Checking accounts and bank monitoring

Do checking accounts help banks monitor borrowers? If they do, the rationale both for allowing regulated providers of liquidity to also make risky loans to commercial borrowers and for the government's providing deposit insurance becomes clearer. Using a unique set of data that includes monthly and annual information on small-business borrowers at an anonymous Canadian bank, the authors provide evidence that a bank has exclusive access to a continuous stream of borrower data, namely, the firm's checking account balances at the bank, that helps it to monitor the borrower. ; To the authors' knowledge, this paper is the first direct empirical test of the usefulness of checking account information in monitoring commercial borrowers. The authors directly examine the mechanism through which a bank is able to gain an information advantage over other types of lenders and find evidence that checking account information is indeed relatively transparent for monitoring borrowers' collateral and that such monitoring is useful in detecting problems with loans. As such, the authors' data provide "smoking gun" evidence that banks are special.Checking accounts

Transactions accounts and loan monitoring.

We provide evidence that transactions accounts help financial intermediaries monitor borrowers by offering lenders a continuous stream of data on borrowers’ account balances. This information is most readily available to commercial banks, but other intermediaries, such as finance companies, also have access to such information at a cost. Using a unique set of data that includes monthly and annual information on small-business borrowers at an anonymous Canadian bank, we provide empirical evidence that transactions account information helps the bank to monitor commercial borrowers’ operating loans and we show the direct mechanism through which an intermediary can use this information in monitoring and controlling moral hazard problems associated with a rising probability of bankruptcy.Loans

The Laser of the ALICE Time Projection Chamber

The large TPC ($95 \mathrm{m}^3$) of the ALICE detector at the CERN LHC was commissioned in summer 2006. The first tracks were observed both from the cosmic ray muons and from the laser rays injected into the TPC. In this article the basic principles of operating the $266 \mathrm{nm}$ lasers are presented, showing the installation and adjustment of the optical system and describing the control system. To generate the laser tracks, a wide laser beam is split into several hundred narrow beams by fixed micro-mirrors at stable and known positions throughout the TPC. In the drift volume, these narrow beams generate straight tracks at many angles. Here we describe the generation of the first tracks and compare them with simulations.Comment: QM06 poster proceedings, 6 pages, 4 figure

Information techniques for irrigation systems: Selected proceedings of the Second International Network Meeting on Information Techniques for Irrigation Systems held in Lahore/Bahawalnagar, Pakistan, 5-8 December 1994

Irrigation management / Irrigation systems / Decision support tools / Decision making / Information systems / Computer techniques / Models / Water management / Malaysia / Pakistan / Sri Lanka

Formulary status of cephalosporins

The primary purpose of this study is to analyze the formulary status of cephalosporins among a representative sample of hospitals in the United States. In addition, the research design attempts to determine the ranking of cephalsoporins in terms of acceptance to the hospitals\u27 formulary and actual stocking of the cephaosoporin products. The study will attempt to ascertain the reasons for these rankings and the influence of DRG implementation, teaching status and hospital bed size on number of cephalosporins on formulary and in stock. This may yield insight into the strategies that hospitals are currently using to contain a significant proportion of their budget for pharmaceutical product

The Laser Calibration System of the ALICE Time Projection Chamber

A Large Ion Collider Experiment (ALICE) is the only experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) dedicated to the study of heavy ion collisions. The Time Projection Chamber (TPC) is the main tracking detector covering the pseudo rapidity range $|\eta|< 0.9$. It is designed for a maximum multiplicity \dNdy = 8000. The aim of the laser system is to simulate ionizing tracks at predifined positions throughout the drift volume in order to monitor the TPC response to a known source. In particular, the alignment of the read-out chambers will be performed, and variations of the drift velocity due to drift field imperfections can be measured and used as calibration data in the physics data analysis. In this paper we present the design of the pulsed UV laser and optical system, together with the control and monitoring systems.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Long-Term Values in Markov Decision Processes and Repeated Games, and a New Distance for Probability Spaces

