Responding to the Impending Repossessions Crisis

This paper was commissioned by Communities and Local Government in November 2008 in response to the rise in repossessions. It addresses the macroeconomic and social impacts of repossessions and makes recommendations for government action

Pathos and patter in real estate parlance

This paper presents the first systematic analysis of estate agent language and employs Aristotle’s ponderings on the art of persuasion as a means of classifying the peculiar parlance of property peddlers. “Des. Res.”, “rarely available”, “viewing essential” – these are all part of the peculiar parlance of housing advertisements. The question is whether the selling agent’s penchant for rhetoric is uniform across a single urban system or whether there are variations, even within a relatively limited geographical area. We are also interested in how the use of superlatives varies over the market cycle. For example, are estate agents more inclined to use hyperbole when the market is buoyant or when it is flat? This paper attempts to answer these questions by applying textual analysis to a unique dataset of 49,926 records of real estate transactions in the West of Scotland over the period 1999 to 2006. Our analysis has implications for our understanding of the agency behaviour of housing market professionals and endeavours to open up a new avenue of research into the market-impact of rhetoric in the language of selling

Spinning particles in 2+12+1 dimensions

Lagrangian and Hamiltonian formulations of a free spinning particle in 2+1-dimensions or {\it anyon} are established, following closely the analysis of Hanson and Regge. Two viable (and inequivalent) Lagrangians are derived. It is also argued that one of them is more favourable. In the Hamiltonian analysis non-triviaal Dirac Brackets of the fundamental variables are computed for both the models. Important qualitative differences with a recently proposed model for anyons are pointed out.Comment: Tex file, No. of pages 12, G.H.College/HEP-94-0

Britain, Anglo-American relations and the ending of the US War in Vietnam, 1969-1973

This dissertation examines the approach of the Labour government of Harold Wilson in 1969-1970 and the Conservative government of Edward Heath from 1970 towards the war in Vietnam in general and towards the Paris peace process in particular. In the historiography of the Vietnam war, there has been little attention given to UK policy in connection with the US Nixon administration’s efforts to secure a “peace with honor” for America, and this dissertation seeks to fill a gap in the literature. As will be seen, both the Labour and Conservative governments were more actively involved at a diplomatic level than the historiography suggests. In the first place, in terms of the UK-US “special relationship”, Britain was called upon by America for support both in the ongoing war and the parallel peace process. In the Wilson-Heath period, the UK accepted the imperative of containing communism in Southeast Asia, where the UK retained considerable Commonwealth, economic and strategic interests. This dictated support for the US. At the same time, the US war was very unpopular in Britain, and support for the US had to be balanced against political considerations closer to home. It is one of the more surprising findings of this dissertation that Heath, who is often depicted as the most sceptical UK postwar Prime Minister about the Anglo-American relationship, was consistently supportive of the Nixon administration’s policy – even controversial features of that policy such as the 1972 Christmas bombing. However, as will be seen, Heath’s attitude was related to his European policy; by backing the US on Vietnam, he hoped to be able to maintain good UK-US relations after the UK joined the EEC. Heath did not regard UK entry into the EEC as building a new special relationship with Europe to take the place of the old UK-US one, but as an additional prop of support for the UK. Finally, in the Wilson-Heath period, we see the legacy of an earlier UK Vietnam peace initiative – the 1954 Geneva settlement which ended the French war in Vietnam. The terms of that settlement had been quickly violated, and Britain, along with the USSR, the co-chairs of the 1954 Geneva conference, assumed responsibility for restoring the situation in Vietnam along the lines of the 1954 settlement. This sometimes required the UK to distance itself in public from aspects of US policy in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and to propose peace initiatives of its own, to the irritation of the Americans. Heath, however, in contrast to Wilson, refused to be overly loyal to 1954 and tended to back the US, as noted, in most instances. But when peace finally arrived, for the US at least, in 1973, the Heath government was determined not to assume any responsibility for its preservation in the way that the UK became entangled in the legacy of 1954

The Sensitivity of Homeowner Leverage to the Deductibility of Home Mortgage Interest

Mortgage interest tax deductibility is needed to treat debt and equity financing of homes equally. Countries that limit deductibility create a debt tax penalty that presumably leads households to shift from debt toward equity financing. The greater the shift, the less is the tax revenue raised by the limitation and smaller is its negative impact on housing demand. Measuring the financing response to a legislative change is complicated by the fact that lenders restrict mortgage debt to the value of the house (or slightly less) being financed. Taking this restriction into account reduces the estimated financing response by 20 percent (a 32 percent decline in debt vs a 40 percent decline). The estimation is based on 86,000 newly originated UK loans from the late 1990s.