Simple Return Research Articles

Phenomenology as a way of life? Husserl on phenomenological reflection and self-transformation

In this article I consider whether and how Husserl’s transcendental phenomenological method can initiate a phenomenological way of life. The impetus for this investigation originates in a set of manuscripts written in 1926 (published in Zur phanomenologischen Reduktion) where Husserl suggests that the consistent commitment to and performance of phenomenological reflection can change one’s life to the point where a simple return to the life lived before this reflection is no longer possible. Husserl identifies this point of no return with becoming a transcendental idealist. I propose a way of understanding Husserl’s claim that transcendental idealism makes a simple return to life before phenomenological reflection impossible. I then suggest that a phenomenological way of life is characterized by an epistemic modesty that follows from Husserl’s transcendental idealism and consider whether and how such a phenomenological way of life is a life worth living.

Trauma and the loss of basic trust

Ferenczi's discovery of trauma was labelled by Freud as a return “to errors” that he himself upheld he had committed before 1897. During the dramatic period running from the Wiesbaden Congress (September 1932) to Ferenczi's death (May 1933), Freud wrote to numerous correspondents (among them Jones, Eitingon, and his daughter Anna) complaining that Ferenczi's latest theoretical elaboration corresponded to a simple return to the origin of psychoanalysis and was also a symptom of a serious psychosis. The theme of this paper is that Freud's opinion concerning Ferenczi's concept of trauma is a result of misunderstanding: the trauma as described by Ferenczi is not the one that preceded (in Freud's theory) the desertion of the seduction theory, but is something that is much deeper and mortifying, where the sexuality role is less central. The author pauses to ponder and reflect on the importance of the concept of Erschütterung as a cause in losing basic trust, a perspective that moves far from Freudian sex-centrism that puts psychoanalysis face to face with the sufferings of the victims of extreme trauma.

A paisagem revisitada

BACK TO LANDSCAPE – Natural landscape in classical geography wasa coherently constructed and universally acknowledged central concept and unquestionably part of geography itself. Hot debate that arose from recent epistemology in geography nearly brought this heritage to an end and even accused it of acting as a brake on the urgent need for scientific renewal. As an old saying goes, what we throw out through the door comes back through every window and not always in the best manner: for some, it is a simple return to the past, although it also poses an external threat to geography’s highest achievement; for others, the impression is that someone has overtaken us in this constant toing and froing that has split the field of geography. However, we maintain that this sudden interest in landscape opens up to us new domains for reflection and investigation, which is, as it was in the past, enriched by the plurality of meanings it embraces. After examining other disciplines (such as aesthetics, anthropology, landscape ecology, and architecture landscape), we return to geographical landscape with the aim of showing a fresh way of looking at things and the new possibilities this concept opens.

Incorporating Movement Patterns to Improve Survival Estimates for Juvenile Bull Trout

AbstractPopulations of many fish species are sensitive to changes in vital rates during early life stages, but our understanding of the factors affecting growth, survival, and movement patterns is often extremely limited for juvenile fish. These critical information gaps are particularly evident for bull trout Salvelinus confluentus, a threatened Pacific Northwest char. We combined several active and passive mark–recapture and resight techniques to assess migration rates and estimate survival for juvenile bull trout (70–170 mm total length). We evaluated the relative performance of multiple survival estimation techniques by comparing results from a common Cormack–Jolly–Seber (CJS) model, the less widely used Barker model, and a simple return rate (an index of survival). Juvenile bull trout of all sizes emigrated from their natal habitat throughout the year, and thereafter migrated up to 50 km downstream. With the CJS model, high emigration rates led to an extreme underestimate of apparent survival, a combined estimate of site fidelity and survival. In contrast, the Barker model, which allows survival and emigration to be modeled as separate parameters, produced estimates of survival that were much less biased than the return rate. Estimates of age‐class‐specific annual survival from the Barker model based on all available data were 0.218±0.028 (estimate±SE) for age‐1 bull trout and 0.231±0.065 for age‐2 bull trout. This research demonstrates the importance of incorporating movement patterns into survival analyses, and we provide one of the first field‐based estimates of juvenile bull trout annual survival in relatively pristine rearing conditions. These estimates can provide a baseline for comparison with future studies in more impacted systems and will help managers develop reliable stage‐structured population models to evaluate future recovery strategies.Received February 1, 2012; accepted July 31, 2012

Selection of Heating System at the Reconstruction of a Family House

Abstract The work deals with the reconstruction of a family house on the part of energy for heating need. The attention was devoted to comparise individual alternatives, which are possible to realise in assessed house. In the first part of the work, the attention is devoted to describing object and to heat loses values before and after the measurements. Then alternatives of heating their annual costs for heat production and for amount of fuel, invested costs and the portion of invested and overall are particularly characterized. In the part: The economical evaluation of the comparised alternatives, simple return of investments outputs, discount time of return, net actual value and yield rate are. These values give information about the expedience of applications of individual alternatives by economical aspect.

