When arm's length is too far: Relationship banking over the credit cycle

We conduct face-to-face interviews with bank chief executive officers to classify 397 banks across 21 countries as relationship or transaction lenders. We then use the geographic coordinates of these banks’ branches and of 14,100 businesses to analyze how the lending techniques of banks near firms are related to credit constraints at two contrasting points of the credit cycle. We find that while relationship lending is not associated with credit constraints during a credit boom, it alleviates such constraints during a downturn. This positive role of relationship lending is stronger for small and opaque firms and in regions with a more severe economic downturn. Moreover, relationship lending mitigates the impact of a downturn on firm growth and does not constitute evergreening of loans.     

Testing impact attenuation on California playground surfaces made of recycled tires

This study was conducted to determine whether rubberized playground surfaces made of recycled tires comply with state-mandated standards for impact attenuation (measured with an accelerometer), and whether their properties change in response to temperature or time. The Head Impact Criterion (HIC) standard of 1000 was found to be a more sensitive indicator of compliance than the G(max) standard of 200(g). Of 32 playgrounds tested, 22 (69 percent) failed the HIC standard. As the heights of playground structures increased, so did the likelihood that the rubberized surface below would fail the HIC standard. Rubberized surfaces gave stable readings for the first three months following installation, and higher values in response to increasing surface temperature. An excessively high percentage of playground surfaces made of recycled tires failed the state-mandated standards designed to prevent serious head injury from falls. Future failures might be prevented by requiring installers to perform post-installation testing to verify compliance.     

Development of leading indicators of process safety

The goal of this project, sponsored by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, is to identify “leading” indicators of nuclear power plant safety. Such indicators would allow early recognition, and perhaps avoidance, of impending safety problems before the problems themselves became evident. Because data are limited in the nuclear industry, CTA's approach to this objective is to look beyond the nuclear power industry, to other industries with safety concerns analogous to those of the nuclear power community, for sources of such indicator data.