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An Endogenous Measure of Class Participation
No full textPeer assessments can provide valuable information to instructors who are assigning class participation scores. Student peer assessments bring their own problems, however, including grade inflation and variation in the quality of assessments across students. This paper addresses these problems by employing an endogenous measure of class participation, which dampens the influence of poor quality information and makes the evaluation fairer, since it weighs more heavily the opinions of classmates that students respect. The technique is employed on example data from an undergraduate seminar course, and the results are evaluated. The technique is shown to be incentive-compatible
Cross Country Analysis of Leveraged Loan Issuance: A Comparative Case Study
No full textThis paper aims to examine the dynamics of the global leveraged loan market through a cross-country analysis of 32,635 loan issuances spanning 133 industries across 29 countries between 2005 and 2024. The study analyzes key loan-level variables; including commitment size, maturity time, facility type, pledge status, priority lien, economic sector, use of proceeds, issue year, and amortization schedule to identify cross-country variation in loan issuance patterns and borrower characteristics, comparing a selected sample of international countries with the United States. The results reveal that the market for leveraged loans has grown significantly over time, specifically due to a higher frequency of issuances, rather than growth in deal volume sizes. The market appears to have relatively maintained its structuring characteristics across regions and over time, recording a median maturity of 5-6 years, a commitment size of $75-83 MM, and a first lien secured structure. Emerging markets were observed to be following U.S. loan structuring patterns, as no significant differences were found between the international sample and U.S. entries. The United States and the United Kingdom were identified as the markets with the highest degree of sophistication and volume of deals. This research contributes to the existing literature on leveraged finance by emphasizing the role of cross-country differences in shaping highly leveraged transactions. The study provides a detailed empirical analysis of global leveraged loan structures, filling an important gap in the existing academic research
On the Possibility of Cre(AI)tive Scientists
No full textCreativity is traditionally regarded as a hallmark of human cognition—marked by its capacity for novelty, value, and resistance to mechanistic explanation. Long associated with spontaneity, intuition, and originality, it has anchored claims of human exceptionalism across artistic, scientific, and intellectual domains. Yet recent advances in artificial intelligence raise foundational questions about the nature of creativity and the epistemic conditions under which it might be attributed to machines, especially in the context of scientific discovery. This thesis offers a two-part investigation. The first develops a conceptual analysis of creativity as an epistemic predicate—a property of intellectual products that restructure explanatory frameworks, resolve anomalies, and enable new inferential pathways. Drawing on accounts of epistemology, scientific paradigms, and abductive reasoning, it situates scientific creativity within the context of conceptual change. The second part evaluates whether artificial systems can meet these criteria, analyzing three AI paradigms: symbolic systems (rule-governed), connectionist models (associative learning), and neurosymbolic architectures (integrated systems) are capable of modeling abduction, recognizing anomalies, and supporting conceptual change. The project delineates the structural, representational, and normative conditions under which creativity is meaningfully attributed, and assesses how far current AI systems approximate these. In doing so, it contributes to ongoing debates in artificial intelligence, cognitive science, and epistemology
A theoretical discussion on financial theory: What should we teach and how
No full textThis essay addresses some of the critical and cohesive teaching philosophies regarding finance theory education in an effort to rekindle and increase our awareness thereof in the wake of rapid advancement and propagation of technology-based practical skills training, which appears to increasingly discount the usefulness of classroom-taught theories. Recognizing the significance of fostering problemidentifying ability in today\u27s financial management, the paper advocates the importance of theory education in finance. Renewed attention to the issue should help reshape finance education for the better in this rapidly changing environment