Patient Understanding of Emergency Department Discharge Instructions: Where Are Knowledge Deficits Greatest?

Many patients are discharged from the emergency department (ED) with an incomplete understanding of the information needed to safely care for themselves at home. Patients have demonstrated particular difficulty in understanding post-ED care instructions (including medications, home care, and follow-up). The objective of this study was to further characterize these deficits and identify gaps in knowledge that may place the patient at risk for complications or poor outcomes. This was a prospective cohort, phone interview-based study of 159 adult English-speaking patients within 24 to 36 hours of ED discharge. Patient knowledge was assessed for five diagnoses (ankle sprain, back pain, head injury, kidney stone, and laceration) across the following five domains: diagnosis, medications, home care, follow-up, and return instructions. Knowledge was determined based on the concordance between direct patient recall and diagnosis-specific discharge instructions combined with chart review. Two authors scored each case independently and discussed discrepancies before providing a final score for each domain (no, minimal, partial, or complete comprehension). Descriptive statistics were used for the analyses. The study population was 50% female with a median age of 41 years (interquartile range [IQR] = 29 to 53 years). Knowledge deficits were demonstrated by the majority of patients in the domain of home care instructions (80%) and return instructions (79%). Less frequent deficits were found for the domains of follow-up (39%), medications (22%), and diagnosis (14%). Minimal or no understanding in at least one domain was demonstrated by greater than two-thirds of patients and was found in 40% of cases for home care and 51% for return instructions. These deficits occurred less frequently for domains of follow-up (18%), diagnosis (3%), and medications (3%). Patients demonstrate the most frequent knowledge deficits for home care and return instructions, raising significant concerns for adherence and outcomes.

Data Show that Federal Investment in Research Pays Dividends

In 1990, the federal government formally launched an ambitious initiative to sequence the human genome, to identify all the genes in human DNA, and to develop the tools to store and allow access to this information. The effort took 13 years and cost the federal government $3.8 billion. As is evidenced by technological advancements, the cultivation of new lines of research, and countless subsequent scientific discoveries, the Human Genome Project (HGP) was a success by nearly all measures. A question of interest to policymakers, however, is what the economic return on this kind of federal investment is. The HGP generated great prosperity, according to a 2011 report by the Battelle Technology Partnership Practice. Between 1988 and 2010, human genome sequencing and associated activities by private industry and researchers generated $796 billion in US economic output. This represents a return on investment of $141 for every $1 spent by the government. The HGP has also generated an estimated 3.8 million job-years of employment and increased government revenue. As was reported by the Battelle group, the genomics-enabled industry generated more than $3.7 billion in federal taxes and $2.3 billion in state and local taxes in 2010 alone. “Thus in one year, revenues returned to government nearly equaled the entire 13-year investment in the HGP,” states the report. Beyond economic benefits, the HGP has influenced and benefited numerous disciplines outside genomics. From human health to agriculture and forensics, the discoveries and methods resulting from the project have generated numerous societal benefits. No one could have anticipated how revolutionary the project would be in improving human health, feeding the planet, fueling society, and remediating degraded environments. “From a simple return on investment, the financial stake made in mapping the aims to track economic outputs, such as jobs and the creation of new companies, resulting from federally funded research. Scientific outcomes, such as publications and patents, will also be tracked. The project is still in the early stages, but it promises to create the necessary digital infrastructure to link science funding with outcomes. Even without the detailed information that STAR METRICS aims to provide, ample evidence exists to make a strong case for the economic returns from federally funded science. “We have powerful evidence of R&D, but funding is moving in the wrong direction,” said Block. Declining investments in science will impair the nation’s ability to innovate and prosper in the future. “We’re eating our seed corn.” The economic recession should not be used as an excuse to defer investments in science, according to Vaitheeswaran. The government invested in America during the Great Depression, investments that later fueled the economic growth of the 1950s and 1960s. “Great economies, like great companies, invest during a downturn,” said Vaitheeswaran.

