Approach to the assessment of the hazard

An overview of the carbon fiber hazard assessment is presented. The potential risk to the civil sector associated with the accidental release of carbon fibers from aircraft having composite structures was assessed along with the need for protection of civil aircraft from carbon fibers

Perspective on the results

The results of studies on the risk due to the use of carbon fibers in aircraft are assessed. Assumptions such as additional fire protection in the aircraft, new structural concepts, and the development of unique carbon composites are evaluated. Some findings from the national risk profile including equipment vulnerability and economic impact are discussed

The Cumulative Unanticipated Change in Interest Rates: Evidence on the Misintermediation Hypothesis

The term structure of interest rates is carefully analyzed over the period 1947-77 in order to construct a monthly series on cumulative unanticipated changes in long-term interest rates. This series is a sort of synthetic interest rate, changes in which over several months or years represent entirely unanticipated changes in interest rates. The behavior of this series is examined over recognized business fluctuations, and it is found to be actually more reliably pro-cyclic than the raw long-term interest rate, in spite of Kessel's finding that the market tends to correctly predict the direction of change of interest rates over phases. That the series is pro-cyclic supports the hypothesis we have put forward in another paper, that business fluctuations may be caused by "misintermediation", by which we mean the traditional mis-matching of asset and liability maturities on the part of financial intermediaries.

The Pricing of Short-Lived Options When Price Uncertainty Is Log-Symmetric Stable

The well-known option pricing formula of Black and Scholes depends upon the assumption that price fluctuations are log-normal. However, this formula greatly underestimates the value of options with a low probability of being exercised if, as appears to be more nearly the case in most markets, price fluctuations are in fact symmetrics table or log-symmetric stable. This paper derives a general formula for the value of a put or call option in a general equilibrium, expected utility maximization context. This general formula is found to yield the Black-Scholes formula for a wide variety of underlying processes generating log-normal price uncertainty. It is then used to derive the value of a short-lived option for certain processes that generate log-symmetric stable price uncertainty. Our analysis is restricted to short-lived options for reasons of mathematical tractability. Nevertheless, the formula is useful for evaluating many types of risk.

Risk analysis approach

The assessment of the carbon fiber hazard is outlined. Program objectives, requirements of the risk analysis, and elements associated with the physical phenomena of the accidental release are described