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...

This paper examines the Kalam cosmological argument, as put forward by William Craig. Craig infers the existence of a personal God from the supposedly finite past of the universe. The temporal finiteness of the universe is based upon philosophical arguments for the presumed impossibility of an actual infinity of past events and is confirmed by two lines of scientific evidence. The arguments aga...

LIGO has completed a series of observations searching for evidence of a stochastic gravitational wave background. There has been no detection to date. However the sensitivity of the observations is approaching the Big Bang nucleosynthesis bound. Future observations will provide information that bounds a number of early Universe models of stochastic gravitational waves.

An upper limit on the masses of scalar superpartners in split supersymmetry is found by considering cosmological constraints on long-lived gluinos. Over most of parameter space, the most stringent constraint comes from big bang nucleosynthesis. A TeV mass gluino must have a lifetime of less than 100 seconds to avoid altering the abundances of D and Li. This sets an upper limit on the supersymme...

We constrain proposed phenomenological models for a vacuum energy which decays with the expansion of the universe from considerations of standard big bang nucleosynthesis. Several models which are simple enough to be physically appealing are ruled out. Typeset using REVTEX

Introduction Since the late 1990s the evolution of center-periphery relationships in Russia became complicated by an additional factor that came into play as a result of the growth of capitalism and, more specifically, the territorial expansion of big businesses into the regions. Some of Russia’s major financial-industrial groups (FIGs) and the notorious oligarchs started to re-orient their act...

Since the idea of Bulgaria joining NATO was launched in public space, the debate has targeted predominantly the political and the military-technical aspects of the issue. The Employers Association of Bulgaria does not underestimate the importance of these factors nonetheless, as a representative of the big domestic private capital, we believe that it is about time to seriously and extensively r...

We describe AlterBBN, a public C program for evaluating the abundances of the elements generated by Big-Bang nucleosynthesis (BBN). This program enables the user to compute the abundances of the elements in the standard model of cosmology, and additionally provides possibilities to alter the assumptions of the cosmological model in order to study their consequences on the abundances of the elem...