The Short-Run Competitive Effects of Merger Enforcement

The main purposes of this paper are twofold. On the one hand, we calculate the sign of the effect of merger and phase II announcement (or decision/ referral) on merged firms’ stock value, while on the other hand, we investigate the possible short-run effects of the scrutinised mergers on competitors’ stock value. This paper extends the articles of Maynes and Rumsey,1 Cox and Portes,2 Duso et al3 and Barthodly et al 4 by introducing the simple return approach so as to overcome the infrequent trading phenomenon. It also infers short-run outcomes regarding the competitive effects of four major phase II mergers that have been notified to the Hellenic Competition Commission (HCC) during the period 2006–10. Despite its crucial importance, to the best of our knowledge the infrequent trading phenomenon has not been incorporated yet in an event study examination of the competitive effects of mergers on competitor’s stock value. Therefore, we argue that this kind of analysis will create strong benefits for other countries and their competition authorities as well.

Industry Survival Rate, Entrepreneur Historical Performance and Personal Wealth: A Probabilistic Model for Optimizing SMEs Capital Structure

Existing research approaches the return on investment expected by entrepreneurs from the perspective of the investor. This paper argues that this perspective is inadequate when applied to entrepreneurs of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). In fact, return on equity cannot be ascertained from financial reports or markets. Entrepreneurs cannot provide a figure since their decision to invest in the venture is driven by many other reasons over and above simple return on equity.The solution suggested in this paper is to approach the issue by viewing the entrepreneurs as a special kind of lenders who expect a return for the risk they incur from the possible bankruptcy of the firm and the impact this would have on their personal wealth. We decompose the entrepreneur risk into a cluster risk (cluster survival rate) and a firm specific risk (historical unsuccess of the entrepreneur). We relate both through the introduction of a Markov transition probability matrix. The transition probabilities are modeled with a logit and estimated with Maximum-Likelihood. The overall risk is, then weighted by the percentage of personal wealth the entrepreneur invested in the venture both directly (as equity) and indirectly (as collateralized debt). In fact, collateralized debt bears both the cost of debt and a 'smoothed' cost of equity since in case of liquidation the entrepreneur will have to repay only the part of debt that will not be covered by firm’s assets. We work out the weighted average cost of capital considering that the financial structure of the firm is characterized by equity, collateralized debt and uncollateralized debt. In the paper the point of equilibrium between the cost of equity and the cost of collateralized debt as well as the optimal mix between equity and collateralized debt is worked out and discussed.

Memory and the Diasporic Creative Imagination: Preeta Samarasan’s Evening is the Whole Day

The focal point of this paper is the concept of transnational memory and the blurred and fluctuating boundaries of ties with the nation that was once home as depicted in Evening is the Whole Day, a novel by Preeta Samarasan, part of the emergent community of new Malaysian diasporic writers. New Malaysian diasporic writers in the context of this paper are taken to refer to writers who were born in Malaysia but are now settled elsewhere in the globe, and yet are recognizably transnational in that their writings focus on the older country and memories of family, community, and a nation that once was. The discussion expands existing scholarship on diasporic memory such as Rushdie’s argument of the broken mirrored refractions by introducing the concept of another cartography of memory, that of appendages of Other memories such as fleeting images from the repertoire of literary (and historical) archives, textual tradition, and its influence on diasporic creative writing. This is framed against Arjun Appadurai’s notion of the “synchronic warehouse,” a term he has used to refer to the “politics of memory” that reside within the concept of “the past” that no longer reflects a simple return but a space which allows for the recasting, redirecting, and editing of memories. Seen in this light, the paper concludes that the novel becomes the synchronic warehouse that projects a multiple imagined perspective of the nation, reimagined in a multitude of scenes that ultimately appear distinctly anomalous.

Memory and the Diasporic Creative Imagination: Preeta Samarasan’s Evening is the Whole Day

The focal point of this paper is the concept of transnational memory and the blurred and fluctuating boundaries of ties with the nation that was once home as depicted in Evening is the Whole Day, a novel by Preeta Samarasan, part of the emergent community of new Malaysian diasporic writers. New Malaysian diasporic writers in the context of this paper are taken to refer to writers who were born in Malaysia but are now settled elsewhere in the globe, and yet are recognizably transnational in that their writings focus on the older country and memories of family, community, and a nation that once was. The discussion expands existing scholarship on diasporic memory such as Rushdie’s argument of the broken mirrored refractions by introducing the concept of another cartography of memory, that of appendages of Other memories such as fleeting images from the repertoire of literary (and historical) archives, textual tradition, and its influence on diasporic creative writing. This is framed against Arjun Appadurai’s notion of the “synchronic warehouse,” a term he has used to refer to the “politics of memory” that reside within the concept of “the past” that no longer reflects a simple return but a space which allows for the recasting, redirecting, and editing of memories. Seen in this light, the paper concludes that the novel becomes the synchronic warehouse that projects a multiple imagined perspective of the nation, reimagined in a multitude of scenes that ultimately appear distinctly anomalous.

