Heterogeneous Information and Appraisal Smoothing

This study examines the heterogeneous appraiser behavior and its implication on the traditional appraisal smoothing theory. We show that the partial adjustment model is consistent with the traditional appraisal smoothing argument only when all the appraisers choose the same smoothing technique. However, if appraiser behavior is heterogeneous and exhibits cross-sectional variation due to the difference in their access to, and interpretation of information, the model actually leads to a mixed outcome: The variance of the appraisal-based returns can be higher or lower than the variance of transaction-based return depending on the degree of such heterogeneity. Using data from the residential market, we find that, contrary to what the traditional appraisal smoothing theory would predict, appraisal-based indices may not suffer any “smoothing” bias. These findings suggest that the traditional appraisal smoothing theory, which fails to consider the heterogeneity of appraiser behaviors, exaggerates the effect of appraisal smoothing.

Ownership Restriction and Housing Value: Evidence from American Housing survey

Amendments to the Fair Lending Act have exempted an age restriction on ownership from fair housing prohibitions. This paper studies the economic impact of such ownership restriction on housing values. Using American Housing Survey data, we find that there is a significant premium attached to the restrictive covenant when other factors are controlled. In particular, we find that imposing age restriction on ownership increases the housing values by anywhere from 10.5% to 12.7%. At the average house value, this is equivalent to a dollar amount between $14,642 and$17,399. The estimates are robust to different specifications in hedonic equations.

How Tax Credits Have Affected the Rehabilitation of the Boston Office Market

This paper is concerned with the extent to which rehabilitation tax credits affect the conditional probability of commercial real estate rehabilitation. Very little has been written about the rehabilitation tax credit, despite the fact that it has been a feature of the U.S. tax code since 1978. Our analysis suggests that rehabilitation tax credits have been a significant determinant of the conditional probability of rehabilitation in the Boston office market. We also find that a significant portion of rehabilitation tax-credit investment is investment that would have been invested elsewhere, about 60 to 65 percent in certain periods, but rising to as high as 90 percent in other periods. We find that the rehabilitation tax credit has a significant and substantial influence on the conditional probability of rehabilitation. We also find that the greatest amount of slippage, not too surprisingly, generally occurs when the tax credit is low and when the gain from rehabilitation before the tax credit is high.

Immigrants and Mortgage Delinquency in the United States

We investigate the relationship between immigrant status and mortgage delinquency in the United States. We find that after controlling for observables, newly arrived immigrants are likely to have a higher delinquency rate on mortgages than natives, while immigrants who have resided in the United States for more than 20 years are no different than natives in this regard. In addition, there is no evidence that the second generation of immigrants has a higher delinquency rate than the third-or-higher generation. Our results are robust to potential sample selection bias and functional misspecifications

Containment through mobility: migrants’ spatial disobediences and the reshaping of control through the hotspot system

This article deals with the modes of (contested) control that are at play at the Mediterranean frontier for containing, dividing and discipling unruly mobility. Building on ethnographic research conducted on the island of Lesvos and of Lampedusa, it focuses on the implementation and the functioning of the Hotspot System in Greece and in Italy, analysing beyond the fences of detention centres and by looking at the broader logistics of channels, infrastructures and governmental measures deployed for regaining control over migration movements. The article argues that more than control in terms of surveillance and tracking, the Hotspot System contributes to enforce forms of containment through mobility that consists in controlling migration by obstructing, decelerating and troubling migrants’ geographies – more than in fully blocking them. The article takes into account migrants’ refusals of being fingerprinted, showing how migrants radically unsettle the association between seeking refuge and lack of choice, enacting their right to choose where to go and claim asylum

IC classifier: a classifier for 3D industrial components based on geometric prior using GNN

In this paper, we propose an approach to address the problem of classifying 3D industrial components by introducing a novel framework named IC-classifier (Industrial Component classifier). Our framework is designed to focus on the object's local and global structures, emphasizing the former by incorporating specific local features for embedding the model. By utilizing graphical neural networks and embedding derived from geometric properties, IC-classifier facilitates the exploration of the local structures of the object while using geometric attention for the analysis of global structures. Furthermore, the framework uses point clouds to circumvent the heavy computation workload. The proposed framework's performance is benchmarked against state-of-the-art models, demonstrating its potential to compete in the field.Comment: 15 pages including citations, 3 pages of figure

The origins and early evolution of DNA mismatch repair genes—multiple horizontal gene transfers and co-evolution

To understand the evolutionary process of the DNA mismatch repair system, we conducted systematic phylogenetic analysis of its key components, the bacterial MutS and MutL genes and their eukaryotic homologs. Based on genome-wide homolog searches, we identified three new MutS subfamilies (MutS3-5) in addition to the previously studied MutS1 and MutS2 subfamilies. Detailed evolutionary analysis strongly suggests that frequent ancient horizontal gene transfer (HGT) occurred with both MutS and MutL genes from bacteria to eukaryotes and/or archaea. Our results further imply that the origins of mismatch repair system in eukaryotes and archaea are largely attributed to ancient HGT from bacteria instead of vertical evolution. Specifically, the eukaryotic MutS and MutL homologs likely originated from endosymbiotic ancestors of mitochondria or chloroplasts, indicating that not only archaea, but also bacteria are important sources of eukaryotic DNA metabolic genes. The archaeal MutS1 and MutL homologs were also acquired from bacteria simultaneously through HGT. Moreover, the distribution and evolution profiles of the MutS1 and MutL genes suggest that they have undergone long-term coevolution. Our work presents an overall portrait of the evolution of these important genes in DNA metabolism and also provides further understanding about the early evolution of cellular organisms