Study on the Exiting Problem and Countermeasure of China’s Adult Academic Credentials Education

The current situation of adult academic credentials education in China has sprang up a lot of disadvantages like the graduate has low professional quality, poor comprehensive quality, and low employment rate, which need reformation urgently. This paper analyzed the current situation and the existing problems of China `s adult academic credentials education, as well as put forward some specific solutions

Collateral damage: Sizing and assessing the subprime CDO crisis

This paper conducts an in-depth analysis of structured finance asset-backed securities collateralized debt obligations (SF ABS CDOs), the subset of CDOs that traded on the ABS CDO desks at the major investment banks and were a major contributor to the global financial panic of August 2007. Despite their importance, we have yet to determine the exact size and composition of the SF ABS CDO market or get a good sense of the write-downs these CDOs will generate. In this paper the authors identify these SF ABS CDOs with data from Intex©, the source data and valuation software for the universe of publicly traded ABS/MBS securities and SF ABS CDOs. They estimate that 727 publicly traded SF ABS CDOs were issued between 1999 and 2007, totaling $641 billion. Once identified, they describe how and why multisector structured finance CDOs became subprime CDOs, and show why they were so susceptible to catastrophic losses. The authors then track the flows of subprime bonds into CDOs to document the enormous cross-referencing of subprime securities into CDOs. They calculate that$201 billion of the underlying collateral of these CDOs was referenced by synthetic credit default swaps (CDSs) and show how some 5,500 BBB-rated subprime bonds were placed or referenced into these CDOs some 37,000 times, transforming $64 billion of BBB subprime bonds into$140 billion of CDO assets. For the valuation exercise, the authors estimate that total write-downs on SF ABS CDOs will be $420 billion, 65 percent of original issuance balance, with over 70 percent of these losses having already been incurred. They then extend the work of Barnett-Hart (2009) to analyze the determinants of expected losses on the deals and AAA bonds and examine the performance of the dealers, collateral managers, and rating agencies. Finally, the authors discuss the implications of their findings for the “subprime CDO crisis” and discuss the many areas for future work.Debt ; Securities ; Asset-backed financing ; Banks and banking

The trust preferred CDO market: from start to (expected) finish

This paper investigates the development, issuance, structuring, and expected performance of the trust preferred securities collateralized debt obligation (TruPS CDO) market. Developed as a way to provide capital markets access to smaller banks, thrifts, insurance companies, and real estate investment trusts (REITs) by pooling the issuance of TruPS into marketable CDOs, the market grew to $60 billion of issuance from its inception in 2000 through its abrupt halt in 2007. As evidenced by rating agency downgrades, current performance, and estimates from the authors' own model, TruPS CDOs are likely to perform poorly. Using data and valuation software from the leading provider of such information, they estimate that large numbers of the subordinated bonds and some senior bonds will be either fully or partially written down, even if no further defaults occur going forward. The primary reason for these losses is that the underlying collateral of TruPS CDOs is small, unrated banks whose primary asset is commercial real estate (CRE). During their years of greatest issuance from 2003 to 2007, the booming real estate market and record low number of bank failures masked the underlying risks that are now manifest. Another reason for the poor performance of bank TruPS CDOs is that smaller banks became a primary investor in the mezzanine tranches of bank TruPS CDOs, something that is also complicating regulators' resolutions of failed banks. To understand how this came about, the authors explore in detail the symbiotic relationship between dealers and rating agencies and how they modeled and sold TruPS CDOs. In their concluding comments, the authors provide several lessons learned for policymakers, regulators, and market participants.Asset-backed financing

Don’t put all your eggs in one basket – spread them around! Diversification using alternative assets and the benefits of hand- picking parameters for portfolio models

After the global financial crisis, alternative assets have become increasingly popular as an investment option due to their potential to generate higher returns and abilities to diversify portfolios. This thesis studies if constructed portfolios containing traditional and multiple alternative assets are better investments than holding any single assets. Further, the paper investigates the performance of a mean-variance framework versus a naïve 1/N constructed portfolio. In addition, the role of different parameters such as lookback window, rebalancing frequency, and weight constraints is analyzed to determine the optimal portfolio strategy for an alternative portfolio. At last, the paper highlights the benefits of holding a portfolio containing alternative assets compared to a traditional stock-bond portfolio. Our results show that some single assets outperform a constructed naïve 1/N portfolio. The mean-variance portfolio framework tends to be a better investment object than holding single assets, with a few exceptions. Overall, our results state that constructed mean-variance alternative portfolios seem to distribute risk, resulting in a higher Sharpe ratio. Regarding parameters, our results suggest that the optimal parameter for an alternative portfolio is a long-only strategy with a five-year lookback window and monthly rebalancing, considering Sharpe as the primary performance measure. Moreover, we look at the effect of differentiating between positive and negative volatility, where the optimal portfolio parameters are still to utilize a five-year lookback window with monthly rebalancing. However, the favored portfolio framework changes to a no-constrains weight strategy. At last, we provide evidence that investing in a portfolio containing alternative assets outperformed a traditional stock-bond portfolio.nhhma

Pressure-driven insulator-metal transition in cubic phase UO 2

Understanding the electronic properties of actinide oxides under pressure poses a great challenge for experimental and theoretical studies. Here, we investigate the electronic structure of cubic phase uranium dioxide at different volumes using a combination of density functional theory and dynamical mean-field theory. The ab initio calculations predict an orbital-selective insulator-metal transition at a moderate pressure of ∼45 GPa. At this pressure the uranium's 5 f 5/2 state becomes metallic, while the 5 f 7/2 state remains insulating up to about 60 GPa. In the metallic state, we observe a rapid decrease of the 5 f occupation and total angular momentum with pressure. Simultaneously, the so-called “Zhang-Rice state”, which is of predominantly 5 f 5/2 character, quickly disappears after the transition into the metallic phase