The efficiency of residential mortgage guarantee insurance markets

Mortgage Guarantee Insurance (MGI) provides protection to lenders against default by borrowers who have less than 20 percent equity interest in the mortgaged property. The existence of this form of insurance helps to stimulate home ownership by allowing consumers with less than twenty percent down payment access to credit markets. Initially an invention of lenders, MGI became dominated by government agencies after the Great Depression but recently private insurers have increased their market share to more than 75 percent. The domination of the industry by the private sector appears not to affirm competition, however. Despite varying loss ratios across states, MGI premiums appear to remain relatively uniform, suggesting price inflexibility. This paper uses cross-sectional data on loss ratio, mortgage delinquency rates, and housing prices to test empirically the level of competition in the MGI industry. The paper finds that the level of competition in the industry is not sufficient to drive the premiums to the competitive (efficient) level. The implication is that national cross subsidies occur where high risk insureds are subsidized by low risk insureds.Mortgages

Finite Sample Properties of the QMLE for the Log-ACD Model: Application to Australian Stocks

This paper is concerned with the finite sample properties of the Quasi Maximum Likelihood Estimator (QMLE) of the Logarithmic Autoregressive Conditional Duration (Log-ACD) model. Although the distribution of the QMLE for the log-ACD model is unknown, it is an important issue as it is used widely for testing various market microstructure models and effects. Knowledge of the distribution of the QMLE is crucial for purposes of valid inference and diagnostic checking. This paper investigates the structural and statistical properties of the log-ACD model by establishing the relationship between the log-ACD model and the Autoregressive-Moving Average (ARMA) model. The theoretical results developed in the paper are evaluated using Monte Carlo experiments. The experimental results also provide insights into the finite sample properties of the log-ACD model under different distributional assumptions.Conditional duration, Asymmetry, ACD, Log-ACD, Monte Carlo simulation Acknowledgement: The authors are grateful for the financial support of the Australian Research Council.

Solar Sister Social Impact Report: Tanzania & Uganda

Eighty to ninety percent of people in East Africa live without access to electricity. Most families burn kerosene, candles, and wood to light their homes and to cook food. Solar Sister strives to eradicate energy poverty through the sales of solar lanterns and clean cookstoves, but Solar Sister does more than just provide clean energy. The impact of its energy products touches every aspect of customers’ lives, from business to education to household safety and more. Solar Sister entrepreneurs develop their own capacity through earned income selling clean energy technology in their communities, often investing into their own families and businesses. To form a deeper understanding of Solar Sister’s social impact in the context of East Africa, we conducted 21 semi-structured interviews with customers and 12 focus groups with Solar Sister entrepreneurs in 15 villages. After each focus group, we distributed a 33-question paper survey to each microentrepreneur to gather data in three categories: baseline monitoring and evaluation, the social impact of clean energy technology, and their local community networks. During our eight weeks in the field, we took about two thousand photos. We traveled to five East African regions in Tanzania and Uganda: Kilimanjaro, Tanga, Singida, Manyara, and Rakai. Our research surfaced patterns of social impact such as increased productivity, purchasing power, improvement in education, and community empowerment. We crafted profiles of Solar Sister entrepreneurs and customers whose personal stories illustrate these impact patterns. In all of the stories, we found emergent themes that characterize the remarkable impact Solar Sister makes in communities. Solar Sister harnesses local expertise, and these entrepreneurs foster trust within their community, which in turn increases market penetration. For both entrepreneurs and customers, the money saved or earned increases agency and also improves their social status. Solar Sister’s products are versatile in use and also create intergenerational impact

Speech coding at 4800 bps for mobile satellite communications

A speech compression project has recently been completed to develop a speech coding algorithm suitable for operation in a mobile satellite environment aimed at providing telephone quality natural speech at 4.8 kbps. The work has resulted in two alternative techniques which achieve reasonably good communications quality at 4.8 kbps while tolerating vehicle noise and rather severe channel impairments. The algorithms are embodied in a compact self-contained prototype consisting of two AT and T 32-bit floating-point DSP32 digital signal processors (DSP). A Motorola 68HC11 microcomputer chip serves as the board controller and interface handler. On a wirewrapped card, the prototype's circuit footprint amounts to only 200 sq cm, and consumes about 9 watts of power

