The Creditors' Financial Reorganization Decision: New Evidence from Canadian Data

The paper examines a data set of 338 randomly selected financial reorganization plans filed in Canada during the period 1978-87. Creditors reject roughly 25% of reorganization plans, while about 20% of the plans creditors accept fail before completion, providing evidence of filtering failure in the reorganization process. A logit model of the creditors' reorganization decision produces two interesting results. Plans offering a high proportion of cash payments are more likely to be accepted by creditors, which we interpret as evidence that cash is a signal of financial viability. Plans with high ratios of secured debt are more likely to be accepted, which we interpret as evidence that secured creditors with insider knowledge signal information about the financial viability of firms to unsecured creditors. Ce document a pour but d'étudier le processus de réorganisation financière au Canada sur la base d'un échantillon de 338 propositions de réorganisations commerciales au cours de la période 1978-1987. Les données démontrent que 25 % des propositions sont rejetées par les créanciers non-garantis et qu'environ 20 % des propositions acceptées résultent éventuellement en un échec. Une analyse du comportement des créanciers lors du vote sur une proposition génère deux résultats intéressants. Premièrement, la probabilité d'acceptation d'une proposition augmente avec la proportion des paiements comptants fait aux créanciers. L'utilisation de paiements comptants est interprêtée comme un signal quand à la viabilité d'une firme. Deuxièmement, la probabilité d'acceptation d'une proposition augmente avec la proportion des créances garanties à l'intérieur de la firme. Ce résultat supporte la thèse à l'effet que les banques possèdent de l'information privilégiée sur la viabilité des entreprises et fournit une nouvelle évidence quant au rôle des banques dans la transmission de cette information vers les créanciers non-garantis.Financial reorganization; Creditors; Financial viability of firms, Réorganisation financière ; Créanciers ; Viabilité des entreprises

Should We Abolish Chapter 11 : Evidence from Canada

Over the last decade, Chapter 11 has been the brunt of serious criticism. Some American jurists arguing in favor of revising Chapter 11 have raised the possibility that the Canadian reorganization system might be a good alternative to the existing U.S. system. This article argues that there are fruitful lessons to be learned from the Canadian experience with court-supervised reorganization. Canadian evidence shows that acceptance, confirmation, and consummation rates of proposals are very high. Moreover, firms reorganizing in Canada are almost ten times more likely to survive reorganization than their American counterparts. Furthermore, Canadian data yield no support for the claim that problems with bankruptcy law result from an over-abundance of small firms in reorganization. The analysis also shows that the Canadian reorganization procedure offers a very rapid solution to financial distress and that creditors gain, in expected value terms, from reorganization over liquidation. Based on our evaluation of the relative performance of both systems, we argue that Chapter 11 be revised rather than repealed. Au cours de la dernière décennie, le Chapitre 11 du U.S. Bankruptcy Code a été l'objet de critiques importantes de la part de juristes et d'économistes américains. Récemment, un certain nombre de ces juristes ont soulevé la possibilité de réformer le Chapitre 11 sur la base du système canadien en matière de réorganisation commerciale. Le but du présent article est de démontrer que l'expérience canadienne en matière de réorganisation commerciale est révélatrice sur les réformes potentielles à apporter au Chapitre 11. Les données canadiennes montrent clairement que les taux d'acceptation, de confirmation et de succès des propositions commerciales sont très élevés. De plus, la probabilité de survie des firmes canadiennes en réorganisation est de dix fois supérieure à celle des firmes américaines. Les données canadiennes permettent également de rejeter l'affirmation selon laquelle l'échec de la procédure de réorganisation origine de son utilisation par les petites entreprises. Qui plus est, la procédure canadienne offre une solution rapide aux entreprises en difficultés financières et un rendement espéré aux créanciers supérieur par rapport à la procédure de liquidation. Sur la base de notre évaluation comparative des deux systèmes d'insolvabilité, nous suggérons la révision plutôt que l'abolition du Chapitre 11.Bankruptcy, Reorganization, Chapter 11, Bankruptcy Act, Faillite, Réorganisation, Chapitre 11, Loi sur la faillite

