Limited liability and the development of capital markets

We study the consequences of the introduction of widespread limited liability for corporations. In the traditional view, limited liability reduces transactions costs and enhances investment incentives for individuals and firms. But this view does not explain several important stylized facts of the British experience, including the slow rate of adoption of limited liability by firms in the years following legal reforms. We construct an alternative model that accounts for this and other features of the nineteenth century British experience. In the model, project risk is private information, and a firm’s decision to adopt limited liability may be interpreted in equilibrium as a signal the firm is more likely to default. Hence less risky firms may choose unlimited liability or forego investments entirely. We show the choice of liability rule can lead to "development traps," in which profitable investments are not undertaken, through its effect on equilibrium beliefs of uninformed investors in the economy.Limited liability ; Capital market

Focus, Vol. 1 No. 1

A literary magazine of student writing published by the Department of English of Stephen F. Austin State College.https://scholarworks.sfasu.edu/focus/1000/thumbnail.jp

The social value of housing in straitened times: The view from England

This paper provides a commentary on the contemporary housing crisis in England and links it to broader questions of role of housing in capitalist economies and societies. It starts with the assumptions that housing and community development issues are linked to the wider housing market and that the housing crisis is not new but has long-run antecedents. The paper begins by reviewing the contemporary terrain of housing markets and policies in the UK. It then discusses several aspects of ‘crisis’: market volatility, rates of new supply, affordability, state welfare subsidies and socio-spatial inequalities. Policy responses to these are examined through a discussion of efforts to expand the role of the private rented sector, sell-off ‘expensive’ public housing and curtail market renewal investments. The paper concludes that current conceptualisations of the value of housing are often partial and insufficiently integrative and that policies must explicitly recognise housing as a social and economic asset

A focus on L dwarfs with trigonometric parallaxes

This is an author-created, un-copyedited version of an article published in Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. Under embargo until 14 May 2019. IOP Publishing Ltd is not responsible for any errors or omissions in this version of the manuscript or any version derived from it. The Version of Record is available online at https://doi.org/10.1088/1538-3873/aaacc5.We report new parallax measurements for ten L and early T type dwarfs, five of which have no previous published values, using observations over 3 years at the robotic Liverpool Telescope. The resulting parallaxes and proper motions have median errors of 2\,mas and 1.5\,mas/year respectively. Their space motions indicate they are all Galactic disk members. We combined this sample with other objects with astrometry from the Liverpool Telescope and with published literature astrometry to construct a sample of 260 L and early T type dwarfs with measured parallaxes, designated the Astrometry Sample. We study the kinematics of the Astrometry Sample, and derived a solar motion of $(U,V,W)_{\bigodot} = (7.9\pm1.7,13.2\pm1.2,7.2\pm1.0)$\,\kms~ with respect to the local standard of rest, in agreement with recent literature. We derive a kinematic age of 1.5-1.7\,Gyr for the Astrometry Sample assuming the age increases monotonically with the total velocity for a given disk sample. This kinematic age is less than half literature values for other low mass dwarf samples. We believe this difference arises for two reasons (1) the sample is mainly composed of mid to late L dwarfs which are expected to be relatively young and (2) the requirement that objects have a measured parallax biases the sample to the brighter examples which tend to be younger.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

Modelling and mapping of exceedance of critical loads and critical levels for acidification and eutrophication in the UK 2013-2016. Final report

This report covers the work of the original contract (2013-15) and the following one-year extension (2015-16). The overall purpose of this project was to maintain, and where appropriate update, the UK critical loads database, and to provide estimates of critical load and critical level exceedance based on current pollutant deposition or concentrations, and scenarios for the future. The exceedance results were used to inform policy makers on the areas of sensitive habitats and designated sites potentially at risk from air pollution and were updated annually to provide a UK indicator of the impacts of air pollution on ecosystems. The project also supported the UK National Focal Centre (NFC) for critical loads modelling and mapping. The 1-year extension to this contract additionally included the biodiversity modelling required to enable the UK NFC to begin work in preparation for responding to the 2015-17 “Call for Data” under the UNECE Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution (CLRTAP)

Spatial patterns and environmental constraints on ecosystem services at a catchment scale

