This paper employs non-parametric specification tests developed in Hong and Li (2005) to evaluate several one-factor reduced-form credit risk models for actual default intensities. Using estimates for actual default probabilities provided by Moody’s KMV from 1994 to 2005 for 106 U.S. firms in seven industry groups, we strongly reject popular univariate affine model specifications. As a good com...

An affine vertex operator construction at arbitrary level is presented which is based on a completely compactified chiral bosonic string whose momentum lattice is taken to be the (Minkowskian) affine weight lattice. This construction is manifestly physical in the sense of string theory, i.e., the vertex operators are functions of DDF “oscillators” and the Lorentz generators, both of which commu...

A Borel-Tits theory was developped for almost split forms of symmetrizable Kac-Moody Lie algebras [J. of Algebra 171, 43-96 (1995)]. In this paper, we look to almost split real forms for symmetrizable hyperbolic KacMoody Lie algebras and we establish a complete list of these forms, in terms of their Satake-Tits index, for the strictly hyperbolic ones and for those which are obtained as (hyperbo...

There is something intuitively appealing and " right " about the idea of emotional intelligence (EI), but what is that something? Before we can answer this question, and especially before we raise issues about what exactly the construct of EI is or ought to be and the problem of how to measure it, it will be helpful to address the question of how to characterize the presupposed notion of " emot...

Moody’s adjusts a firm’s reported leverage across several dimensions to determine credit ratings. I find that changes to these adjustments affect firm capital structure and investment decisions, especially for firms near the investment grade boundary and with bond covenants containing ratings triggers. Further, in 2006, Moody’s made several changes to its adjustment methodologies. I find that c...

Candelas and Font introduced the notion of a ‘top’ as half of a three dimensional reflexive polytope and noticed that Dynkin diagrams of enhanced gauge groups in string theory can be read off from them. We classify all tops satisfying a generalized definition as a lattice polytope with one facet containing the origin and the other facets at distance one from the origin. These objects torically ...