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We study the quantitative impact of lender control rights on corporate investment, asset prices, and the aggregate economy. We build a general equilibrium model in which the breaching of a loan covenant (technical default) entails a switch in investment control rights from borrowers to lenders. Lenders optimally choose low-risk projects, thus mitigating borrowers' risk-taking incentives and lowering the cost of equity. This mechanism generates strong macroeconomic effects and mitigates the financial accelerator. Consistent with our model, proximity to technical default in the data is associated with 4.12% lower returns and lower exposure to systematic risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study makes a preliminary characterization of the Late Horizon in the Supe and Huaura valley considering three emblematic sites: Caral, Chimú Cápac and Acaray. An observational methodology was applied, using checklists, archaeological field techniques and cabinet analysis. Some aspects of the Inka, Chimú and Chancay material culture were identified, such as architecture, funerary behavior, ceramic styles involved and a propo- sed sequence of occupation.

While conventional wisdom suggests that financial supervision is costly for bank shareholders, agency theory suggests that supervisors' audits can reduce shareholder monitoring costs. I study this trade-off in the context of an unexpected decrease in off-site surveillance intensity by the U.S. Federal Reserve. Banks subject to reduced surveillance experience a 1% loss in bank Tobin's q and a 7% loss in equity market-to-book. These banks engage in more earnings management, and appear to compensate lower regulatory surveillance with costly internal audits. My results document a novel substitution effect between public monitoring by regulators and private monitoring by shareholders. This paper was accepted by Victoria Ivashina, finance. Supplemental Material: The online appendix and data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2021.03083. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Speech intelligibility (SI) tests under realistic acoustic scenarios are complex tasks to perform. Optimal acoustics, in terms of reverberation and noise, are thus needed. This is particularly true in the presence of young hard-of-hearing (HoH) children equipped with cochlear implants who need speech to be highly intelligible to learn. During the COVID-19 pandemic starting in early 2020, wearing face masks became common to avoid the spread of infection, mainly impacting the increasingly challenging task of listening for HoH listeners. This study investigated the influence of different types of face masks on speech intelligibility and listening difficulty under competitive noise scenarios. Fourteen children with cochlear implants were involved, as well as six children with typical hearing. Three types of face masks with different acoustic, filtration, and breathability characteristics were considered; three signal-to-noise ratios (SNR) of +10 dB, +5 dB, and 0 dB were used. As expected, lower SNRs corresponded to lower speech intelligibility, and SI without a mask was similar to that obtained with a mask at the lowest acoustic attenuation, albeit with a low filtration efficiency. These preliminary outcomes help improve speech communication strategies in classrooms to support optimal listening conditions.

We show that public banks face negative stock return jumps after missing their earnings per share (EPS) targets, and theoretically and quantitatively link these jumps to bunching behavior in the EPS surprise distribution. Bunching banks cut deposit rates to meet their targets, but do so at the expense of deposit outflows and franchise value losses. Local competitors, including private banks unexposed to capital market pressure, increase deposit rates, compensating depositors for switching. Our results provide new evidence that performance targeting incentives can affect consumer product prices, and suggest that competition may provide a check on public firms' targeting efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unsteady counterflows are employed to understand and model the effect of turbulence on flames. We present a novel numerical approach for the simulation of one-dimensional unsteady counterflow flames with fourth order spatial discretization and up to fourth order time discretization. The approach couples a three-stage Lobatto IIIa formula for boundary value problems and variable-order, variable time step size Backward Differentiation Formulas for time integration. The framework is explained in detail, its computational performance is analysed, and its use is demonstrated for the case of stochastic forcing of premixed counterflow flames, whereby the imposed rate of strain is a multi-scale lognormal discrete random process with exponential autocorrelation. High-order spatial and temporal discretization make the approach well-suited for the accurate and computationally efficient simulation of the effect of turbulence on flames, which are characterised by large amplitude stochastic fluctuations of the local rate of strain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Speech intelligibility (SI) tests under realistic acoustic scenarios are complex tasks to perform. Optimal acoustics, in terms of reverberation and noise, are thus needed. This is particularly true in the presence of young hard-of-hearing (HoH) children equipped with cochlear implants who need speech to be highly intelligible to learn. During the COVID-19 pandemic starting in early 2020, wearing face masks became common to avoid the spread of infection, mainly impacting the increasingly challenging task of listening for HoH listeners. This study investigated the influence of different types of face masks on speech intelligibility and listening difficulty under competitive noise scenarios. Fourteen children with cochlear implants were involved, as well as six children with typical hearing. Three types of face masks with different acoustic, filtration, and breathability characteristics were considered; three signal-to-noise ratios (SNR) of +10 dB, +5 dB, and 0 dB were used. As expected, lower SNRs corresponded to lower speech intelligibility, and SI without a mask was similar to that obtained with a mask at the lowest acoustic attenuation, albeit with a low filtration efficiency. These preliminary outcomes help improve speech communication strategies in classrooms to support optimal listening conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BackgroundThere’s scarce evidence about cardiovascular events (CV) in patients with hospitalization for acute heart failure (HF) and no indication for immediate device implant. ObjectiveThe CARdiac RhYthm monitorING after acute decompensatiON for Heart Failure study was designed to assess the incidence of prespecified clinical and arrhythmic events in this patient population. MethodsIn this pilot study, 18 patients (12 (67%) male; age 72±10; 16 (89%) NYHA II-III), who were hospitalized for HF with low left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) (

We reexamine the ability of teams to credibly self‐impose group punishments and prevent free riding when individual inputs are unobservable. We formulate self‐imposed group punishments as performance underreporting by the team. Although underreporting is not credible in a static game, we show that simple strategies can sustain underreporting in a repeated game, and that the threat of underreporting improves welfare only if team members' preferences between shirking and team output consumption are nonseparable. Our results suggest that self‐assessments can replace increased managerial monitoring in remote work environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]