Improved understanding and prediction of the fundamental environmental controls on ecosystem service supply across the landscape will help to inform decisions made by policy makers and land-water managers. To evaluate this issue for a local catchment case study, we explored metrics and spatial patterns of service supply for water quality regulation, agriculture production, carbon storage, and biodiversity for the Macronutrient Conwy catchment. Methods included using ecosystem models such as LUCI and JULES, integration of national scale field survey datasets, earth observation products and plant trait databases, to produce finely resolved maps of species richness and primary production. Analyses were done with both 1x1 km gridded and subcatchment data. A common single gradient characterised catchment scale ecosystem services supply with agricultural production and carbon storage at opposing ends of the gradient as reported for a national-scale assessment. Species diversity was positively related to production due to the below national average productivity levels in the Conwy combined with the unimodal relationship between biodiversity and productivity at the national scale. In contrast to the national scale assessment, a strong reduction in water quality as production increased was observed in these low productive systems. Various soil variables were tested for their predictive power of ecosystem service supply. Soil carbon, nitrogen, their ratio and soil pH all had double the power of rainfall and altitude, each explaining around 45% of variation but soil pH is proposed as a potential metric for ecosystem service supply potential as it is a simple and practical metric which can be carried out in the field with crowd-sourcing technologies now available. The study emphasises the importance of considering multiple ecosystem services together due to the complexity of covariation at local and national scales, and the benefits of exploiting a wide range of metrics for each service to enhance data robustness

Effects of antiplatelet therapy on stroke risk by brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases: subgroup analyses of the RESTART randomised, open-label trial

Background Findings from the RESTART trial suggest that starting antiplatelet therapy might reduce the risk of recurrent symptomatic intracerebral haemorrhage compared with avoiding antiplatelet therapy. Brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases (such as cerebral microbleeds) are associated with greater risks of recurrent intracerebral haemorrhage. We did subgroup analyses of the RESTART trial to explore whether these brain imaging features modify the effects of antiplatelet therapy

Search for new phenomena in final states with an energetic jet and large missing transverse momentum in pp collisions at √ s = 8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

Results of a search for new phenomena in final states with an energetic jet and large missing transverse momentum are reported. The search uses 20.3 fb−1 of √ s = 8 TeV data collected in 2012 with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. Events are required to have at least one jet with pT > 120 GeV and no leptons. Nine signal regions are considered with increasing missing transverse momentum requirements between Emiss T > 150 GeV and Emiss T > 700 GeV. Good agreement is observed between the number of events in data and Standard Model expectations. The results are translated into exclusion limits on models with either large extra spatial dimensions, pair production of weakly interacting dark matter candidates, or production of very light gravitinos in a gauge-mediated supersymmetric model. In addition, limits on the production of an invisibly decaying Higgs-like boson leading to similar topologies in the final state are presente

Business process management and supply chain collaboration: a critical comparison

The link between a firm and supply chain (SC) members has been recognised as one of the key issues for ensuring business success and achieving competitive advantage. Indeed, working across organisational boundaries is required to accomplish effective responses to customers’ needs. Our preliminary research confirmed that there are positive relationships between business process management (BPM), supply chain collaboration (SCC), collaborative advantage and organisational performance. This study is a step further and uses a multiple case design to illuminate the results and gain a greater understanding from extensive discussions about these relationships. By means of semi-structured interviews, the three main issues were identified as: (1) the link between BPM and organisational performance; (2) the link between BPM and SCC; and (3) the contextual factors and benefits achieved from working collaboratively with SC partners. The different scenarios of the link between BPM and SCC were developed in a taxonomy, and the case studies were used to illustrate the experience of intra- and inter-organisational practices in the developing economy of Thailand. The case studies’ results explain in depth that both BPM and SCC are important for improving organisational performance and competitiveness. BPM not only improves organisational performance directly, but also assists with collaborative activities that in turn help to improve internal capabilities. Additionally, the comparisons in issues relating to firm size, industry type, relationship closeness and relationship length were also included in this study

Measurements of integrated and differential cross sections for isolated photon pair production in pp collisions at √s=8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

A measurement of the production cross section for two isolated photons in proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of √s=8 TeV is presented. The results are based on an integrated luminosity of 20.2 fb−1 recorded by the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. The measurement considers photons with pseudorapidities satisfying |ηγ|40GeV and EγT,2>30 GeV for the two leading photons ordered in transverse energy produced in the interaction. The background due to hadronic jets and electrons is subtracted using data-driven techniques. The fiducial cross sections are corrected for detector effects and measured differentially as a function of six kinematic observables. The measured cross section integrated within the fiducial volume is 16.8 ± 0.8  pb . The data are compared to fixed-order QCD calculations at next-to-leading-order and next-to-next-to-leading-order accuracy as well as next-to-leading-order computations including resummation of initial-state gluon radiation at next-to-next-to-leading logarithm or matched to a parton shower, with relative uncertainties varying from 5% to 20%