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This paper aims to theoretically examine the effects of regulatory policyholder protection on spread behavior and default probability of a life insurance company.

The authors construct a contingent claim model for the valuation of the equity of a life insurance company. Then, they extend it to model default risk measures associated with a more appropriate behavioral mode of strategic invested asset rate-setting under regulation.

The findings established that the optimal insurer interest margin is explicitly modeled by a spread between the loan rate and the required guaranteed rate of the company. The effect of the guaranteed rate on the insurer interest margin is positive when the barrier is low, whereas it is negative when the barrier is high. As the barrier increases, the positive effect of the guaranteed rate on the default risk is increased, the negative effect of the participation on the insurer interest margin is decreased and the positive effect of the participation on the default risk is decreased.

Several results derived that should be of interest to investors, analysts, supervising agencies and policymakers. For example, policyholders protected by increasing the guaranteed rate may create a higher risk for the life insurance company to meet its obligations.

The authors’ approach is a significant departure from the existing literature; they differentiate among path-dependent, barrier options and suggest that the life insurance company’s defaults are more commonly triggered by regulatory responses than debt default.

This paper aims to develop a barrier cap option model, i.e. a cap option model where default can occur at any time before the maturity date, to evaluate the equity and the default risk of a bank. The model implies the bank as a liquidity provider that one institution carriers out both lending and deposit-taking functions under the same roof. This paper studies the impacts of demand deposits and capital regulation on the optimal bank interest margin, i.e. the spread between the loan rate and the deposit rate.

This paper characterizes the bank’s equity value by a barrier cap option framework. In the model, default can occur at any time before the maturity and loan markets are imperfectly competitive.

This paper has two main results. First, increases in demand deposits reduce the bank’s interest margin and further increase the bank’s default risk. The negative effect on the optimal bank interest margin which ignores the barrier leads to significant overestimation; the positive effect on the default risk which ignores the barrier leads to underestimation. Second, the same pattern of capital regulation as previously applies. Capital regulation as such makes the bank more prone to loan risk-taking, thereby adversely affecting the stability of banking system.

This paper reintroduces the knock-out value and bank interest margin determination within a synergy banking function to the cap option model. The results confirm the need to model bank equity as a barrier cap option and demonstrate its usefulness in capital regulation.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a theoretical framework to answer the following question: What are the consequences of sunflower behavior as well as spread behavior for how asset-liability management is administrated in a life insurance company?

This paper takes into account the following: the chief executive officer (CEO) of a life insurance company confirms the board of directors’ belief – the preference of the like of higher return relative to the dislike of higher risk; the authors call such behavior sunflower management; the life insurance policyholder is entitled to a guaranteed interest rate and a participation percentage of the company’s investment surplus; and the authors examine the optimal insurer interest margin, i.e., the spread between the loan rate and the guaranteed rate.

Sunflower management translates into lower utility for the CEO and makes the CEO more prudent to risk-taking at an increased insurer interest margin for the provision of life insurance contracts. The effect of the guaranteed rate on the margin is ambiguous and depends on the level of guarantee itself. An increase in the participation level decreases the CEO’s loan risk-taking at an increased margin. It is shown that a trend toward higher return like of the board’s belief produces a corresponding trend toward the CEO’s decreasing risk-taking when the return like is revealed strongly. The results indicate that sunflower management as such is an important determinant in ensuring a safe insurance system.

This is the first paper to construct a contingent claim model to evaluate the expected value of the CEO’s utility function defined in terms of the equity returns and the equity risks of a life insurance company. The model explicitly considers CEO sunflower behavior, CEO spread behavior and the limited liability of shareholders.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a capped barrier option framework to consider the politically preferential treatment for bank loans incentivized by government capital injections and calculate loan-risk sensitive insurance premiums.

This paper takes a capped barrier option approach to the market valuation of the equity of the bank and the liability of the deposit insurer. The cap demonstrates the dynamics of a politically connected borrowing firm’s asset and highlights the truncated nature of loan payoffs. The barrier addresses that default can occur at any time before the maturity date. The bank participating in a government capital injection program is required to fund the politically connected firm that has preferential access to financing.

Political connection as such makes the bank more prone to risk taking at a reduced interest margin, produces greater safety for the bank owing to government capital injections, and leads to increasing the fair deposit insurance premium. The positive effect of political connection on the deposit insurance premium, which ignores the cap and the barrier yields significant over-estimation.

The study on the politically connected borrowing firm shows that political connection is likely to affect the distressed bank’s performance, yielding the political-connection cost of a reduced bank interest margin and the political-connection benefit of a reduced bank equity risk, contributing the literature on political connection and bank bailout.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the performance of cold-sprayed Zn15Al alloy coating whether it is capable of protecting magnesium alloy from corrosion, and to compare it with arc-sprayed Zn15Al alloy coating.

In this paper, Zn15Al alloy coating was prepared with CS-6000 cold spraying system and HDX-800 arc-sprayed system. Corrosion behaviors of the two kinds of coatings were examined with potentiodynamic polarization curves methods combined with SEM, EDS, XRD, etc.

Corrosion behavior of cold-sprayed Zn15Al alloy coating is superior to arc-sprayed Zn15Al alloy coating. The bonding strength and density of cold-sprayed Zn15Al alloy coating is much higher than that of arc-sprayed Zn15Al alloy coating. The cold-sprayed coating has a dense structure which separate magnesium from corrosion medium completely. The samples behave as Zn15Al instead of AZ91D alloy. The coating has a low probability of pitting corrosion comparing with cold sprayed Al coating through potentiodynamic polarization curve.

Cold-sprayed Zn15Al coating can be used to improve the anticorrosion performance of magnesium significantly and low down the risk of pitting corrosion of coating.

Cold-sprayed Zn15Al coating is an environmentally friendly anticorrosion method for light alloy, which is also the most effective way among thermal spray, chemical vapor deposition, sol–gel, plating and anodizing or microarc oxidation.

The present paper used cold spray method to deposit Zn15Al coating, which has an overwhelming performance both in physical and anticorrosion to traditional thermal spray method.

Chinese began to arrive in Florida at the turn of the 20th century. Currently there are more than fifty thousand Chinese living in Florida. This article provides information resources for scholars and students of Chinese studies, and for people interested in the history of Chinese Americans and Southeast regional studies. It consists of archive papers, books, journal and newspaper articles and Internet resources containing information on Florida and China. The list is arranged by authors’ last names when available.