Creditor rights and corporate risk-taking

We propose that stronger creditor rights in bankruptcy reduce corporate risk-taking. Employing country-level data, we find that strong creditor rights are associated with a greater propensity of firms to engage in diversifying mergers, and this propensity changes in response to changes in the country creditor rights. Also, in countries with stronger creditor rights companies’ operating risk is lower, and acquirers with low-recovery assets prefer targets with high-recovery assets. These relationships are strongest in countries where management is dismissed in reorganization, suggesting an agency-cost effect.Our results suggest that there might be a “dark” side to strong creditor rights in that they can induce costly risk avoidance in corporate policies. Thus, stronger creditor rights may not necessarily be optimal

Private Information Trading and Corporate Governance In Emerging Markets

We apply the theoretical framework of Llorente, Michaely, Saar, and Wang (2002) to analyze the relation between daily volume and first-order return autocorrelation for individual stocks in emerging markets. We find strong evidence of return continuation following high volume days, suggesting the presence of private information trading for many emerging market stocks. We discover that private information trading is especially strong around major corporate event dates. In addition, we find stocks that provide better investor protection and information disclosure exhibit less private information trading. These results suggest return autocorrelation and trading volume carry useful information about corporate governance in emerging market

Private Information Trading and Corporate Governance in Emerging Markets

We apply the theoretical framework of Llorente, Michaely, Saar, and Wang (2002) to analyze the relation between daily volume and first-order return autocorrelation for individual stocks in emerging markets. We find strong evidence of return continuation following high volume days, suggesting the presence of private information trading for many emerging market stocks. We discover that private information trading is especially strong around major corporate event dates. In addition, we find stocks that provide better investor protection and information disclosure exhibit less private information trading. These results suggest return autocorrelation and trading volume carry useful information about corporate governance in emerging market

Creditor rights and corporate risk-taking

We analyze the link between creditor rights and firms’ investment policies, proposing that stronger creditor rights in bankruptcy reduce corporate risk-taking. In cross-country analysis, we find that stronger creditor rights induce greater propensity of firms to engage in diversifying acquisitions, which result in poorer operating and stock-market abnormal performance. In countries with strong creditor rights, firms also have lower cash flow risk and lower leverage, and there is greater propensity of firms with low-recovery assets to acquire targets with high-recovery assets. These relationships are strongest in countries where management is dismissed in reorganization, and are observed in time-series analysis around changes in creditor rights. Our results question the value of strong creditor rights as they have an adverse effect on firms by inhibiting management from undertaking risky investments.

Application of avalanche photodiodes as a readout for scintillator tile-fiber systems

The application of reach-through avalanche photodiodes (R'APD) as a photodetector for scintillator tiles has been investigated. The light collected by WLS fibers (0.84mm and 1mm diameter) embedded in the scintillator has been transmited to the 0.5mm2 active surface of APD by clear optical fibers and optical connectors. A low noise charge sensitive preamplifier (approximately 400 electrons equivalent noise charge) has been used to gain the photodiode signal. Various configurations of tile-fibre systems, suitable for CMS and LHCb experiments at LHC have been studied using cosmic muons and muon beam at SPS at CERN. In order to optimize the performance of APD, measurments in the temperature range from -10C to +25C have been done. The MIP detection efficiency and electron/MIP separation have been estimated in order to determine applicability of the readout for LHCb preshower.Comment: 20 pages,13 figure

Private Information Trading and Corporate Governance In Emerging Markets

We apply the theoretical framework of Llorente, Michaely, Saar, and Wang (2002) to analyze the relation between daily volume and first-order return autocorrelation for individual stocks in emerging markets. We find strong evidence of return continuation following high volume days, suggesting the presence of private information trading for many emerging market stocks. We discover that private information trading is especially strong around major corporate event dates. In addition, we find stocks that provide better investor protection and information disclosure exhibit less private information trading. These results suggest return autocorrelation and trading volume carry useful information about corporate governance in emerging market

Private Information Trading and Corporate Governance in Emerging Markets

We apply the theoretical framework of Llorente, Michaely, Saar, and Wang (2002) to analyze the relation between daily volume and first-order return autocorrelation for individual stocks in emerging markets. We find strong evidence of return continuation following high volume days, suggesting the presence of private information trading for many emerging market stocks. We discover that private information trading is especially strong around major corporate event dates. In addition, we find stocks that provide better investor protection and information disclosure exhibit less private information trading. These results suggest return autocorrelation and trading volume carry useful information about corporate governance in emerging market

Studies of the Response of the Prototype CMS Hadron Calorimeter, Including Magnetic Field Effects, to Pion, Electron, and Muon Beams

We report on the response of a prototype CMS hadron calorimeter module to charged particle beams of pions, muons, and electrons with momenta up to 375 GeV/c. The data were taken at the H2 and H4 beamlines at CERN in 1995 and 1996. The prototype sampling calorimeter used copper absorber plates and scintillator tiles with wavelength shifting fibers for readout. The effects of a magnetic field of up to 3 Tesla on the response of the calorimeter to muons, electrons, and pions are presented, and the effects of an upstream lead tungstate crystal electromagnetic calorimeter on the linearity and energy resolution of the combined calorimetric system to hadrons are evaluated. The results are compared with Monte Carlo simulations and are used to optimize the choice of total absorber depth, sampling frequency, and longitudinal readout segmentation.Comment: 89 pages, 41 figures, to be published in NIM, corresponding author: P de Barbaro, [email protected]

NA49 results on hadron production: indications of the onset of deconfinement ?

The NA49 experiment at the CERN SPS measured the energy and system size dependence of particle production in A+A collisions. A change of the energy dependence of several hadron production properties at low SPS energies is observed which suggests a scenario requiring the onset of deconfinement.Comment: XXXV International Symposium on Multiparticle Dynamics 200

Energy dependence of particle ratio fluctuations in central Pb+Pb collisions from sNN=\sqrt{s_{_{NN}}} =~6.3 to 17.3 GeV

We present measurements of the energy dependence of event-by-event fluctuations in the K/pi and (p + \bar{p})/pi multiplicity ratios in heavy ion collisions at the CERN SPS. The particle ratio fluctuations were obtained for central Pb+Pb collisions at five collision energies, \sqrt{s_{_{NN}}}, between 6.3 and 17.3 GeV. After accounting for the effects of finite-number statistics and detector resolution, we extract the strength of non-statistical fluctuations at each energy. For the K/pi ratio, larger fluctuations than expected for independent particle production are found at all collision energies. The fluctuations in the (p + \bar{p})/pi ratio are smaller than expectations from independent particle production, indicating correlated pion and proton production from resonance decays. For both ratios, the deviation from purely statistical fluctuations shows an increase towards lower collision energies. The results are compared to transport model calculations, which fail to describe the energy dependence of the K/pi ratio fluctuations.Comment: 11 pages, 10 figures, update to published versio