Housing Policy and Mortgage Finance in Turkey During the Late 1990s Inflationary Period

This paper evaluates the Turkish government’s housing policy for financing the public sector housing and examines the desirability of wage-indexed payment mortgage (WIPM) contract from the lenders perspective. The WIPM contract introduced in 1998 differs from the standard index-linked mortgages in that it is based on the Civil Servant’s Wage Index and there is no amortization rate. From the lender’s perspective, the WIPMs are found to be desirable mortgage instruments in periods of persistent high inflation because they eliminate the real interest rate risk and credit risk of the ARM and the ‘wealth risk’ of a nominal FRM.housing policy in inflationary economies, civil servant’s wage-indexed payment mortgages (WIPMs)

House Price Dynamics and Granger Causality: An Analysis of Taipei New Dwelling Market

The primary purpose of this paper is to examine dynamic causal relationships between house price and its five determinants, including total household income, short-run interest rates, stock price index, construction costs, and housing completions, in Taipei new dwelling market. Granger causality tests, variance decomposition, impulse response functions based on the vector error-correction model are utilised. All five determinants Granger cause house prices, but only house prices and stock price index have a bilateral feedback effect. The variance decomposition results suggest that disturbances originating from current house prices inflict greatest variability (66 percent of variance) to future prices. The remaining 34 percent of the variance is explained by the five determinants. On the supply side, the construction costs and housing completions together explain about 10 percent of the house price variance. On the demand side, short-run interest rates, total household income and stock price index explain about 24 percent of the variance.Vector Error-correction Model, Granger Causality Test, Generalised Impulse Response Function

Dust Devil Sediment Transport: From Lab to Field to Global Impact

The impact of dust aerosols on the climate and environment of Earth and Mars is complex and forms a major area of research. A difficulty arises in estimating the contribution of small-scale dust devils to the total dust aerosol. This difficulty is due to uncertainties in the amount of dust lifted by individual dust devils, the frequency of dust devil occurrence, and the lack of statistical generality of individual experiments and observations. In this paper, we review results of observational, laboratory, and modeling studies and provide an overview of dust devil dust transport on various spatio-temporal scales as obtained with the different research approaches. Methods used for the investigation of dust devils on Earth and Mars vary. For example, while the use of imagery for the investigation of dust devil occurrence frequency is common practice for Mars, this is less so the case for Earth. Modeling approaches for Earth and Mars are similar in that they are based on the same underlying theory, but they are applied in different ways. Insights into the benefits and limitations of each approach suggest potential future research focuses, which can further reduce the uncertainty associated with dust devil dust entrainment. The potential impacts of dust devils on the climates of Earth and Mars are discussed on the basis of the presented research results

Ambient-pressure endstation of the Versatile Soft X-ray (VerSoX) beamline at Diamond Light Source

The ambient-pressure endstation and branchline of the Versatile Soft X-ray (VerSoX) beamline B07 at Diamond Light Source serves a very diverse user community studying heterogeneous catalysts, pharmaceuticals and biomaterials under realistic conditions, liquids and ices, and novel electronic, photonic and battery materials. The instrument facilitates studies of the near-surface chemical composition, electronic and geometric structure of a variety of samples using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and near-edge X-ray absorption fine-structure (NEXAFS) spectroscopy in the photon energy range from 170 eV to 2800 eV. The beamline provides a resolving power hν/Δ(hν) > 5000 at a photon flux > 1010 photons s−1 over most of its energy range. By operating the optical elements in a low-pressure oxygen atmosphere, carbon contamination can be almost completely eliminated, which makes the beamline particularly suitable for carbon K-edge NEXAFS. The endstation can be operated at pressures up to 100 mbar, whereby XPS can be routinely performed up to 30 mbar. A selection of typical data demonstrates the capability of the instrument to analyse details of the surface composition of solid samples under ambient-pressure conditions using XPS and NEXAFS. In addition, it offers a convenient way of analysing the gas phase through X-ray absorption spectroscopy. Short XPS spectra can be measured at a time scale of tens of seconds. The shortest data acquisition times for NEXAFS are around 0.5 s per data point

Pricing the default option of inflation-indexed mortgages using explicit finite difference method

Free to read on publisher website This paper evaluates the default risk of civil servants’ wage-indexed payment mortgage (WIPM) contract in Turkey, which is linked to the expected inflation. The aim of the study has two sides: one is to apply the contingent claims approach, which has been widely us ed to price standard fixed- and adjustable-rate contracts, to price an inflation-indexed mortgage. The second is to understand if WIPM contract is a suitable mortgage design for lenders under an inflationary economy. We extend the traditional risk-neutral valuation for pricing the WIPM contract with its embedded default option. Using backward pricing method, namely t he explicit finite difference method, we evaluate this unique inflation-index ed mortgage contract from the lender’s point of view. The expected inflation and house price are the two stochastic variables underlying the WIPM contract. Our numerical results show that the lender benefits from originating WIPM only during the periods when the real interest rate is very low. Expected inflation risk premium notably increases the value of future payments on WIPM contract, resulting in high values of lender’s position in the mortgage agreement. The results also show that house price volatility has a greater effect on the borrower’s default option value compared to the expected inflation volatility