We study long-term Markov decision processes (MDPs) and gambling houses, with applications to any partial observation MDPs with finitely many states and zero-sum repeated games with an informed controller. We consider a decision maker who is maximizing the weighted sum 11t 65 1 trt, where rt is the expected reward of the t-th stage. We prove the existence of a very strong notion of long-term value called general uniform value, representing the fact that the decision maker can play well independently of the evaluations (t)t 65 1 over stages, provided the total variation (or impatience) 11t 651 23 23\u3b8t+1 12\u3b8t 23 23 is small enough. This result generalizes previous results of the literature that focus on arithmetic means and discounted evaluations. Moreover, we give a variational characterization of the general uniform value via the introduction of appropriate invariant measures for the decision problems, generalizing the fundamental theorem of gambling or the Aumann\u2013Maschler cav(u) formula for repeated games with incomplete information. Apart the introduction of appropriate invariant measures, the main innovation in our proofs is the introduction of a new metric, d*, such that partial observation MDPs and repeated games with an informed controller may be associated with auxiliary problems that are nonexpansive with respect to d*. Given two Borel probabilities over a compact subset X of a normed vector space, we define d 17(u,v)=supf 08D1 23 23u(f) 12v(f) 23 23, where D1 is the set of functions satisfying 00 x, y 08 X, 00 a, b 65 0, af(x) 12 bf(y) 64 \u2016ax 12 by\u2016. The particular case where X is a simplex endowed with the L1-norm is particularly interesting: d* is the largest distance over the probabilities with finite support over X, which makes every disintegration nonexpansive. Moreover, we obtain a Kantorovich\u2013Rubinstein-type duality formula for d*(u, v), involving couples of measures (\u3b1, \u3b2) over X 7 X such that the first marginal of \u3b1 is u and the second marginal of \u3b2 is v

CARTAN SUBALGEBRAS IN C*-ALGEBRAS. EXISTENCE AND UNIQUENESS

We initiate the study of Cartan subalgebras in C*-algebras, with a particular focus on existence and uniqueness questions. For homogeneous C*-algebras, these questions can be analysed systematically using the theory of fibre bundles. For group C*-algebras, while we are able to find Cartan subalgebras in C*-algebras of many connected Lie groups, there are classes of (discrete) groups, for instance non-abelian free groups, whose reduced group C*-algebras do not have any Cartan subalgebras. Moreover, we show that uniqueness of Cartan subalgebras usually fails for classifiable C*-algebras. However, distinguished Cartan subalgebras exist in some cases, for instance in nuclear Roe algebras.Comment: 26 page

Chemical Abundance Constraints on White Dwarfs as Halo Dark Matter

We examine the chemical abundance constraints on a population of white dwarfs in the Halo of our Galaxy. We are motivated by microlensing evidence for massive compact halo objects (Machos) in the Galactic Halo, but our work constrains white dwarfs in the Halo regardless of what the Machos are. We focus on the composition of the material that would be ejected as the white dwarfs are formed; abundance patterns in the ejecta strongly constrain white dwarf production scenarios. Using both analytical and numerical chemical evolution models, we confirm that very strong constraints come from Galactic Pop II and extragalactic carbon abundances. We also point out that depending on the stellar model, significant nitrogen is produced rather than carbon. The combined constraints from C and N give $\Omega_{WD} h < 2 \times 10^{-4}$ from comparison with the low C and N abundances in the Ly$\alpha$ forest. We note, however, that these results are subject to uncertainties regarding the nucleosynthesis of low-metallicity stars. We thus investigate additional constraints from D and $^4$He, finding that these light elements can be kept within observational limits only for \Omega_{WD} \la 0.003 and for a white dwarf progenitor initial mass function sharply peaked at low mass (2$M_\odot$). Finally, we consider a Galactic wind, which is required to remove the ejecta accompanying white dwarf production from the galaxy. We show that such a wind can be driven by Type Ia supernovae arising from the white dwarfs themselves, but these supernovae also lead to unacceptably large abundances of iron. We conclude that abundance constraints exclude white dwarfs as Machos. (abridged)Comment: Written in AASTeX, 26 pages plus 4 ps figure