Granularity of corporate debt : [Version 9 Mai 2013]

We study to what extent firms spread out their debt maturity dates across time, which we call "granularity of corporate debt." We consider the role of debt granularity using a simple model in which a firm's inability to roll over expiring debt causes inefficiencies, such as costly asset sales or underinvestment. Since multiple small asset sales are less costly than a single large one, firms may diversify debt rollovers across maturity dates. We construct granularity measures using data on corporate bond issuers for the 1991-2011 period and establish a number of novel findings. First, there is substantial variation in granularity in that many firms have either very concentrated or highly dispersed maturity structures. Second, our model's predictions are consistent with observed variation in granularity. Corporate debt maturities are more dispersed for larger and more mature firms, for firms with better investment opportunities, with higher leverage ratios, and with lower levels of current cash flows. We also show that during the recent financial crisis especially firms with valuable investment opportunities implemented more dispersed maturity structures. Finally, granularity plays an important role for bond issuances, because we document that newly issued corporate bond maturities complement pre-existing bond maturity profiles

Modeling the Intergrated Customer Loyalty Program on Blockchain Technology by Using Credit Card

Blockchain technology integrates mathematical encryption, open source software, computer networks and incentive mechanisms. It created a crypto call hiding in a token. However, tokens should be used to purchase goods or services from offline retailers, but current tokens are used primarily for investment. Therefore, the most important thing at this point is how to get the royalty-based tokens integrated into the offline store. For this purpose, it is not realistic to install a new payment terminal in an offline store. Based on these perceptions, this study measures the application of investigated components to understand the impact of blockchain technology on customer loyalty programs. The main purpose of this study is to propose an integrated customer loyalty program model for blockchain technology using credit cards. This study shows how to implement an integrated customer loyalty program process in credit card-based blockchain technology and how to identify the importance of block-chain technology to improve customer loyalty programs

Guiding the Self-Assembly of Block Copolymers in 2D and 3D with Minimal Patterning

Directed self-assembly (DSA) of block copolymers (BCPs) based on topographic patterns is one of the most promising strategies for overcoming resolution limitations in the current lithographic process and fabricating the next generation data storage devices. While the DSA of BCPs with deep topographic patterning has been extensively studied both experimentally and theoretically over the past two decades, less attention has been paid to the development of the DSA process using minimal topographic patterning. This dissertation focuses on understanding the effect of minimal topographic patterning on guiding the self-assembly of BCPs in 2D and 3D. We demonstrate that minimal trench patterns can be used to achieve highly ordered hexagonal arrays or unidirectionally aligned line patterns over large areas. By preparing BCP thin films on a series of minimal single trench with different dimensions, we study the minimum amount of topographic patterning necessary to successfully guide the self-assembly of BCPs. This approach provides insight into the minimum pitch of the trench necessary to fully order BCP microdomains. We develop a simple and robust method for the generation of macroscopically ordered xi hexagonal arrays from the DSA of BCPs based on minimal trench patterns with solvent vapor annealing. The use of minimal trench patterns allows us to elucidate the morphological characteristics and lateral ordering of hexagonal array using grazing incidence small angle X-ray scattering (GISAXS). Moreover, using minimal trench patterns, we describe the generation of BCP line patterns oriented orthogonal to the trench direction over arbitrarily macroscopic distances. Beyond 2D BCP nanostructures, we explore the fabrication of 3D BCP architectures over large areas using simple woodpile structures as 3D guiding templates. We can also produce 3D networks of metallic nanostructures within the woodpile structures using a metal salt infiltration technique. In the last part, we conclude this dissertation and propose an outlook

The Relationship between Service Quality and Revisit intention: Based on self-service retail technology

This paper is focused on how firms increase customers’ acceptance of self-service retail, and impact of self-efficacy on effective customer experience, customer satisfaction and loyalty. This paper mainly uses questionnaires to conduct empirical research on collecting 308 used self-service convenience stores from China. The study employs a structural equation model to analyze relationship between service quality and revisit intention, Word of mouth. The results shown that service perceived quality significantly influences customer satisfaction. Also, self-service retail service quality and experience values are two important elements for consumers to accept self-service retail stores. Additionally, the relationship between consumer experience value and satisfaction, loyalty, and self-service retail stores has a significant impact on Perceived self-efficacy

