560 research outputs found
Directional Syllabification in Generalized Alignment
No full textWe show in this brief paper that certain directional syllabification effects can be derived in Optimality Theory, without recourse to a serial derivation, by extending to the syllabic level the argument made for directional footing in McCarthy and Prince (1993), who attribute the basic idea to Robert Kirchner. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of the potential benefits and limitations of this conception of directionality effects.The definitive version of this paper was published in Phonology at Santa Cruz, vol. 3.Mester, A., & Padgett, J. (1994). Directional Syllabification in Generalized Alignment. In J. Merchant, J. Padgett, & R. Walker (Eds.), Phonology at Santa Cruz, Vol. 3 (pp. 79-85). Santa Cruz, Calif.: Syntax Research Center, University of California, Santa Cruz
A Chronological Retrospective of Works by Women and about Women Published in Mester
No full text[No abstract
Correspondence and Compositionality: The Ga-gyō Variation in Japanese Phonology
No full textThis paper explores the theoretical consequences of surface-to-surface correspondence constraints in Optimality Theory, in comparison to a derivational approach employing sequential derivational mechanisms like cyclicity and ordered default rules. The empirical object of investigation are the facts of the g-N(angma) alternation and variation in Tokyo Japanese. The central argument of the paper is that the OT analysis is better equipped to handle the facts of the alternation, which are truly intricate and interesting, since an (at first glance) simple process of allophony is complicated by subpatterns of optionality vs. obligatoriness, governed by factors such as the presence vs. absence of related words and the influence of Rendaku voicing.The definitive version of this paper was published in Derivations and Constraints in Phonology (1997)Itô, J., & Mester, A. (1997). Correspondence and compositionality: The ga-gyō variation in japanese phonology. In I. Roca (Ed.) Derivations and constraints in phonology (pp. 419-462). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.ISBN: 0198236905 (Published conference proceedings)This work was partially supported by faculty senate grants from the University of California at Santa Cruz and by the National Science Foundation under grant SBR-951086
Switching costs and adverse selection in the market for credit cards: new evidence
No full textTo explain persistence of credit card interest rates at relatively high levels, Calem and Mester (AER, 1995) argued that informational barriers create switching costs for high-balance customers. As evidence, using data from the 1989 Survey of Consumer Finances, they showed that these households were more likely to be rejected when applying for new credit. In this paper, they revisit the question using the 1998 and 2001 SCF. Further, they use new information on card interest rates to test for pricing effects consistent with information-based switching costs. The authors find that informational barriers to competition persist, although their role may have declined. ; Also issued as Payment Cards Center Discussion Paper No. 05-09Credit cards
Bank capitalization and cost: evidence of scale economies in risk management and signaling
No full textWith seemingly minor amendments to the standard techniques of measuring banking technology, we have uncovered important empirical phenomena that point to the crucial role played by financial capital in banking and financial intermediation. The authors employ a standard cost function, conditioned on the level of financial capital, but they model the demand for financial capital so that it can logically serve as a cushion against insolvency for potentially risk-averse managers and as a signal of risk for less informed outsiders. This allows scale economies to be computed without assuming that the bank chooses a level of capitalization that minimizes cost. Hence, a wider range of cost configurations is accommodated. ; The authors find evidence that bank managers are risk averse and use the level of financial capital to signal the level of risk. For any given vector of outputs, risk-averse managers increase the level of financial capital to control risk and employ additional amounts of labor and physical capital to improve risk management and to preserve capital. When scale economies are calculated, increasing size and the consequent improvement in diversification allow risk-averse banks to economize on their costly tradeoff and achieve significant scale economies. When these roles of financial capital are ignored in analyzing banking costs, the measured scale economies disappear. Our results seem to reconcile the disparity between the finding of constant returns to scale of previous studies that ignored financial capital and assumed risk-neutral bank managers and the recent wave of large bank mergers, which bankers claim are driven in part by scale economies.Bank capital ; Economies of scale ; Risk
Sympathy theory and German truncations
No full textPhonological opacity, in the proposal of McCarthy 1997, arises through constraints on a new type of correspondence relation holding within the candidate set that Gen produces for a given input, i.e., a relation between co-candidates. A candidate may win because it is in sympathy with a particular failed co-candidate, one that is optimal with respect to a specific lower-ranking constraint. This paper presents independent evidence for Sympathy by arguing that, enriched with the new notion, Optimality Theory can explain a certain type of prosodic-morphological formations requiring access to virtual forms accessible neither in the input in the output. The empirical focus throughout is a productive pattern of truncation in contemporary German deriving hypocoristics and other kinds of shortenings. In a broader vein, it is suggested that with the inclusion of Sympathy, the power of Output-Output constraints can be drastically reduced, leading to a simpler overall theory.The definitive version of this paper was published in University of Maryland Working Papers in Linguistics 5 (1997) and is available at http://46a-369.umd.edu/publications/Ito, J., & Mester, A. (1997). Sympathy theory and german truncations. University of Maryland Working Papers in Linguistics, 5, 117-139.This work was partially supported by faculty senate grants from the University of California at Santa Cruz and by the National Science Foundation under grant SBR-951086
The changing nature of the payments system: should new players mean new rules?
No full textTraditional forms of payment, such as currency, coin, and paper checks, are quickly being eclipsed by electronic forms, such as payments made by ATM, credit card, or automated clearing house. More recently, smart cards, debit cards, and PC banking have joined this electronic army of new ways to make payments. A parallel development has been the entrance of many nonbank players into the payments arena. Nowadays, settlement and clearing can be done by entities that are not necessarily banks, the customary center of the U.S. payments system. As these new entrants grow in number and become more popular, concerns about regulating these newcomers have arisen. In this article, Loretta Mester documents changes in the use of various forms of retail payments and outlines some of the regulatory concerns as she considers the question, Should new players mean new rules?Payment systems
The dollars and sense of bank consolidation
No full textFor nearly two decades banks in the United States have consolidated in record numbers--in terms of both frequency and the size of the merging institutions. Rhoades (1996) hypothesizes that the main motivators were increased potential for geographic expansion created by changes in state laws regulating branching and a more favorable antitrust climate. To look for evidence of economic incentives to exploit these improved opportunities for consolidation, the authors examine how consolidation affects expected profit, the riskiness of profit, profit efficiency, market value, market-value efficiencies, and the risk of insolvency. Their estimates of expected profit, profit risk, and profit efficiency are based on a structural model of leveraged portfolio production that was estimated for a sample of highest-level U.S. bank holding companies in Hughes, Lang, Mester, and Moon (1996). Here, the authors also estimate two additional measures that gauge efficiency in terms of the market values of assets and of equity. Their findings suggest that the economic benefits of consolidation are strongest for those banks engaged in interstate expansion and, in particular, interstate expansion that diversifies banks' macroeconomic risk. Not only do these banks experience clear gains in their financial performance, but society also benefits from the enhanced bank safety that follows from this type of consolidation.Bank mergers
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