We examine the effect of credit default swaps (CDSs) on the restructuring of distressed firms. Theoretically, we show that if bondholders are insured with CDSs, the participation rate in a restructuring decreases. Using a sample of distressed exchange offers, we estimate that the participation rate is 29% lower if the firm has CDSs traded on its debt, compared to an unconditional mean of 54%. W...

In this demo participants will explore Bang, a system for multiagent team formation. Bang automatically selects exercises for training agents, and allows an operator to visualize the expected performance of possible teams, guiding in the agent selection process. Bang is used in the context of programming competitions, a real-world challenge that involves human teams, and significantly improved ...

LLE Review, Volume 88 17

We present the results of a detailed study of how isocurvature axion fluctuations are converted into adiabatic metric perturbations through axion decay, and discuss the constraints on the parameters of pre-big bang cosmology needed for consistency with present CMB-anisotropy data. The large-scale normalization of temperature fluctuations has a non-trivial dependence both on the mass and on the ...

This paper presents a DCO dithering technique which employs a finer fractional gain control to suppress nonlinear effect of a bang-bang digital PLL (BB-DPLL).

A variable annuity contract with Guaranteed Minimum Withdrawal Benefit (GMWB) promises to return the entire initial investment through cash withdrawals during the policy life plus the remaining account balance at maturity, regardless of the portfolio performance. We assume that market is complete in financial risk and also there is no mortality risk (in the event of policyholder death, the cont...

Ekpyrotic and cyclic cosmologies provide theories of the very early and of the very late universe. In these models, the big bang is described as a collision of branes and thus the big bang is not the beginning of time. Before the big bang, there is an ekpyrotic phase with equation of state w = ρ ≫ 1 (where P is the average pressure and ρ the average energy density) during which the universe slo...