Grammatical gender and the notion of default: insights from language acquisition

The aim of this study is to investigate the contrast in the timing of acquisition of grammatical gender attested in Dutch and Greek child learners. Greek children show precocious acquisition of neuter gender in particular, while Dutch children experience a long delay in the acquisition of neuter nouns, which extends to school age. For both Dutch and Greek, neuter has been claimed to be the default gender value on grounds of syntactic distribution in contexts where gender agreement is inert. To reconcile the contrast between the learner and the language facts in Dutch, as well as the contrast in the timing between Greek and Dutch monolingual child learners, we consider two sets of criteria to define the notion of default: one set pertains to the notion of linguistic default and the other to the notion of learner default. We suggest that, whereas Greek neuter is both the linguistic and the learner default value, Dutch neuter is the linguistic but not the learner default, leading to a learnability problem.

Filching the Argentine colonists : the encouragement of Patagonians to the Northern Territory in the early twentieth century

This paper explores the background to the emigration of 220 settlers from Patagonia in South America to the Northern Territory during the course of World War I. The group, which arrived in Darwin on the Kwanto Maru in 1915, comprised an unusual mixture of nationalities. The breakdown given in the passenger list and the contemporary press was 113 Spaniards, 45 Russians, 30 Italians. 28 British, I Argentinian [of British parents], 1 Frenchman, 1 Serbian and 1 Greek. Some of the 'Spaniards' were presumably Spanish speaking Argentinians but most were indeed of Spanish descent, such as the Martinez, Perez and Villalba families. Of the British amongst the group, almost all were Welsh. They came as a result of inducements held out to the Welsh amongst the party in the years immediately prior to the war by the Commonwealth Government, which administered the Northern Territory after 1911. This account provides a fascinating case study of the recruitment of immigrants to Australia, and particularly to the Northern Territory, in the early twentieth century.

A population-based study of retinoblastoma incidence and survival in Argentine children

An increased incidence of retinoblastoma in some developing countries has been reported but no conclusive data are available from population-based studies at national level.

Does ownership affect a firm’s performance and default risk in Jordan?

This paper seeks to examine the impact of ownership structure on firm performance and the default risk of a sample of publicly listed firms.

Default probability for the Jordanian companies: A test of cash flow theory

Abstract
This paper aims to investigate the effect of cash flow and free cash flow on corporate failure in the emerging market in particular Jordan using two samples; matched sample and a cross sectional time-series (panel data) sample representative of 167 Jordanian companies in 1989-2003. LOGIT models are used to outline the relationship between firms’ financial health and the probability of default. Our results show that there is firm’s free cash flow increases corporate failure. The result also shows that the firm’s cash flow decreases corporate failure. Firms’ capital structures are fund a mental in predicting default. Capital structure is seen as the main factor affecting the probability of default as it affects a firm’s ability to access external sources of funds. Jordanian firms depend on short-term debt for both short and long term financing.

Costly monitoring, dynamic incentives, and default

We study dynamic contracts between a lender and a borrower in the presence of costly state verification and hidden effort. We prove three results. Costly monitoring is employed by the lender to optimally limit history dependence and prevent future inefficient termination of the relationship. Due to interaction between costly monitoring and dynamic incentives, the probability of monitoring may fail to be monotone in the borrower's reservation utility. Finally, following the interpretation of the costly state verification literature, we distinguish two levels of bankruptcy: one associated with restructuring and the other with liquidation.

Book-to-market ratio, default risk and return implications: from a negative perspective

A paradox is created by the common practice in stock evaluation models of excluding stocks with a negative book equity (BE). If we interpret the book-to-market ratio as a proxy for distress risk, it makes no sense to exclude these negative BE stocks since they are, prima facie, most prone to distress risk. This paper reassesses the relationship between default risk, return and the book-to-market ratio by incorporating negative BE stocks into the study. We find that negative BE stocks carry higher default risks than their positive BE counterparts and that these risks are not totally offset by higher returns. This suggests that a default risk filter can be used in the investment universe selection process through which the portfolio return can be enhanced.

Corporate capital structure revisited: incomplete markets and default

After Modigliani and Miller (1958) presented their capital structure irrelevance proposition, analysis of corporate Önancing choices involving debt and equity instruments have generally followed two trends in the literature, where models either incorporate informational asymmetries or introduce tax beneÖts in order to explain optimal capital structure determination (Myers, 2002). None of these features is present in this paper, which develops an asset pricing model with the purpose of providing a positive theory of corporate capital structure by replicating main aspects of standard contractual practice observed in real markets. Alternatively, the imperfect market structure of the economy is tailored to match what is most common in corporate reality. Allowance for default on corporate debt with an associated penalty of seizure of Örmís future cash áows by creditors is introduced, for instance. In this context, a qualitative assessment of Önancial managersídecisions is carried out through numerical procedures.

Collateral, default penalties and almost finite-time solvency

We argue that it is possible to adapt the approach of imposing restrictions on available plans through finitely effective debt constraints, introduced by Levine and Zame (1996), to encompass models with default and collateral. Along this line, we introduce in the setting of Araujo, Páscoa and Torres-Martínez (2002) and Páscoa and Seghir (2008) the concept of almost finite-time solvency. We show that the conditions imposed in these two papers to rule out Ponzi schemes implicitly restrict actions to be almost finite-time solvent. We define the notion of equilibrium with almost finite-time solvency and look on sufficient conditions for its existence. Assuming a mild assumption on default penalties, namely that agents are myopic with respect to default penalties, we prove that existence is guaranteed (and Ponzi schemes are ruled out) when actions are restricted to be almost finite-time solvent. The proof is very simple and intuitive. In particular, the main existence results in Araujo et al. (2002) and Páscoa and Seghir (2008) are simple corollaries of our existence result.

Essays on international finance, default and inflation

This thesis is composed by three papers, each one of them corresponding to one chapter. The first and the second chapters are essays on international finance appraising default and inflation as equilibrium outcomes for crisis time, in particular, for confidence crisis time that leads to speculative attack on the external public debt issued by emerging economies. With this background in mind, welfare effects from adopting common currency (chapter 1) and welfare effects from increasing the degree of economic openness (chapter 2) are analyzed in numerical exercises, based on DSGE framework. Cross-countries results obtained are then presented to be compared with empirical evidence and to help on understanding past policy decisions. Some policy prescriptions are also suggested. In the third chapter we look to the inflation targeting regime applied to emerging economies that are subject to adverse shocks, like the external debt crisis presented in the previous chapters. Based on a more theoretical approach, we appraise how pre commitment framework should be used to coordinate expectations when policymaker announcement has no full credibility and self fulfilling inflation may be possible.

Risco soberano e probabilidade de default implícita em swaps de crédito

Este trabalho propõe um modelo de forma reduzida livre de arbitragem para a extração de probabilidades de default a partir de spreads de Swaps de Crédito e aplica-o realizando uma análise da percepção de risco da dívida soberana brasileira confrontando dois momentos com contextos econômicos distintos. É utilizada uma modelagem paramétrica da estrutura temporal das probabilidades condicionais de default para a qual se testa duas formas funcionais distintas: Constante por Partes e Linear por Partes. Os resultados fornecem evidências que corroboram a aplicabilidade do modelo e indicam uma clara vantagem da modelagem Linear por Partes, por se ajustar melhor aos dados e possuir implicações convenientes na estrutura a termo das taxas de juros ajustadas ao risco de default.