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Automatic Workout Mortgage and Housing Consumption Choice
No full textThis paper further develops the Automatic Workout Mortgage (AWM) which embeds an insurance put option to reduce negative equity, systemic risk, and promote economic recovery. We introduce a mathematical model showing that AWM raises household utility and increases housing demand. Without AWM, households stabilize at about 40% equity when considering reverse mortgages; with AWM, demand peaks at 80%. The insurance feature lowers precautionary saving, making housing more attractive to risk-averse borrowers. AWM boosts expected utility by roughly 33% of optimal housing consumption without AWM and protects home equity, improving future housing affordability and retirement-phase resilience
Trust, Risk, and Provisions: How Man-Made Disasters Shape Banking Behavior
Get PDFThis study examines the impact of unintentional man-made disasters, using data on Extraordinarily Serious Accidents (ESAs) in China, on bank loan loss provisions. Results show that disasters significantly increase provisions, driven by shifts in bank managers’ risk perception rather than firms’ operational distress. The impact of ESAs attenuates over time and as the salience of the event declines. Banks with cross-province branches and a higher proportion of managerial personnel show milder responses, while independent directors, non-traffic disasters and periods of high policy uncertainty amplify provisioning. Lower internal capital adequacy further heightens this tendency. Information transparency plays a moderating role in shaping emotional responses, however, no link is found between provisions and penalties on local officials post-ESA. This research highlights the role of managerial sentiment in shaping loan loss provisioning
Experimental and Theoretical Studies of Isomeric Metal (N^C^N)Cl Coordination Complexes (Metal = Pt, Pd) with Multiple Conductance Pathways in Single-Molecule Junctions
Get PDFThe present work provides insight into the effect of connectivity within isomeric 3,5-bis(pyridin-2-yl)phenyl (N^C^N) platinum and palladium complexes on their electron transmission properties within gold|molecule|gold junctions. The ligands 3,5-bis(4-(methylthio)pyridin-2-yl)phenyl hexanoate (L m H) and 3,5-bis(5-(methylthio)pyridin-2-yl)phenyl hexanoate (L p H) were synthesized and coordinated with either PtCl or PdCl to form complexes Pt m , Pt p , Pd m and Pd p . X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) measurements evaluated the contacting modes of the molecules in the junctions. A combination of scanning tunneling microscopy-break junction (STM-BJ) measurements and density functional theory (DFT) calculations demonstrate that for the single-molecule S···S contacted junctions metal coordination enhanced the conductance compared with the free ligands. Notably, the higher degree of orbital mixing between the metal center and the ligand π-orbitals in the metal complexes plays a greater role than quantum interference to the extent that the complexes that incorporate ligands substituted with thiomethyl groups in meta positions relative to the pyridine-benzene linkages have a higher conductance than their para-analogs, e.g., Pt p −3.8 log(G/G 0) and Pt m −3.3 log(G/G 0), in contrast to the usual conductance trend (para > meta) for purely organic π-electron systems
Anomaly-induced vanishing of brane partition functions
Get PDFIn the presence of ’t Hooft anomalies, backgrounds for the symmetries of a quantum field theory can lead to non-conservation of Noether currents, or more generally, to the presence of charged insertions in the path integral. When there is a net background charge, the partition function evaluated on closed manifolds will vanish. For anomalous symmetries, this statement can also be understood as the anomaly theory giving rise to a non-trivial anomalous phase for the partition function even for “rigid” transformations which leave all background fields unchanged. We use the generalisation of this second viewpoint to the setting of anomalous higher-form symmetries in order to show vanishing of the partition function for a number of examples, both with and without a Lagrangian description. In particular, we show how to derive from these considerations the analogue of the Freed-Witten anomaly cancellation condition for the M5-brane, and also that for the D3-brane in S-fold backgrounds
Financial geography III – Everyday lives of finance
Get PDFThis third progress report on financial geography focuses on the everyday lives of finance. Moving beyond firm- and state-centric analyses, research increasingly foregrounds how financialisation permeates households, care relations and daily practices through variegated financial subjectivities, debt-based survival strategies and digital intermediation. Drawing on feminist political economy and critical approaches, the report highlights intersections of finance with social reproduction, gendered and racialised inequalities and the rise of fintech as a transformative yet potentially exploitative force. It concludes by identifying gaps in research on age and on state-technology relations, calling for intersectional, multi-scalar perspectives on finance’s lived and affective dimensions
Energy security in the maritime Arctic: Pouring old wine into new oceans
Get PDFEnergy security has traditionally been framed in terms of ensuring stable and affordable access to energy sources, such as oil and natural gas, where it is understood that the countries that control the oil spigot control the global economy. As the world shifts towards renewable energy systems, strategic minerals are increasingly being framed in a similar way, as the new geopolitical assets. This chapter analyses this shift in the context of the ‘return of geopolitics’ to the Arctic, and in particular to the maritime Arctic, as it has been accompanied by a concern about how the region may be a site of energy insecurity, as well as hopes that the region can host innovations that will provide the world with sustainable energy security solutions. Nowhere is this clearer than in Norway, where energy security is mobilised as a geo/political discourse, with the energy security framing that has long prevailed for oil and gas now being transferred to a different resource base. Oil and gas production is presented as crucial to European security while deep sea mining is presented as crucial to the Western decarbonisation project through a self-fulfilling process of what we term ‘geopolitical forecasting’. In this way new frontiers for appropriation are integrated into pre-existing state economic imaginaries and governance practices. In response, this chapter proposes a research agenda that explores not simply how new energy sources can be mobilised for ‘energy security’ but how energy transitions can be genuinely transformative for how we conceptualise both governance and security