Solar: L0L_0 solution path averaging for fast and accurate variable selection in high-dimensional data

We propose a new variable selection algorithm, subsample-ordered least-angle regression (solar), and its coordinate descent generalization, solar-cd. Solar re-constructs lasso paths using the $L_0$ norm and averages the resulting solution paths across subsamples. Path averaging retains the ranking information of the informative variables while averaging out sensitivity to high dimensionality, improving variable selection stability, efficiency, and accuracy. We prove that: (i) with a high probability, path averaging perfectly separates informative variables from redundant variables on the average $L_0$ path; (ii) solar variable selection is consistent and accurate; and (iii) the probability that solar omits weak signals is controllable for finite sample size. We also demonstrate that: (i) solar yields, with less than $1/3$ of the lasso computation load, substantial improvements over lasso in terms of the sparsity (64-84\% reduction in redundant variable selection) and accuracy of variable selection; (ii) compared with the lasso safe/strong rule and variable screening, solar largely avoids selection of redundant variables and rejection of informative variables in the presence of complicated dependence structures; (iii) the sparsity and stability of solar conserves residual degrees of freedom for data-splitting hypothesis testing, improving the accuracy of post-selection inference on weak signals with limited $n$; (iv) replacing lasso with solar in bootstrap selection (e.g., bolasso or stability selection) produces a multi-layer variable ranking scheme that improves selection sparsity and ranking accuracy with the computation load of only one lasso realization; and (v) given the computation resources, solar bootstrap selection is substantially faster (98\% lower computation time) than the theoretical maximum speedup for parallelized bootstrap lasso (confirmed by Amdahl's law)

Should We Abolish Chapter 11 : Evidence from Canada

Au cours de la dernière décennie, le Chapitre 11 du U.S. Bankruptcy Code a été l'objet de critiques importantes de la part de juristes et d'économistes américains. Récemment, un certain nombre de ces juristes ont soulevé la possibilité de réformer le Chapitre 11 sur la base du système canadien en matière de réorganisation commerciale. Le but du présent article est de démontrer que l'expérience canadienne en matière de réorganisation commerciale est révélatrice sur les réformes potentielles à apporter au Chapitre 11. Les données canadiennes montrent clairement que les taux d'acceptation, de confirmation et de succès des propositions commerciales sont très élevés. De plus, la probabilité de survie des firmes canadiennes en réorganisation est de dix fois supérieure à celle des firmes américaines. Les données canadiennes permettent également de rejeter l'affirmation selon laquelle l'échec de la procédure de réorganisation origine de son utilisation par les petites entreprises. Qui plus est, la procédure canadienne offre une solution rapide aux entreprises en difficultés financières et un rendement espéré aux créanciers supérieur par rapport à la procédure de liquidation. Sur la base de notre évaluation comparative des deux systèmes d'insolvabilité, nous suggérons la révision plutôt que l'abolition du Chapitre 11.Over the last decade, Chapter 11 has been the brunt of serious criticism. Some American jurists arguing in favor of revising Chapter 11 have raised the possibility that the Canadian reorganization system might be a good alternative to the existing U.S. system. This article argues that there are fruitful lessons to be learned from the Canadian experience with court-supervised reorganization. Canadian evidence shows that acceptance, confirmation, and consummation rates of proposals are very high. Moreover, firms reorganizing in Canada are almost ten times more likely to survive reorganization than their American counterparts. Furthermore, Canadian data yield no support for the claim that problems with bankruptcy law result from an over-abundance of small firms in reorganization. The analysis also shows that the Canadian reorganization procedure offers a very rapid solution to financial distress and that creditors gain, in expected value terms, from reorganization over liquidation. Based on our evaluation of the relative performance of both systems, we argue that Chapter 11 be revised rather than repealed

The association of dyslexia and developmental speech and language disorder candidate genes with reading and language abilities in adults