Good News, Bad News: A Sentiment Analysis of the 2016 Election Russian Facebook Ads

You are viewing a publication from UT Affiliates that was in the Good Systems Network Digest in May 2020.Office of the VP for Researc

Detection of Interaction-based Knowledge for Reclassification of Service Robots: Big Data Analytics Perspective

With the advancement of artificial intelligence technology, the robot industry in human- robot interactive service has rapidly developed. The purpose of this paper is to uncover user acceptance of human-robot interactive service robots based on online reviews. Extract reviews the public service robots and the domestic service robots from YouTube uses word2vec, sentiment classification, and LDA (Latent Dirichlet Allocation) analysis methods for research. The results show that in the interactive technology, the public service robots, the domestic service robots, and the service robots can well receive the user’s speech, gestures, and understanding of emotional states and navigating with and around. However, collaborating with humans, users may be more fearful and worried. At the same time, the positive topic of the public service robots is experience value, and the negative topic is system quality. The positive topic of the domestic service robots is anthropomorphism, and the negative topic is perceived intelligence

Bond funds and credit risk

We show that supply-side effects arising from the bond holdings of open-end mutual funds affect corporate credit risk. In our model, funds exposed to flow-performance relationships are reluctant to roll over bonds of companies with weak cash flow prospects fearing future outflows. This lowers rollover prices, enhancing equityholders' strategic default incentives, engendering a positive association between bond funds' presence and credit risk. Empirically, we find that in firms with weak cash flow prospects, fund holding shares increase CDS spreads, and more so when flows are more sensitive to performance. We use instrumental variables and quasi-experiments to address endogeneity concerns

Large NN Universality of 4d N=1\mathcal{N}=1 Superconformal Index and AdS Black Holes

We study the large $N$ limit of the matrix models associated with the superconformal indices of four-dimensional $\mathcal{N}=1$ superconformal field theories. We find that for a large class of $\mathcal{N}=1$ superconformal gauge theories, the superconformal indices in the large $N$ limit of such theories are dominated by the 'parallelogram' saddle, providing $O(N^2)$ free energy for the generic value of chemical potentials. This saddle corresponds to BPS black holes in AdS$_5$ whenever a holographic dual description is available. Our saddle applies to a large class of gauge theories, including ADE quiver gauge theories, and the theories with rank-2 tensor matters. Our analysis works for most $\mathcal{N}=1$ superconformal gauge theories that admit a suitable large $N$ limit while keeping the flavor symmetry fixed. We also find 'multi-cut' saddle points, which correspond to the orbifolded Euclidean black holes in AdS$_5$.Comment: 34 pages, 2 figure

NQAR: Network Quality Aware Routing in Error-Prone Wireless Sensor Networks

We propose a network quality aware routing (NQAR) mechanism to provide an enabling method of the delay-sensitive data delivery over error-prone wireless sensor networks. Unlike the existing routing methods that select routes with the shortest arrival latency or the minimum hop count, the proposed scheme adaptively selects the route based on the network qualities including link errors and collisions with minimum additional complexity. It is designed to avoid the paths with potential noise and collision that may cause many non-deterministic backoffs and retransmissions. We propose a generic framework to select a minimum cost route that takes the packet loss rate and collision history into account. NQAR uses a data centric approach to estimate a single-hop delay based on processing time, propagation delay, packet loss rate, number of backoffs, and the retransmission timeout between two neighboring nodes. This enables a source node to choose the shortest expected end-to-end delay path to send a delay-sensitive data. The experiment results show that NQAR reduces the end-to-end transfer delay up to approximately 50% in comparison with the latency-based directed diffusion and the hop count-based directed diffusion under the error-prone network environments. Moreover, NQAR shows better performance than those routing methods in terms of jitter, reachability, and network lifetime