There are three reasons for attempting to reach a common understanding of the responsibilities of sovereign borrowers and their lenders. First, the flow of capital to sovereign debtors is exceptionally important to the world economy. Industrialized countries rely on it to finance their budget...

CMBS are an important segment of the real estate debt markets which reduce the commercial property sector's dependence on bank financing. Until the advent of the credit squeeze in Q3:2007, the CMBS market was one of the most dynamic and fastest-growing sectors in the capital markets, for a...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to perform a comparative study of prediction performances of an artificial neutral network (ANN) model against a linear prediction model like a linear discriminant analysis (LDA) with regards to forecasting corporate credit ratings from financial...

The paper explores the development of the Australian Commercial Mortgage-Backed Securities (CMBS) market from 1999 to 2006 and outlines similarities and dissimilarities with the United States (US) and European (EU) CMBS markets. Whilst the US has been the market leader in terms of issuance...

A proper security architecture is an essential part of implementing robust and reliable networked applications. Security patterns have shown how reoccurring problems can be best solved with proven solutions. However, while they are critical for ensuring the confidentiality, integrity and...

The process of globalization has gathered momentum due to the rapid increase in cross-border capital flows stimulated by trade liberalization and the rapid diffusion of information technology. The International Monetary Fund spearheaded the issue of freer capital mobility or capital account...

This paper analyzes a unit-contingent power purchase agreement between an electricity distributor and a power plant. Under such a contract the distributor pays the plant a fixed price if the plant is operational and nothing if plant outage occurs. Pricing a unit-contingent contract is...