Credit Booms and Lending Standards: Evidence from the Subprime Mortgage Market

This paper links the current subprime mortgage crisis to a decline in lending standards associated with the rapid expansion and changes in the structure of this market. We show that lending standards declined more in areas that experienced faster credit growth. We also find that the entry of new lenders contributed to the decline in lending standards. The results are robust to controlling for house price appreciation, mortgage securitization, and other economic fundamentals, and to several robustness tests controlling for endogeneity. The results are consistent with the predictions of recent models based on asymmetric information, and shed light on the relationship between credit booms and financial instability.credit boom;lending standards;mortgages;subprime loans;moral hazard;financial accelerators

The August 2010 Phreatic Eruption of Mount Sinabung, North Sumatra

DOI: 10.17014/ijog.v8i1.155Mount Sinabung, located in Karo Regency, North Sumatra Province, is a strato volcano having four active craters. Since its latest eruption about 1,200 year ago, a phreatic eruption occurred on August 27th, 2010. The eruption took place in Crater-I, which was initiated by a greyish white plume and then followed by black plumes as high as 2000 m above the crater. Altered rock fragments and ash were erupted during this event. The altered rocks show a development of argillic alterations which was formed in the hydrothermal system in depth. The alteration zone is formed along the northeast-southwest and northwest-southeast trend across the three craters. All of the craters are actively discharging solfataric gases, of which sulphur deposits are resulted, and they have been quarried by the local people. The age of the latest magmatic eruption was dated by 14C method from the charcoal sample found in the pyroclastic flow deposits near Bekerah Village

Genetic heterogeneity in Italian families with IgA nephropathy: suggestive linkage for two novel IgA nephropathy loci.

IgA nephropathy (IgAN) is the most common glomerulonephritis worldwide, but its etiologic mechanisms are still poorly understood. Different prevalences among ethnic groups and familial aggregation, together with an increased familial risk, suggest important genetic influences on its pathogenesis. A locus for familial IgAN, called "IGAN1," on chromosome 6q22-23 has been described, without the identification of any responsible gene. The partners of the European IgAN Consortium organized a second genomewide scan in 22 new informative Italian multiplex families. A total of 186 subjects (59 affected and 127 unaffected) were genotyped and were included in a two-stage genomewide linkage analysis. The regions 4q26-31 and 17q12-22 exhibited the strongest evidence of linkage by nonparametric analysis (best P=.0025 and .0045, respectively). These localizations were also supported by multipoint parametric analysis, in which peak LOD scores of 1.83 ( alpha =0.50) and 2.56 ( alpha =0.65) were obtained using the affected-only dominant model, and by allowance for the presence of genetic heterogeneity. Our results provide further evidence for genetic heterogeneity among families with IgAN. Evidence of linkage to multiple chromosomal regions is consistent with both an oligo/polygenic and a multiple-susceptibility-gene model for familial IgAN, with small or moderate effects in determining the pathological phenotype. Although we identified new candidate regions, replication studies are required to confirm the genetic contribution to familial IgA

The Impact of Macroprudential Housing Finance Tools in Canada: 2005-10

This paper combines loan-level administrative data with household-level survey data to analyze the impact of recent macroprudential policy changes in Canada using a microsimulation model of mortgage demand of first-time homebuyers. Policies targeting the loan-to-value ratio are found to have a larger impact than policies targeting the debtservice ratio, such as amortization. This is because there are more wealth-constrained borrowers than income-constrained borrowers entering the housing market