Simple Return Rate at Imprecision Risk

The future value of a security is described as a random variable. Distribution of this random variable is the formal image of risk uncertainty. On the other side, any present value is defined as a value equivalent to the given future value. This equivalence relationship is a subjective. Thus follows, that present value is described as a fuzzy number, which is depend on the investor's susceptibility to behavioural factors. All above reasons imply, that return rate is given as a fuzzy probabilistic set. The basic properties of such image of simple return rate are studied. At the last the set of effective securities is distinguished as a fuzzy set.

The Remains of History: Gao Xingjian's Soul Mountain and Wuhe's The Remains of Life

This essay analyzes Gao Xingjian's Soul Mountain (Ling shan 1990) and Wuhe's The Remains of Life (Yusheng 1999) and their reflections on history and what lies beyond or outside of history. In the face of past traumas, the Cultural Revolution in Gao's, the Musha Incident, in Wuhe's case, both authors and their respective protagonists turn to prehistory. Gao and his protagonists, split into different perspectives, travel through China in search not only of the ”soul mountain” of the title, but of natural preserves and minority cultures. Wuhe's protagonist dwells among the indigenous Atayal in Taiwan and becomes especially interested in the practice of headhunting-one of the rituals conventionally associated with the ”primitive.” And yet, each author effects much more than a simple return to an imagined prehistory. In their texts, the renegotiation of historical trauma acquires a complex temporality: not only a return to the traumatic event, not merely a finally unfulfilled and unfulfillable desire for a world untouched by trauma and history, but also a reflection on what remains of and after trauma. These texts highlight and question the construction of history with and through its other (s): If the logos of history always needs its own constructed other-as non-logos, as nature or bios-in order to function, how can we rethink its temporal and conceptual logic? Can we craft the remains of history into a site of possibility? Can we glimpse a moment that neither succumbs to the dichotomy between history and its ineffable other nor to a total immanence of history? What is the hallmark of a representation of the past that would allow us not to become absorbed in it without remainder? What kind of text can reflect on history's violent character without inviting an eternal return of trauma, but also without fetishizing a pristine prehistory, unmarked by trauma?

Zombie economics: how dead ideas still walk among us

In the graveyard of economic ideology, dead ideas still stalk the land. The recent financial crisis laid bare many of the assumptions behind market liberalism--the theory that market-based solutions are always best, regardless of the problem. For decades, their advocates dominated mainstream economics, and their influence created a system where an unthinking faith in markets led many to view speculative investments as fundamentally safe. The crisis seemed to have killed off these ideas, but they still live on in the minds of many--members of the public, commentators, politicians, economists, and even those charged with cleaning up the mess. In Zombie Economics, John Quiggin explains how these dead ideas still walk among us--and why we must find a way to kill them once and for all if we are to avoid an even bigger financial crisis in the future. Zombie Economics takes the reader through the origins, consequences, and implosion of a system of ideas whose time has come and gone. These beliefs--that deregulation had conquered the financial cycle, that markets were always the best judge of value, that policies designed to benefit the rich made everyone better off--brought us to the brink of disaster once before, and their persistent hold on many threatens to do so again. Because these ideas will never die unless there is an alternative, Zombie Economics also looks ahead at what could replace market liberalism, arguing that a simple return to traditional Keynesian economics and the politics of the welfare state will not be enough--either to kill dead ideas, or prevent future crises. In a new chapter, Quiggin brings the book up to date with a discussion of the re-emergence of pre-Keynesian ideas about austerity and balanced budgets as a response to recession.

Impacts of Jumps and Stochastic Interest Rates on the Fair Costs of Guaranteed Minimum Death Benefit Contracts

The authors offer a new perspective to the field of guaranteed minimum death benefit contracts, especially for simple return premium and rising floor guarantees. A particular feature of these contracts is a guaranteed capital upon the insured's death. A complete methodology based on the generalized Fourier transform is proposed to investigate the impacts of jumps and stochastic interest rates. This paper thus extends Milevsky and Posner (2001). If jumps alone are considered, similar results are obtained, but, when stochastic interest rates are introduced, the fair costs of the guarantee feature are found to be substantially higher in this more general economy.

