Is It a Heavy Log that Broke the Camel’s Back? Evidence of the Credit Channel in Taiwan’s Construction Industry

Since the 1997 Asian financial crisis, the monetary authority of Taiwan decreased the interest rate nine times and had every intention to maintain a loose monetary policy. However, the lending amounts to the construction industry decreased much more sharply in spite of an increased monetary supply. Hence, the loose monetary policy has not reduced the financial constraints of the construction firms in Taiwan. In this paper, we investigate that the credit channel of monetary policy how to works at the Taiwan’s construction industry. We explain the reasons for financial constraints in the construction industry in Taiwan. Construction firms whose information is considerably opaque, are likely to be viewed as “lemons,” which accounts for the credit crunch policy of banking lending to these construction firms. Two strands of evidence support this view. First, the borrowing terms for the construction industry have been more restrictive than those for other industries firms during the same period of financial difficulty. Second, we determine that such financial constraints vary systematically within different industry groups. The results substantiate that construction firms retain more internal funds for future investment, and the sign of the liquidity coefficient is significant in their investment function. The evidence shows construction firms bear most of the reductions in bank loan supply, and that they are more bank-dependent.REIT; return predictability; REIT characteristics; risk and return; portfolio

Nucleation of stable cylinders from a metastable lamellar phase in a diblock copolymer melt

The nucleation of a droplet of stable cylinder phase from a metastable lamellar phase is examined within the single-mode approximation to the mean-field Landau–Brazovskii model for diblock copolymer melts. By employing a variational ansatz for the droplet interfacial profile, an analytic expression for the interfacial free energy of an interface of arbitrary orientation between cylinders and lamellae is found. The interfacial free energy is anisotropic and is lower when the cylinder axis is perpendicular to the interface than when the cylinders lie along the interface. Consequently, the droplet shape computed via the Wulff construction is lens like, being flattened along the axis of the cylinders. The size of the critical droplet and the nucleation barrier are determined within classical nucleation theory. Near the lamellar–cylinder phase boundary, where classical nucleation theory is applicable, critical droplets of size 30–400 cylinders across with aspect ratios of 4–10 and nucleation barriers of (30–40)kBT are typically found. The general trend is to larger critical droplets, higher aspect ratios, and smaller nucleation barriers as the mean-field critical point is approached

Theory of polygonal phases self-assembled from T-shaped liquid crystalline polymers

Extensive experimental studies have shown that numerous ordered phases can be formed via the self-assembly of T-shaped liquid crystalline polymers (TLCPs) composed of a rigid backbone, two flexible end chains and a flexible side chain. However, a comprehensive understanding of the stability and formation mechanisms of these intricately nano-structured phases remains incomplete. Here we fill this gap by carrying out a theoretical study of the phase behaviour of TLCPs. Specifically, we construct phase diagrams of TLCPs by computing the free energy of different ordered phases of the system. Our results reveal that the number of polygonal edges increases as the length of side chain or interaction strength increases, consistent with experimental observations. The theoretical study not only reproduces the experimentally observed phases and phase transition sequences, but also systematically analyzes the stability mechanism of the polygonal phases