Essential Properties and Coinciding Objects

How can a parcel of matter, or collection of particles, simultaneously compose three different objects, characterized by different modal properties? If the statue is gouged it still exists, but not exactly that piece of gold which originally occupied the statue's borders, and the (mass of) gold within that piece can survive dispersal, while the piece cannot. The solution to this "problem of coinciding objects", this paper argues, is that there is, in that space, only the statue. The properties which the piece and the mass supposedly must have, to go on being, are not properties which anything can have necessarily or essentially. Not even having that origin can be essential. There is no object of which the statue is composed, though there are objects (viz., gold atoms) and a kind of stuff (viz., gold) of which it is composed.

Alexander’s Dictum and the Reality of Familiar Objects

Alexander's Dictum--"to be is to have causal powers"--appears to furnish an argument against the reality of familiar medium-sized objects. For every time a familiar object appears to cause a familiar macro-event, it sets up a rival claim by its component microparticles to have caused the complex swarm of microphysical events that composes into that macro-event. But this argument, argues this paper, wrongly assumes that even after familiar objects are removed from the picture, there is a phenomenon of joint causation which unites all and only the microparticles within each familiar object.

US Corporate Default Swap Valuation: The Market Liquidity Hypothesis and Autonomous Credit Risk

This paper develops a reduced form three-factor model which includes a liquidity proxy of market conditions which is then used to provide implicit prices. The model prices are then compared with observed market prices of credit default swaps to determine if swap rates adequately reflect market risks. The findings of the analysis illustrate the importance of liquidity in the valuation process. Moreover, market liquidity, a measure of investors. willingness to commit resources in the credit default swap (CDS) market, was also found to improve the valuation of investors. autonomous credit risk. Thus a failure to include a liquidity proxy could underestimate the implied autonomous credit risk. Autonomous credit risk is defined as the fractional credit risk which does not vary with changes in market risk and liquidity conditions.