A targeted gene panel that covers coding, non-coding and short tandem repeat regions improves the diagnosis of patients with neurodegenerative diseases

Genetic testing for neurodegenerative diseases (NDs) is highly challenging because of genetic heterogeneity and overlapping manifestations. Targeted-gene panels (TGPs), coupled with next-generation sequencing (NGS), can facilitate the profiling of a large repertoire of ND-related genes. Due to the technical limitations inherent in NGS and TGPs, short tandem repeat (STR) variations are often ignored. However, STR expansions are known to cause such NDs as Huntington\u27s disease and spinocerebellar ataxias type 3 (SCA3). Here, we studied the clinical utility of a custom-made TGP that targets 199 NDs and 311 ND-associated genes on 118 undiagnosed patients. At least one known or likely pathogenic variation was found in 54 patients; 27 patients demonstrated clinical profiles that matched the variants; and 16 patients whose original diagnosis were refined. A high concordance of variant calling were observed when comparing the results from TGP and whole-exome sequencing of four patients. Our in-house STR detection algorithm has reached a specificity of 0.88 and a sensitivity of 0.82 in our SCA3 cohort. This study also uncovered a trove of novel and recurrent variants that may enrich the repertoire of ND-related genetic markers. We propose that a combined comprehensive TGPs-bioinformatics pipeline can improve the clinical diagnosis of NDs

A comparison of novel and conventional fabrication methods for auxetic foams for sports safety applications

This study compares fabrication methods for auxetic foam intended for use in sports safety equipment. Thermo-mechanical conversion methods were applied using: i) cubic moulds (150x150x150 mm), ii) cuboidal moulds (150x150x30 mm) & iii) cuboidal moulds (150x150x30 mm) with through-thickness pins. The cuboidal moulds having one reduced dimension relative to the cubic moulds enable faster heat transfer and more consistent through-thickness compression to the foam during conversion. The through-thickness pins allow greater control of in-plane compression throughout the bulk of the converted foam. Samples were compared using: i) density measurements and measurements of total surface folding (length multiplied by depth), ii) quasistatic compressive load/unload tests to obtain specific strain energy, stress/strain relationship and Poisson's ratio, iii) impact testing on a bespoke drop rig based on a standard for cricket pads (BS 6183-3: 2000, EN 2001) at 5, 10 and 15 J & iv) microscopic images of dissected samples to confirm their auxetic (re-entrant) structure. Samples fabricated in cuboidal moulds show less variation in final density, axial compressive stiffness and specific strain energy between samples than those cut from monoliths fabricated in cubic moulds. Samples created with through-thickness pins exhibited reduced surface folding. Greater control over final properties paves the way for further work designing auxetic foams for sport safety equipment

Web 2.0 and folksonomies in a library context

This is the post-print version of the Article. The official published version can be accessed from the link below - Copyright @ 2011 ElsevierLibraries have a societal purpose and this role has become increasingly important as new technologies enable organizations to support, enable and enhance the participation of users in assuming an active role in the creation and communication of information. Folksonomies, a Web 2.0 technology, represent such an example. Folksonomies result from individuals freely tagging resources available to them on a computer network. In a library environment folksonomies have the potential of overcoming certain limitations of traditional classification systems such as the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH). Typical limitations of this type of classification systems include, for example, the rigidity of the underlying taxonomical structures and the difficulty of introducing change in the categories. Folksonomies represent a supporting technology to existing classification systems helping to describe library resources more flexibly, dynamically and openly. As a review of the current literature shows, the adoption of folksonomies in libraries is novel and limited research has been carried out in the area. This paper presents research into the adoption of folksonomies for a University library. A Web 2.0 system was developed, based on the requirements collected from library stakeholders, and integrated with the existing library computer system. An evaluation of the work was carried out in the form of a survey in order to understand the possible reactions of users to folksonomies as well as the effects on their behavior. The broad conclusion of this work is that folksonomies seem to have a beneficial effect on users’ involvement as active library participants as well as encourage users to browse the catalogue in more depth