\frac1N\sum_{n\le N} \delta_{s_n\alpha}$ on the torus can be. In this first paper on the subject, we investigate the case of a single irrational $\alpha$. We show that if $S$ is a good set then for every irrational $\alpha$ the limit measure $\mu_{S,\alpha}$ must be a continuous Borel probability measure. Using random methods, we show that the limit measure $\mu_{S,\alpha}$ can be any measure which is absolutely continuous with respect to the Haar-Lebesgue probability measure on the torus. On the other hand, if $\nu$ is the uniform probability measure supported on the Cantor set, there are some irrational $\alpha$ so that for no good sequence $S$ can we have the limit measure $\mu_{S,\alpha}$ equal $\nu$. We leave open the question whether for any continuous Borel probability measure $\nu$ on the torus there is an irrational $\alpha$ and a good sequence $S$ so that $\mu_{S,\alpha}=\nu$.Comment: 44 page

Nivat's conjecture holds for sums of two periodic configurations

Nivat's conjecture is a long-standing open combinatorial problem. It concerns two-dimensional configurations, that is, maps $\mathbb Z^2 \rightarrow \mathcal A$ where $\mathcal A$ is a finite set of symbols. Such configurations are often understood as colorings of a two-dimensional square grid. Let $P_c(m,n)$ denote the number of distinct $m \times n$ block patterns occurring in a configuration $c$. Configurations satisfying $P_c(m,n) \leq mn$ for some $m,n \in \mathbb N$ are said to have low rectangular complexity. Nivat conjectured that such configurations are necessarily periodic. Recently, Kari and the author showed that low complexity configurations can be decomposed into a sum of periodic configurations. In this paper we show that if there are at most two components, Nivat's conjecture holds. As a corollary we obtain an alternative proof of a result of Cyr and Kra: If there exist $m,n \in \mathbb N$ such that $P_c(m,n) \leq mn/2$, then $c$ is periodic. The technique used in this paper combines the algebraic approach of Kari and the author with balanced sets of Cyr and Kra.Comment: Accepted for SOFSEM 2018. This version includes an appendix with proofs. 12 pages + references + appendi

Memory development: implications for adults recalling childhood experiences in the courtroom

Adults frequently provide compelling, detailed accounts of early childhood experiences in the courtroom. Judges and jurors are asked to decide guilt or innocence based solely on these decades-old memories using 'common sense' notions about memory. However, these notions are not in agreement with findings from neuroscientific and behavioural studies of memory development. Without expert guidance, judges and jurors may have difficulty in properly adjudicating the weight of memory evidence in cases involving adult recollections of childhood experiences

Attachment, household chaos, and children's health.

INTRODUCTION:Despite growing interest in the links between sociocontextual factors and children's behavioral functioning, few studies have investigated how such factors, in combination, relate to health outcomes or vary across mental and physical well-being. We evaluated the direct and interactive associations of parental attachment and household chaos with preschool-age children's mental and physical health. METHOD:Ninety-four parents completed questionnaires about their attachment styles, disorganization and confusion in the home, and their children's health functioning. RESULTS:Attachment avoidance and anxiety in parents predicted poorer mental health in children, particularly in highly chaotic homes. Moreover, parental attachment anxiety, but not avoidance, predicted poorer reported physical health in children and, in conjunction with chaotic homes, more hospitalizations. DISCUSSION:The results help illuminate how multiple domains in children's immediate environment jointly influence their physical and mental health and how these influences may vary across domains of functioning. Findings have implications for targeting interventions to have impact across facets of children's health. (PsycINFO Database Recor

Attorneys' Questions and Children's Productivity in Child Sexual Abuse Criminal Trials.

We investigated the links between questions child witnesses are asked in court, children's answers, and case outcome. Samples of acquittals and convictions were matched on child age, victim-defendant relationship, and allegation count and severity. Transcripts were coded for question types, including a previously under-examined type of potentially suggestive question, declarative questions. Children's productivity was conceptualized in a novel way by separating new from repeated content and by adjusting the definition based on the linguistic demands of the questions. Attorneys frequently used declarative questions, and disconcertingly, attorneys who used these and other suggestive questions more frequently were more likely to win their case. Open-ended and closed-ended questions elicited similar levels of productivity from children, and both elicited more productivity compared with suggestive questions. Results highlight how conceptualization of questions and answers can influence conclusions, and demonstrate the important real-world implications of attorney questioning strategies on legal cases with child witnesses