Who’s counting? Measuring social outcomes from targeted private equity

The potential of private equity investment in emerging domestic markets to deliver strong financial returns while also giving rise to public benefits has drawn the attention of both venture and economic development capital, as well as policymakers and researchers. Ratcliffe examines this strategy and shares some real world examples of how funds are performing in their double-bottom line objectives.

Neighborhood Subprime Lending and the Performance of Community Reinvestment Mortgages

This study analyzes the spillover effect of the spatial concentration of subprime lending on the performance of recently originated community reinvestment mortgages targeting low- to moderate-income borrowers. The level of subprime lending in a census tract is found to be a significant predictor of the default and prepayment probability of the community reinvestment loans in the same neighborhoods. The results suggest that the concentration of subprime lending and the resulting clusters of foreclosed properties reduce neighborhood property values and increase price volatility. The lowered property values and the increased volatility increase the default probability of borrowers holding any loan product, including community reinvestment mortgages. This study provides new evidence concerning the negative impacts of the concentration of subprime lending in certain neighborhoods.

The CRA: outstanding, and needs to improve

Community Reinvestment Act of 1977

Post-purchase Counseling and Default Resolutions among Low- and Moderate-Income Borrowers

The rise of delinquencies and foreclosures in a softening housing market calls for systematic studies of default behavior and efforts to minimize the default risks. Using a sample of residential mortgages made to low- to moderate-income borrowers, this paper empirically examines the impact of a proactive post-purchase counseling service on moderately delinquent mortgages. It demonstrates that well-timed, situation-appropriate counseling, even over the phone, effectively increases the curing probability of delinquent borrowers. The findings hold even after accounting for unobserved heterogeneity among borrowers and the endogeneity problem. Many other factors, such as home equity, local economic conditions, and borrower and loan characteristics, also impact the transition of delinquencies.

Risky Borrowers or Risky Mortgages Disaggregating Effects Using Propensity Score Models

In this research, we examine the relative risk of subprime mortgages and a sample of community reinvestment loans originated through the Community Advantage Program (CAP). Using the propensity score matching method, we construct a sample of comparable borrowers with similar risk characteristics but holding the two different loan products. We find that the sample of community reinvestment loans have a lower default risk than subprime loans, very likely because they are not originated by brokers and lack risky features such as adjustable rates and prepayment penalties. Results suggest that similar borrowers holding more sustainable products exhibit significantly lower default risks.

Fatigue-Related Changes of Daily Function: Most Promising Measures for the Digital Age

Background: Fatigue is a prominent symptom in many diseases and is strongly associated with impaired daily function. The measurement of daily function is currently almost always done with questionnaires, which are subjective and imprecise. With the recent advances of digital wearable technologies, novel approaches to evaluate daily function quantitatively and objectively in real-life conditions are increasingly possible. This also creates new possibilities to measure fatigue-related changes of daily function using such technologies. Summary: This review examines which digitally assessable parameters in immune-mediated inflammatory and neurodegenerative diseases may have the greatest potential to reflect fatigue-related changes of daily function. Key Messages: Results of a standardized analysis of the literature reporting about perception-, capacity-, and performance-evaluating assessment tools indicate that changes of the following parameters: physical activity, independence of daily living, social participation, working life, mental status, cognitive and aerobic capacity, and supervised and unsupervised mobility performance have the highest potential to reflect fatigue-related changes of daily function. These parameters thus hold the greatest potential for quantitatively measuring fatigue in representative diseases in real-life conditions, e.g., with digital wearable technologies. Furthermore, to the best of our knowledge, this is a new approach to analysing evidence for the design of performance-based digital assessment protocols in human research, which may stimulate further systematic research in this area

Preventive servicing is good for business and affordable homeownership policy

This article documents the growing importance of preventive servicing—business practices that emphasize early intervention in delinquency and default management practices that also help financially troubled borrowers avoid foreclosure. We suggest that the loan servicing side of the affordable housing delivery system may be underappreciated and undercapitalized. We use a database of more than 28,000 affordable housing loans to test several preventive servicing‐related propositions and find that after we control for loan and borrower characteristics, the likelihood that a delinquent mortgagor within this universe will ultimately default varies significantly across servicers. This suggests that loan servicing is an important factor in determining whether low‐ and moderate‐income borrowers who fall behind in their mortgage payments will end up losing their homes through foreclosure. It also suggests a need for policy makers to incorporate preventive servicing into affordable homeownership programs

Critical care admission following elective surgery was not associated with survival benefit: prospective analysis of data from 27 countries

This was an investigator initiated study funded by Nestle Health Sciences through an unrestricted research grant, and by a National Institute for Health Research (UK) Professorship held by RP. The study was sponsored by Queen Mary University of London