Essays on disclosure of holdings by institutional investors

This thesis contains three essays on disclosure of holdings by institutional investors. Chapter 1 presents a theoretical model that examines the impact of confidential treatment requests made by institutional investors to the Securities and Ex- change Commission (SEC) to delay disclosure of their holdings. Chapter 2 presents another theoretical model that analyses how an informed trader trades strategically in the presence of copycats who track his disclosed trades. Chapter 3 is an empirical study that examines the impact of more frequent portfolio disclosure on mutual funds' performance

U.S. politicians adhere to balanced budget rules because they fear the bond markets, not judicial intervention

In the wake of the European financial crisis, European Union (EU) leaders have reformed Eurozone governance to empower national and EU courts to enforce deficit and debt limits. In designing these reforms, policymakers drew lessons on balanced budget rules in U.S. states. But is the threat of court enforcement actually effective in ensuring balanced budgets in the states? In new research, R. Daniel Kelemen and Terence Teo find that despite their 170-year history, these judicial mechanisms are almost never enforced in court, and that they do not act as a deterrent to breaking budget rules for state officials. They argue instead, that clear balanced budget rules can act as a ‘red line’ for investors and bond markets, which, if broken, will act as a signal for them to punish sovereigns

Focal points and fiscal discipline. ACES Cases No. 2013.2

Many studies suggest that balanced budget rules can restrain sovereign debt and lower sovereign borrowing costs, even if those rules are never enforced in court. Typically, this is explained as a result of a legal deterrence logic, in which the threat of judicial enforcement deters sovereigns from violating the rules. By contrast, we argue that balanced budget rules work by coordinating decentralized punishment of sovereigns by bond markets, rather than by posing a credible threat of judicial enforcement. Therefore, the clarity of the focal point provided by the rule, rather than the strength of its judicial enforcement mechanisms, determines its effectiveness. We develop a formal model that captures the logic of our argument, and we assess this model using data on US states. We then consider implications of our argument for the impact of the balanced budget rules recently imposed on eurozone states in the Fiscal Compact Treaty

Understanding crowd funding : cost of capital and factors for success

Thesis (S.M. in Engineering and Management)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division, 2013.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (pages 63-64).Since the advent of Web 2.0, crowd funding has played an increasingly important role as a means of financing for startup companies. Crowd funding is a particular means of financing where money is obtained from the public in exchange for equity or rewards. Currently, only accredited investors, including investment firms, pension funds and individuals with personal net worth of at least $1 million or earning at least$200,000 a year (US Securities and Exchange Commission, 2012) can invest in private companies and get equity in return. With the passing of the JOBS Act by President Barack Obama in April 2012, making investments in exchange for equity in private companies will soon be available to small investors. This thesis examines the phenomenon of crowd funding through estimating the cost of capital for the crowd funded projects and the factors influencing their success. Data is obtained from a popular fund raising website, Kickstarter and analysis is carried out using regression. The results show that the probability of a successful fund raising campaign is rather low, at 43%. Setting a low funding target, entering a market that has fewer competing products and building up popular support through captivating design or meeting latent user needs is associated with a higher probability of fund raising success. In addition, though the median cost of capital is negative, the cost of capital exhibits a wide range and it may be more expensive to fund projects through crowd funding compared to debt financing, which has a much smaller spread of its cost of capital. As such, the results show that a lower the cost of capital is associated with a lower cost of goods sold, faster delivery of rewards and a high proportion of free capital, which may be obtained by encouraging donations or asking for a higher price premium for its products relative to retail price.by Lingkai Terence Teo.S.M.in Engineering and Managemen

N-Glycosylation analysis and comparative modeling of mouse hybridoma lgM84 & 85

Master'sMASTER OF ENGINEERIN

Improving the Systems Engineering Process with Multilevel Analysis of Interactions

The systems engineering V (SE-V) is an established process model to guide the development of complex engineering projects (INCOSE, 2011). The SE-V process involves decomposition and integration of system elements through a sequence of tasks that produce both a system design and its testing specifications, followed by successive levels of build, integration, and test activities. This paper presents a method to improve SE-V implementation by mapping multilevel data into design structure matrix (DSM) models. DSM is a representation methodology for identifying interactions either between components or tasks associated with a complex engineering project (Eppinger & Browning, 2012). Multilevel refers to SE-V data on complex interactions that are germane either at multiple levels of analysis, e.g. component versus subsystem conducted either within a single phase or across multiple time phases, e.g. early or late in the SE-V process. This method extends conventional DSM representation schema by incorporating multilevel test coverage data as vectors into the off diagonal cells. These vectors provide a richer description of potential interactions between product architecture and SE-V integration test tasks than conventional domain mapping matrices (DMMs). We illustrate this method with data from a complex engineering project in the offshore oil industry. Data analysis identifies potential for unanticipated outcomes based on incomplete coverage of SE-V interactions during integration tests. Additionally, assessment of multilevel features using maximum and minimum function queries isolates all the interfaces that are associated with either early or late revelations of integration risks based on the planned suite of SE-V integration tests

Factors associated with nursing home placement of all patients admitted for inpatient rehabilitation in Singapore community hospitals from 1996 to 2005: A disease stratified analysis

10.1371/journal.pone.0082697PLoS ONE812-POLN

Identification of 12 new susceptibility loci for different histotypes of epithelial ovarian cancer.

To identify common alleles associated with different histotypes of epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC), we pooled data from multiple genome-wide genotyping projects totaling 25,509 EOC cases and 40,941 controls. We identified nine new susceptibility loci for different EOC histotypes: six for serous EOC histotypes (3q28, 4q32.3, 8q21.11, 10q24.33, 18q11.2 and 22q12.1), two for mucinous EOC (3q22.3 and 9q31.1) and one for endometrioid EOC (5q12.3). We then performed meta-analysis on the results for high-grade serous ovarian cancer with the results from analysis of 31,448 BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutation carriers, including 3,887 mutation carriers with EOC. This identified three additional susceptibility loci at 2q13, 8q24.1 and 12q24.31. Integrated analyses of genes and regulatory biofeatures at each locus predicted candidate susceptibility genes, including OBFC1, a new candidate susceptibility gene for low-grade and borderline serous EOC