On Nature and Bioethics

The account of nature and humanity's relationship to nature are of central importance for bioethics. The Scientific Revolution was a critical development in the history of this question and many contemporary accounts of nature find their beginnings here. While the innovative approach to nature going out of the seventeenth century was reliant upon accounts of nature from the early modern period, the Middle Ages, late-antiquity and antiquity, it also parted ways with some of the understandings of nature from these epochs. Here I analyze this development and suggests that some of the insights from older understandings of nature may be helpful for bioethics today, even if there can be no simple return to them.

Sacred Cloth and Development in <i>Timor-Leste</i>

Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Women in Timor-Leste hand-weave textiles that play a significant role in their culture, particularly in the wake of destructive conflicts in that society. A nascent handcraft industry primarily composed of poor rural women represents a vulnerable and marginalized section of society. For many of these women, selling their handcraft products is the only way to earn cash to pay for essential items. Assisting these women and their families to develop sustainable livelihoods in this small industry is a worthy development goal which is grounded in women's cultural and social realities. However, new exploratory research indicates that, like handcraft producers everywhere in the world, they face great obstacles in marketing their goods and retaining the cultural integrity of their products and practices while gaining a fair return for their work. A central conclusion arrived at is that a coordinated and dedicated national craft development program is needed in Timor-Leste. This should be based on the current realities of production and trade, and the distinct types and social variables of women producers, all of which requires further investigation. These projects must have the goal of empowering the participants, rather than merely seeking a simple economic return for their work.

Approximations of Portfolio Returns: Are the Errors Really Small?

We analyze the systematic errors coming from two approximations in use in financial modelling: that the portfolio logreturn is the weighted average of the asset logreturns, and that the logreturn is equal to the simple return. Usually, the errors inherent in the approximations are taken to be small and so they are simply ignored. We estimate the errors using Monte Carlo simulations with different distributional assumptions on single asset logreturns. We analyze the impacts of the errors in the context of portfolio choice. The approximations are found to significantly underestimate portfolio logarithmic returns, leading investors to systematically select riskier portfolios than actually desired. On a portfolio with a target logreturn of 10% the true mean exceeds the approximated mean by up to 1%, while the error on volatility is about 2.7%. Furthermore, we show that not only does diversification reduce risk, it also increases the portfolio logreturn mean and skewness, whatever assumptions you make on single asset distributions.

A Moral Imperative for Children

IT IS UNCLEAR WHY THE UNITED STATES LACKS BROAD, COMprehensive policies that consistently address the status of children (those younger than 18 years). In the United Nations Children’s Fund’s (UNICEF’s) Innocenti Report Card 7 on child well-being in wealthy countries, an analysis of child well-being is composed of 6 dimensions: material well-being, health and safety, educational wellbeing, family and peer relationships, behaviors and risks, and subjective well-being (as measured by child report). These 6 dimensions are captured in a broad survey designed to monitor the progress of children from a holistic view. The dimensions reflect the concepts articulated in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development countries listed in the report are the 21 of 30 participating countries for which complete data were available. In this analysis, the United States ranks 21 of 21 countries for health and safety and 20 of 21 countries for all composite measures, excluding subjective well-being, which, ironically, is not reported for US children. There are some possible explanations for the lack of focus on child well-being in the United States. In a recent article, it was stated that the United States is “a nation built on commitment, certainly to freedom and capitalism.” Both freedom and capitalism carry their burdens with respect to societal commitment to children. An example is the lack of universal health insurance in the United States. Vladeck, in reflecting on this subject, considers historical, cultural, political, and structural explanations for why the United States is the only industrialized, advanced nation to not have universal health insurance for its population, inclusive of its children. He proposes that Americans as a group have more negative attitudes about government than most other individuals from other countries. Furthermore, he states that this rejection of government is a general cultural tendency to reject authority with a preference for individualistic, independent, and, perhaps, “freer” choices. The politicalstructural explanation for the lack of universal coverage is grounded in the fabric of capitalism, an opportunistic, supplyand-demand system that does not generally support the redistribution of wealth. Vladeck further argues that political contributions are often evaluated in terms of “simple return on investment.” A simple return on investment places material gain above all and is the framework for operation. Many have tried to counter the arguments against broad support for children by precisely framing the need in economic terms. “Investing” in children, it has been argued, is sound policy and merits support because it is an investment in “human capital.” In arguing on behalf of children, many have sought to define the “whole child,” a life span approach, gains in disability-adjusted life-years, and even a holistic view of mind and body. There is wisdom in achieving the goal of improved outcomes for children during the course of their lives and, thus, maximizing benefit for society as a whole. These efforts are laudable but must be embedded in basic concepts and understanding of the intangible, that is, that a human life has no price. Noneconomic arguments must be part of a civilized society. These arguments must rest on the belief of right and wrong. Competing forces to achieving holistic policies of child health in the United States are also represented by the lack of support for a truly comprehensive, integrated health system encompassing mental health. In 1982, Knitzer spoke out for the most vulnerable in pointing out in stark terms the plight of children experiencing socioemotional problems. She used case examples to discuss a system that had failed to deliver needed services to children and also helped to humanize the many stories that could not be envisioned by others. She included children from all walks of life, but often from impoverished circumstances, who were burdened with depression, aggression, posttraumatic stress, and other serious emotional disorders. Her lens into the lives of these children was cast nationally—and in differing communities to get a broad representation of the problems, the challenges, and, most importantly, the reachable solutions. Two basic principles have emerged from discussion of her work—the need for universal access to health care and that health is always inclusive of mental health. It is unfortunate but not entirely surprising, then, that the United States (along with Somalia) has not ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. The convention and its 54 articles articulate the fundamental rights of children. Starting with a preamble, the convention ar-

