Is bank lending special?

Bank loans ; Financial institutions ; Commercial loans

Assessing High House Prices: Bubbles, Fundamentals, and Misperceptions

We construct measures of the annual cost of single-family housing for 46 metropolitan areas in the United States over the last 25 years and compare them with local rents and incomes as a way of judging the level of housing prices. Conventional metrics like the growth rate of house prices, the price-to-rent ratio, and the price-to-income ratio can be misleading because they fail to account both for the time series pattern of real long-term interest rates and predictable differences in the long-run growth rates of house prices across local markets. These factors are especially important in recent years because house prices are theoretically more sensitive to interest rates when rates are already low, and more sensitive still in those cities where the long-run rate of house price growth is high. During the 1980s, our measures show that houses looked most overvalued in many of the same cities that subsequently experienced the largest house price declines. We find that from the trough of 1995 to 2004, the cost of owning rose somewhat relative to the cost of renting, but not, in most cities, to levels that made houses look overvalued.

Do Stock Price Bubbles Influence Corporate Investment?

Building on recent developments in behavioral asset pricing, we develop a model in which dispersion of investor beliefs under short-selling constraints drives a firm's stock price above its fundamental value. Managers optimally respond to the stock market bubble by issuing new equity. The bubble reduces the user-cost of capital and increase real investment. Using the variance of analysts' earnings forecasts as a proxy for the dispersion of investor beliefs, we find strong empirical support for the model's key prediction that increases in dispersion cause increases in new equity issuance, Tobin's Q, and real investment.

Roundtable Discussion: The Future of New York: 1898, 1998

In this transcript of a symposium held at Fordham University School of Law on November 16, 1998 on the Future of New York, the six participants addressed the broad subject of what the future can bring as New York celebrated its centennial year. Professor Hammack spoke first. He focused on the future of “Greater New York” by discussing the creation of it, the hopes at the time and the changes that occurred since. Next, Professor Siegel addressed the challenge of the telecommunications revolution as New York faced an economic downturn, and possibly an impending national recession. He recounted some of the complexities of the revolution, decentralization of the economy as a result of telecommunications and New York’s advanced standing in the revolution resulting from early deregulation. Third, Professor Fuchs spoke about the common characterization of New York as exceptional. Reviewing the past century, she explained in what regards New York, a global city, was indeed exceptional. Looking forward, Professor Fuchs argued that a successful future was dependent on continuing a course of being exceptional, as opposed to “making New York like the rest of America,” through political innovation. Professor Jackson spoke last. He first dispelled the conception that circumstances are presently worse than they were 100 years ago and then briefly commented on the remarks of the earlier speakers. Dean Robert Himmelberg of Fordhan’s Graduate School of Arts & Sciences gave an introduction, followed by brief remarks from Professor Daniel Soyer, a member of Fordham’s History Department who organized the conference. The six participants were: (1) Robert Himmelberg (Chair); (2) Daniel Soyer (Moderator); (3) David C. Hammack (Panelist), Elbert Jay Benton Professor of History at Case Western Reserve University and Pulitzer Prize nominated author; (4) Fred Siegel (Panelist), Professor of History at Cooper Union for the Arts & Sciences in New York, author, and a Senior Fellow of the Progressive Policy Institute; (5) Ester R. Fuchs (Panelist), Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at Barnard College and Columbia University, Director of the Columbia Center for Urban Research and Policy, and author; and (6) Kenneth T. Jackson (Respondent), Jacques Barzun Professor of History and the Social Sciences at Columbia University, author and editor of the Encyclopedia of New York City

St. Anna Marie\u27s Convent: Wichita, Kansas

Located on a picturesque site on the secluded northern shore of Cheney Lake, St. Anna Marie\u27s serves as the Mother House Convent for the Sisters of the Most Precious Blood. After the existing St. Louis facility was destroyed by fire and because of its diminishing numbers, the congregation elected to merge with its sister convent in Wichita, Kansas..

