Credit risk transfer and financial sector performance

In this paper we study the impact of credit risk transfer (CRT) on the stability and the efficiency of a financial system in a model with endogenous intermediation and production. Our analysis suggests that with respect to CRT, the individual incentives of the agents in the economy are generally aligned with social incentives. Hence, CRT does not pose a systematic challenge to the functioning of the financial system and is generally welfare enhancing. However, we identify issues that should be addressed by the regulatory authorities in order to minimize the potential costs of CRT. These include: ensuring the development of new methods of CRT that allow risk to be more perfectly transferred, setting regulatory standards that reflect differences in the social cost of instability in the banking and insurance sector; promoting CRT instruments that are nor detrimental to the monitoring incentives of banks

Congruences for powers of the partition function

Let $p_{-t}(n)$ denote the number of partitions of $n$ into $t$ colors. In analogy with Ramanujan's work on the partition function, Lin recently proved in \cite{Lin} that $p_{-3}(11n+7)\equiv0\pmod{11}$ for every integer $n$. Such congruences, those of the form $p_{-t}(\ell n + a) \equiv 0 \pmod {\ell}$, were previously studied by Kiming and Olsson. If $\ell \geq 5$ is prime and $-t \not \in \{\ell - 1, \ell -3\}$, then such congruences satisfy $24a \equiv -t \pmod {\ell}$. Inspired by Lin's example, we obtain natural infinite families of such congruences. If $\ell\equiv2\pmod{3}$ (resp. $\ell\equiv3\pmod{4}$ and $\ell\equiv11\pmod{12}$) is prime and $r\in\{4,8,14\}$ (resp. $r\in\{6,10\}$ and $r=26$), then for $t=\ell s-r$, where $s\geq0$, we have that \begin{equation*} p_{-t}\left(\ell n+\frac{r(\ell^2-1)}{24}-\ell\Big\lfloor\frac{r(\ell^2-1)}{24\ell}\Big\rfloor\right)\equiv0\pmod{\ell}. \end{equation*} Moreover, we exhibit infinite families where such congruences cannot hold

Multiquadratic fields generated by characters of AnA_n

For a finite group $G$, let $K(G)$ denote the field generated over $\mathbb{Q}$ by its character values. For $n>24$, G. R. Robinson and J. G. Thompson proved that $$K(A_n)=\mathbb{Q}\left (\{ \sqrt{p^*} \ : \ p\leq n \ {\text{ an odd prime with } p\neq n-2}\}\right),$$ where $p^*:=(-1)^{\frac{p-1}{2}}p$. Confirming a speculation of Thompson, we show that arbitrary suitable multiquadratic fields are similarly generated by the values of $A_n$-characters restricted to elements whose orders are only divisible by ramified primes. To be more precise, we say that a $\pi$-number is a positive integer whose prime factors belong to a set of odd primes $\pi:= \{p_1, p_2,\dots, p_t\}$. Let $K_{\pi}(A_n)$ be the field generated by the values of $A_n$-characters for even permutations whose orders are $\pi$-numbers. If $t\geq 2$, then we determine a constant $N_{\pi}$ with the property that for all $n> N_{\pi}$, we have $$K_{\pi}(A_n)=\mathbb{Q}\left(\sqrt{p_1^*}, \sqrt{p_2^*},\dots, \sqrt{p_t^*}\right).$