An Empirical Study of the Returns on Defaulted Debt and the Discount Rate for Loss-Given-Default

Prudential management of credit risk and supervisory requirements call for the accurate measurement of loss conditional upon default (LGD). In the case of banks, in order to achieve Advanced Internal Ratings Based (AIRB) compliance under the Basel II minimum regulatory capital framework, loss arising fro m counterparty default must be estimated. However, the discount rate to be applied to post-default cash flows is a largely unsettled issue, amongst both practitioners and bank supervisors. In this study we survey various methodologies extant in the literature for determining an appropriate discount rate. We propose an approach in which the discount rate is conditional upon the level or undiversifiable risk inherent in the recovery cash flows associated with defaulted facilities. We present a stylized theoretical framework for understanding such an approach. This is followed by an empirical exercise that utilizes a comprehensive and commercially available database of workout recoveries (Moody’s Ultimate Recovery Database - MURD), in which we analyze the returns on marketable bonds and loans, having market prices at default and at the resolution of the default event. We propose alternative empirical measures of the recovery risk inherent in post-default cash-flows: the annualized simple return on defaulted debt (RDD) and discount rates implied from a structural model of credit risk incorporating systematic recovery risk, a generalization of the asymptotic single risk factor (ASRF) framework (Gordy, 2003). We find our empirically derived estimates to be significantly higher than what has been found in the previous literature, as well as what is used in industry, mean RDD of 29.2%; this compares to benchmarks such as the 15% reported by Araten et al (2003), the 200bps over the risk-free rate suggested by Machlachlan (2004), or rates in the range of 10-15% derived from model-based estimations (one or two factor structural credit models in conjunction with an assumption on the systematic risk factor). Principal findings are that returns on defaulted debt, which can be interpreted as an appropriate discount rate for workout recoveries, vary significantly according to various factors. There is some evidence that discount rate metrics are elevated for loans having better collateral quality rank or better protected tranches within the capital structure; and for obligors rated higher at origination, more financially levered or having higher Cumulative Abnormal Returns (CARs) on equity just prior to default. However, the discount rate is increasing in market implied loss severity at default. We also find evidence that LGD discount rates vary procyclically, as they increase with industry default rates, but there tends to be some asynchronousity in this relationship; further, they are inversely related to short-term interest rates. However, for other demographics the results are inconclusive, such as the industry group of the obligor. Finally, we conduct an analysis of the impact of the discounting method upon the distribution of estimated LGD and regulatory capital. We find that a regression model based discounting, for a sub-sample of the MURD database, results in a capital charge 73 bps greater than discounting at a constant punitive rate of 25%, and 113 bps larger than discounting at the contractual coupon rate (where the capital charge ranges in 7-8%). This conservativeness of the risk-sensitive RDD model, as well as the evidence that the risk in recovery cash flows contain a significant non-diversifiable component, supports the appropriateness of this framework for regulatory capital calculations.