Investment, protection, ownership, and the cost of capital

We investigate the cost of capital in a model with an agency conflict between inside managers and outside shareholders. Inside ownership reflects the classic tradeoff between incentives and risk diversification, and the severity of agency costs depends on a parameter representing investor protection. In equilibrium, the marginal cost of capital is a weighted average of terms reflecting both idiosyncratic and systematic risk, and weaker investor protection increases the weight on idiosyncratic risk. Using firm-level data from 38 countries, we estimate the predicted relationships among investor protection, inside ownership, and the marginal cost of capital. We discuss implications for the determinants of firm size, the relationship between Tobin's Q and ownership, and the effect of financial liberalizations.Investor protection, ownership, investment, cost of capital, agency costs

Numerical simulations for wellbore stability and integrity for drilling and completions

Conventional wellbore trajectory planning is commonly based on an Andersonian state of stress [SoS] and the optimum well azimuth and inclination for a specific depth can be determined using stereographic projections of the safe mud weight window. In this thesis a new methodology using the complete stress tensor is developed to determine optimal well trajectories for complex in-situ stress scenarios. This study uses a 3D finite element analysis to simulate the SoS based on an integrated 3D MEM. The model yields the complete stress tensor at every location for a planned future well path. Using standard equations to determine the wellbore SoS for inclined wellbores the safe operational pressure window can be determined. Included is a wellbore integrity study on the cement sheath of a well proposed for CO₂ sequestration. This includes both the mechanical interactions of the casing, cement, and formation as well as the effects of temperature change which would be caused by CO₂ injection. The use of a staged finite element model to accurately predict the pre-cementing wellbore SoS is proposed. The SoS results are then implemented into a wellbore model with a perfectly bonded cement sheath in order to investigate the effects of cement curing and degradation. In this study the evolution of Young\u27s Modulus during cement curing, and de-evolution during cement degradation is accounted for. Traditional cement integrity studies use only a constant value for Young\u27s Modulus. The finite element models show that inclusion of cement hardening may increase the risk of shear failure in the cement, while inclusion of cement degradation may lead to tensile failure during cold CO₂ injection. --Abstract, page iii

Repair prioritization with respect to inventory requirements

In a multi-echelon service parts supply chain with limited repair resources, real-time repair decisions have significant impacts on supply chain performance. Inducting into repair the appropriate breadth and depth of components is essential to meeting short-term and long-term customer service level constraints. Previous research in this area primarily focuses on steady-state supply chains assuming infinite repair capabilities and the repair induction of all non-serviceable parts. This thesis develops a Mixed Integer Linear Program (MIP) which considers the current state of the entire repair system as well as forecasted part-breakages to produce strategic real-time repair recommendations. Repair inductions are prioritized to maximize stock location service levels over multiple budget periods through comparative fill rates encompassing both issue effectiveness and sub-system availability. Multiple model runs were completed to determine objective function parameter specifications that best align with these overall system goals. Model output includes daily or weekly repair recommendations, a prioritized list of repair inductions, and projected supply chain performance for issue effectiveness and sub-system availability

Low-level visual processing and its relation to neurological disease

Retinal neurons extract changes in image intensity across space, time, and wavelength. Retinal signal is transmitted to the early visual cortex, where the processing of low-level visual information occurs. The fundamental nature of these early visual pathways means that they are often compromised by neurological disease. This thesis had two aims. First, it aimed to investigate changes in visual processing in response to Parkinson’s disease (PD) by using electrophysiological recordings from animal models. Second, it aimed to use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate how low-level visual processes are represented in healthy human visual cortex, focusing on two pathways often compromised in disease; the magnocellular pathway and chromatic S-cone pathway. First, we identified a pathological mechanism of excitotoxicity in the visual system of Drosophila PD models. Next, we found that we could apply machine learning classifiers to multivariate visual response profiles recorded from the eye and brain of Drosophila and rodent PD models to accurately classify these animals into their correct class. Using fMRI and psychophysics, found that measurements of temporal contrast sensitivity differ as a function of visual space, with peripherally tuned voxels in early visual areas showing increased contrast sensitivity at a high temporal frequency. Finally, we used 7T fMRI to investigate systematic differences in achromatic and S-cone population receptive field (pRF) size estimates in the visual cortex of healthy humans. Unfortunately, we could not replicate the fundamental effect of pRF size increasing with eccentricity, indicating complications with our data and stimulus