The development and regulation of consumer credit reporting in America

In the United States today, there is at least one credit bureau file, and probably three, for every credit-using individual in the country. Over 2 billion items of information are added to these files every month, and over 2 million credit reports are issued every day. Real-time access to credit bureau information has reduced the time required to approve a loan from a few weeks to just a few minutes. But credit bureaus have also been criticized for furnishing erroneous information and for compromising privacy. The result has been 30 years of regulation at the state and federal levels. ; This paper describes how the consumer credit reporting industry evolved from a few joint ventures of local retailers around 1900 to a high technology industry that plays a supporting role in America's trillion dollar consumer credit market. In many ways the development of the industry reflects the intuition developed in the theoretical literature on information-sharing arrangements. But the story is richer than the models. Credit bureaus have changed as retail and lending markets changed, and the impressive gains in productivity at credit bureaus are the result of their substantial investments in technology. ; Credit bureaus obviously benefit when their data are more reliable, but should we expect them to attain the socially efficient degree of accuracy? There are plausible reasons to think not, and this is the principal economic rationale for regulating the industry. An examination of the requirements of the Fair Credit Reporting Act reveals an attempt to attain an appropriate economic balancing of the benefits of a voluntary information sharing arrangement against the cost of any resulting mistakes.Consumer credit

The New Neighbors: A User's Guide to Data on Immigrants in U.S. Communities

Provides a guide for identifying characteristics, contributions, and needs of immigrant populations. Discusses national immigration trends, and addresses public policy questions. Includes a profile of the immigrant population in Providence, Rhode Island

A Panel of Price Indices for Housing, Other Goods, and All Goods for All Areas in the United States 1982-2008

This paper produces a panel of price indices for housing, other produced goods, and all produced goods for each metropolitan area in the United States and the non-metropolitan part of each state from 1982 through 2008 that can be used for estimating behavioral relationships, studying the workings of markets, and assessing differences in the economic circumstances of people living in different areas. Our general approach is to first produce cross-sectional price indices for a single year 2000 and then use BLS time-series price indices to create the panel. Our geographic housing price index for 2000 is based on a large data set with detailed information about the characteristics of dwelling units and their neighborhoods throughout the United States that enables us to overcome many shortcomings of existing interarea housing price indices. For most areas, our price index for all goods other than housing is calculated from the price indices for categories of non-housing goods produced each quarter by the Council for Community and Economic Research. In order to produce a non-housing price index for areas of the United States not covered by their index, we estimate a theoretically-based regression model explaining differences in the composite price index for non-housing goods for areas where it is available and use it to predict a price of other goods for the uncovered areas. The overall consumer price index for all areas is based on the preceding estimates of the price of housing and other goods. The paper also discusses existing interarea price indices available to researchers, and it compares the new housing price index with housing price indices based on alternative methods using the same data and price indices based on alternative data sets. Electronic versions of the price indices are available online.Interarea price indices, interarea housing price indices, geographic cost-of-living differences, geographic price differences

Estimating network effects in mobile telephony in Germany

In this paper we analyze the demand for mobile telecommunication services in Germany in the period from January 1998 to June 2003. During this time, the subscriber base grew exponentially by about 700% while prices declined only moderately by about 41%. We believe that prices alone cannot account for such rapid diusion and network eects have inuenced the evolution of the industry. We put this view to the test by using publicly available data on subscriptions, price indices and churn rates. Using churn rates gave us approximate sales levels which enabled us to use standard methods to investigate the eect of network size on demands. Our estimates of a system of demand functions show that network eects played a signicant role in the diusion of mobile services in Germany

Driven to Spend: Pumping Dollars Out of Our Households and Communities

This report examines the impacts of transportation spending on households in the 28 metro areas for which the federal government collects expenditure data and of rising gas prices on both households and regional economies. It finds that households in regions that have invested in public transportation reap financial benefits from having access to affordable mobility options, even as gas prices rise, and that regions with public transit are losing less per household from the increase in gas prices than those without transit options

Walmart On Tax Day: How Taxpayers Subsidize America's Biggest Employer and Richest Family

This report finds that the American public is providing enormous tax breaks and tax subsidies to Walmart and the Walton family, further boosting corporate profits and the family's already massive wealth at everyone else's expense. Specifically, our analysis shows that:Walmart and the Walton family receive tax breaks and taxpayer subsidies estimated at more than $7.8 billion a year – that is enough money to hire 105,000 new public school teachers.The annual subsidies and tax breaks to Walmart and the Waltons include the following:* Walmart receives an estimated$6.2 billion annually in mostly federal taxpayer subsidies. The reason: Walmart pays its employees so little that many of them rely on food stamps, health care and other taxpayer-funded programs. * Walmart avoids an estimated $1 billion in federal taxes each year. The reason: Walmart uses tax breaks and loopholes, including a strategy known as accelerated depreciation that allows it to write off capital investments considerably faster than the assets actually wear out.* The Waltons avoid an estimated$607 million in federal taxes on their Walmart dividends. The reason: income from investments is taxed at a much lower tax rate than income from salaries and wages.In addition to the $7.8 billion in annual subsidies and tax breaks, the Walton family is avoiding an estimated$3 billion in taxes by using specialized trusts to dodge estate taxes – and this number could increase by tens of billions of dollars.Walmart also benefits significantly from taxpayer-funded public assistance programs that pump up the retailer's sales. For example, Walmart had an estimated $13.5 billion in food stamp sales last year.

IMAGING THE FUTURE: THE DEMOGRAPHIC ROLE IN FOOD DEMAND

Demand and Price Analysis,