none

none

Cholesky Decomposition is usually used to deal with the correlation problem among a financial product's underlying assets. However, Cholesky Decomposition inherently suffers from the requirement that all eigenvalues must be positive. Therefore, Cholesky Decomposition can't work very well when the number of the underlying assets is high. The report takes a diffrent approach called spectral Decomposition in attempt to solve the problem. But it turns out that although Spectral Decomposition can meet the requirement of all-positive eigenvalue, the decomposision error will be larger as the number of underlying asset getting larger. Thus, although Spectral Decomposition does offer some help, it works better when the number of underlying assets is not very large.

none

none

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 271-280). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept. of Economics, August 2003. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

In recent years, concerns have been raised about the real effects of credit default swaps (CDS) on the economy. Different from the hitherto accepted view that derivatives are redundant, CDS may affect the credit risk and strategic liquidity decision of the reference entities. In this dissertation, I use a unique, comprehensive sample covering 901 CDS introductions on North American corporate issuers, between June 1997 and April 2009, to address these questions. In chapter 2, I investigate whether CDS trading increases the credit risk of the reference entities. I find that the probability of both a credit rating downgrade and bankruptcy increase after the inception of CDS trading. This finding is robust to controlling for the endogeneity of CDS trading in difference-in-difference analysis, propensity score matching, and treatment regressions with instruments. In further corroboration of our basic results, I explore the mechanism behind the increased credit risk after CDS trading, and show that firms with relatively larger amounts of CDS contracts outstanding, and those with more “no restructuring” contracts, are more adversely affected by CDS trading. In chapter 3, I further investigate the effect of CDS on corporate cash holding policies. U.S. firms are holding more cash than at any time in nearly half a century. I find that CDS trading affects corporate cash holdings. Corporate cash holdings increase after the inception of CDS trading. The impact is significant after controlling for the endogeneity of CDS trading. Moreover, cash-to-assets ratios for firms with larger CDS contracts outstanding, and those with less access to financial market are more affected by CDS trading. The impact of CDS is beyond the direct effect of line of credit on cash holdings. / published_or_final_version / Economics and Finance / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Not available / text

Direct and indirect stimulation of the brain have produced a range of perceptual, motor, and cognitive experiences, including experiences historically ascribed to religious or spiritual domains. Weak intensity, extremely low frequency electromagnetic fields patterned after physiological processes have been the subject of much research and controversy. The current study examined the Shiva technology, a unique method of field production that utilizes the same fields used in previous research. Quantitative changes in brain activity were measured using quantitative electroencephalograph and subjective reports of experiences were examined. The investigation included two different configurations of the Shiva technology. Results indicated that individuals exposed to specific patterned fields exhibited different patterns of neural activity and greater reports of unusual experiences compared to a sham condition. The importance of particular enhancement of power in regions of the brain due to the sequence of different patterns of magnetic fields was a key discovery. Personality characteristics, particularly those involved with the Default Mode Network, and their relation to baseline electroencephalographic data were also examined.