Reading and language abilities are critical for educational achievement and success in adulthood. Variation in these traits is highly heritable, but the underlying genetic architecture is largely undiscovered. Genetic studies of reading and language skills traditionally focus on children with developmental disorders; however, much larger unselected adult samples are available, increasing power to identify associations with specific genetic variants of small effect size. We introduce an Australian adult population cohort (41.7–73.2 years of age, N = 1505) in which we obtained data using validated measures of several aspects of reading and language abilities. We performed genetic association analysis for a reading and spelling composite score, nonword reading (assessing phonological processing: a core component in learning to read), phonetic spelling, self-reported reading impairment and nonword repetition (a marker of language ability). Given the limited power in a sample of this size (~80% power to find a minimum effect size of 0.005), we focused on analyzing candidate genes that have been associated with dyslexia and developmental speech and language disorders in prior studies. In gene-based tests, FOXP2, a gene implicated in speech/language disorders, was associated with nonword repetition (p < .001), phonetic spelling (p = .002) and the reading and spelling composite score (p < .001). Gene-set analyses of candidate dyslexia and speech/language disorder genes were not significant. These findings contribute to the assessment of genetic associations in reading and language disorders, crucial for understanding their etiology and informing intervention strategies, and validate the approach of using unselected adult samples for gene discovery in language and reading

Genome-wide screening for DNA variants associated with reading and language traits

This research was funded by: Max Planck Society, the University of St Andrews - Grant Number: 018696, US National Institutes of Health - Grant Number: P50 HD027802, Wellcome Trust - Grant Number: 090532/Z/09/Z, and Medical Research Council Hub Grant Grant Number: G0900747 91070Reading and language abilities are heritable traits that are likely to share some genetic influences with each other. To identify pleiotropic genetic variants affecting these traits, we first performed a genome‐wide association scan (GWAS) meta‐analysis using three richly characterized datasets comprising individuals with histories of reading or language problems, and their siblings. GWAS was performed in a total of 1862 participants using the first principal component computed from several quantitative measures of reading‐ and language‐related abilities, both before and after adjustment for performance IQ. We identified novel suggestive associations at the SNPs rs59197085 and rs5995177 (uncorrected P ≈ 10–7 for each SNP), located respectively at the CCDC136/FLNC and RBFOX2 genes. Each of these SNPs then showed evidence for effects across multiple reading and language traits in univariate association testing against the individual traits. FLNC encodes a structural protein involved in cytoskeleton remodelling, while RBFOX2 is an important regulator of alternative splicing in neurons. The CCDC136/FLNC locus showed association with a comparable reading/language measure in an independent sample of 6434 participants from the general population, although involving distinct alleles of the associated SNP. Our datasets will form an important part of on‐going international efforts to identify genes contributing to reading and language skills.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Modeling of subcontinuum thermal transport across semiconductor-gas interfaces

A physically rigorous computational algorithm is developed and applied to calculate subcontinuum thermal transport in structures containing semiconductor-gas interfaces. The solution is based on a finite volume discretization of the Boltzmann equation for gas molecules (in the gas phase) and phonons (in the semiconductor). A partial equilibrium is assumed between gas molecules and phonons at the interface of the two media, and the degree of this equilibrium is determined by the accommodation coefficients of gas molecules and phonons on either side of the interface. Energy balance is imposed to obtain a value of the interface temperature. The classic problem of temperature drop across a solid-gas interface is investigated with a simultaneous treatment of solid and gas phase properties for the first time. A range of transport regimes is studied, varying from ballistic phonon transport and free molecular flow to continuum heat transfer in both gas and solid. A reduced-order model is developed that captures the thermal resistance of the gas-solid interface. The formulation is then applied to the problem of combined gas-solid heat transfer in a two-dimensional nanoporous bed and the overall thermal resistance of the bed is characterized in terms of the governing parameters. These two examples exemplify the broad utility of the model in practical nanoscale heat transfer applications