Essays in Leveraged Capital Markets

The debt capital markets for leveraged borrowers are ripe with information asymmetry, lender specialization, and borrower segmentation. In this dissertation, I explore how these factors manifest themselves and the economic consequences thereof. Essay 1 shows that adverse selection and moral hazard concerns are inherent in underwriting syndicates that differ in size and number of lead underwriters. Using a nested double selection probit model of syndicate choice, I examine the matching of issuers and underwriters and find that matches of issuer quality and underwriter reputation are positive assortative. Further, switching regressions show that yield spreads reflect uncertainty about the intrinsic values of debt issued. Yield spreads are 150 basis points higher when poor issuer and issue quality require multiple lead underwriters, but weak lead underwriter reputation constrains the size of the syndicate needed for information production and distribution. Essay 2 shows that borrowers care who are their lenders. The matches between borrowers and lenders are endogenously determined and negative assortative. Creditworthy but opaque firms will choose to borrow from specialized lenders (QIBs), who are more adept at assessing issuer quality, maintaining confidentiality of private disclosures, and monitoring. In Essay 3, I investigate the default and bankruptcy hazards of covenant-lite and fully covenanted leveraged loans over the period 1999 to Q3:2016. I show how lender specialization and borrower segmentation in the leveraged loan market is impounded in the pricing of loans characterized by low probability but high loss events. Non-bank lenders rely on screening of speculative grade rated borrowers and secondary market trading of loans to control potential agency conflicts with borrowers. Traditional monitoring is more important for bank lenders. The default rates of covenant-lite loans are lower than on fully covenanted loans, but recovery rates implied by higher yield spreads are substantially lower. In loan pricing, lenders give considerably more weight to losses when default occurs

A Seminar on Reaching the Secular Mind for Members and Guests of the Hickory Seventh-day Adventist Church

Problem Western civilization is now pre- or post-Christian. Secularism has entrenched itself in our culture. Many churches are still utilizing mostly antiquated methods of reaching a Christian culture. We need to discover methods to engage the twenty-first-century secular mind. Method This report is outlined in the following way. It gives a brief overview of secularism by defining and then tracing its origin and development. Then it gives an overview of biblical, SDA, and selected evangelical literature on reaching the secular mind. A six-session seminar was formulated utilizing Microsoft PowerPoint, to be conducted sometime in the near future. Results The results of this seminar will be determined after it is conducted. It is hoped that the material will bring about a paradigm shift in people\u27s thinking, motivating them to be more flexible and energetic about reaching the twenty- first-century secular mind. Conclusions The report shows that Scripture envisions Christians reaching all people-groups. Adventist and evangelical authors state that culturally relevant methods must be utilized to reach the secular mind

Winter Home Range and Habitat Use of the Virginia Northern Flying Squirrel (Glaucomys sabrinus fuscus)

We radio-tracked two male and one female Virginia northern flying squirrels (Glaucomys sabrinus fuscus) in the Allegheny Mountains of West Virginia at Snowshoe Mountain Resort, in winter 2003 and Canaan Valley National Wildlife Refuge in winter 2004, respectively, to document winter home range and habitat use in or near ski areas. Male home range size in the winter was larger than that reported for males during summer and fall, whereas the female home range we observed was smaller than those reported for summer and fall. However, winter habitat use was similar to summer and fall habitat use reported in other studies. Virginia northern flying squirrels foraged and denned in both red spruce (Picea rubens)-dominated forests and northern hardwood forests; however, selection of red spruce-dominated forests and open areas was greater than expected based on availability. Use of northern hardwood forest occurred less than expected based on availability. Male squirrels denned near, and routinely crossed, downhill ski slopes and unimproved roads during foraging bouts, whereas the female approached, but did not cross forest edges onto roads or trails

Investigation of a Switchable Textile Communication System on the Human Body

In this paper, a switchable textile communication system working at 2.45 GHz ISM band is presented and studied for different locations within a realistic on-body environment. A 3D laser scanner is used to generate a numerical phantom of the measured subject to improve the accuracy of the simulations which are carried out for different body postures. For the off-body communications, the system is acting as an aperture coupled microstrip patch antenna with a boresight gain of 1.48 dBi. On-body communication is achieved by using a textile stripline, which gives approximately 5 dB transmission loss over 600 mm distance. The system is switched between on and off-body modes by PIN diodes. Common issues, such as shape distortion and body detuning effects which the textile antenna may experience in realistic use are fully discussed. Robust antenna performance is noted in the on-body tests, and an additional 3 dB transmission coefficient deduction was noticed in the most severe shape distortion case

What Brown saw and you can too

A discussion is given of Robert Brown's original observations of particles ejected by pollen of the plant \textit{Clarkia pulchella} undergoing what is now called Brownian motion. We consider the nature of those particles, and how he misinterpreted the Airy disc of the smallest particles to be universal organic building blocks. Relevant qualitative and quantitative investigations with a modern microscope and with a "homemade" single lens microscope similar to Brown's, are presented.Comment: 14.1 pages, 11 figures, to be published in the American Journal of Physics. This differs from the previous version only in the web site referred to in reference 3. Today, this Brownian motion web site was launched, and http://physerver.hamilton.edu/Research/Brownian/index.html, is now correc