CEOs’ early-life disaster experiences and corporate hedging activities
Get PDFWe study how traumatic experiences in childhood influence CEOs’ risk preferences and corporate financial hedging decisions. Based on a sample of U.S. public firms from 1993 to 2020, we document a positive relation between CEOs’ early-life disaster experiences and the likelihood of firms using financial derivatives. We also find that the interactive impact of disaster experiences and financial hedging on firm value is negative, suggesting that early-life disaster experiences increase the gap between CEOs’ and shareholders’ risk preferences, potentially leading to conflicts of interest. Furthermore, our cross-sectional analysis shows that the positive relation between disaster experiences and financial hedging is more pronounced in firms with weaker corporate governance, fewer financial constraints, and higher firm-specific risk. Our findings suggest that corporate boards and regulators should maintain active oversight of corporate risk management practices, especially when early-life disaster experiences are known to influence a CEO’s risk preferences
Global remapping of the sensory homunculus emerges early in childhood development
Get PDFSome of the most dramatic examples of neuroplasticity in the human brain follow congenital sensory deprivation, yet the plasticity mechanisms producing this large-scale cortical remapping remain poorly understood. Congenital malformation of the upper-limb provides a unique temporal dissociation of developmental plasticity mechanisms: While sensory deprivation from the absent hand is triggered before birth, compensatory motor behaviours develop gradually throughout childhood. Using paediatric neuroimaging and semi-ecological behavioural analysis in children (5-7 years old) and adults (>25 years old) with unilateral upper-limb congenital limb difference, we studied deprivation- and use-dependent plasticity in the deprived primary somatosensory cortex and beyond. We reveal that global remapping, encompassing the entire sensory homunculus, is established early and maintained in adulthood. Modelling indicates that deprivation-driven homeostatic plasticity can account for this global remapping. Hebbian-based compensatory learning further contributes to the magnitude of inter-individual differences observed at both childhood and adulthood. Our findings emphasise the early establishment and stability of cortical maps, despite extensive daily-life behavioural adaptation
Balls and Bins and the Infinite Process with Random Deletions
No full textWe consider an infinite balls-into-bins process with deletions where in each discrete step a coin is tossed as to whether, with probability () ∈(0,1), a new ball is allocated using the Greedy[2] strategy (which places the ball in the lower loaded of two bins sampled uniformly at random) or, with remaining probability 1 −(), a ball is deleted from a non-empty bin chosen uniformly at random. Let be the number of bins and () the total load at time . We are interested in bounding the discrepancy max() −()/ (current maximum load relative to current average) and the overload max() −max()/ (current maximum load relative to highest average observed so far).We prove that at an arbitrarily chosen time the total number of balls above the average is () and that the discrepancy is (log). For the discrepancy, we provide a matching lower bound. Furthermore we prove that at an arbitrarily chosen time the overload is loglog +(1). For “good” insertion probability sequences (in which the average load of time intervals with polynomial length increases in expectation) we show that even the discrepancy is bounded by loglog +(1).One of our main analytical tools is a layered induction, as per [ABKU99]. Since our model allows for rather more general scenarios than what was previously considered, the formal analysis requires some extra ingredients as well, in particular a detailed potential analysis. Furthermore, we simplify the setup by applying probabilistic couplings to obtain certain “recovery” properties, which eliminate much of the need for intricate and careful conditioning elsewhere in the analysis
Off-grid shore-to-ship power system optimization with a hydrogen-in-loop buffering scheme driven by hydrokinetic wave-wind energy
Get PDFThe environmentally vulnerable Arctic's harsh climate and remote geography demand innovative green energy solutions. This study introduces a hybrid off-grid system that integrates wave and wind energy with hydrogen-electricity conversion technologies. Designed to power cruise ships at berth, fuel-cell hybrid electric vehicles, and residential heating, the system tackles the challenge of energy variability through dual optimization schemes. External optimization identifies a cost-effective architecture, achieving a net present cost of 20.1/kg without a fuel cell. Internal optimizations, employing multi-objective game theory and HYBRID algorithms, further improve performance, reducing the net present cost to 13.74/kg (game theory) and 15.63/kg (HYBRID). A key innovation is hydrokinetic turbines, which streamline the design by cutting cumulative cash flow requirements by 1.85M to $1.38M. This approach prioritizes intelligent energy management, shifting reliance from variable wind and wave inputs to optimized electrolyzer and battery operations. These results underscore the feasibility of cost-effective and scalable renewable energy systems and provide a compelling blueprint for addressing energy challenges in remote and resource-constrained environments
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