Mapping New England: the caregiver crunch

The numbers of people over 85 are growing faster than the numbers of typical caregivers (women aged 25 to 44) and may mean a shortage of caregivers in some regions.New England - Population

Taking stock of the Community Reinvestment Act

Over the past 25 years, the Community Reinvestment Act has been found to expand access to mortgage credit. But the banking world keeps evolving. Lending gains were strong during the 1990s, yet disparities still exist. This article provides highlights of an important paper that was produced by Harvard University on CRA's silver anniversary.Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 ; Mortgage loans ; Discrimination in mortgage loans

Massachusetts mortgage summit issues recommendations

In April 2007, the Massachusetts Division of Banks reported on the recommendations of its mortgage summit. The summit brought together a wide range of stakeholders to develop concrete responses to the problem of rising foreclosures. This article describes the collaborative process used in the mortgage summit and the recommendations issued. These recommendations illustrate a number of possible remedies to limit foreclosures and their impact on consumers and communities.Mortgage loans - Massachusetts ; Foreclosure - Massachusetts

Mapping New England : largest immigrant groups in southern New England counties

Among Southern New England immigrants, the largest populations are from Portugal and Canada (each with about 100,000), followed by the Dominican Republic and Italy, with about 70,000 and 60,000, respectively.Immigrants - New England

Too Much to Lose, or More to Gain? Should Sweden Join the Euro?

This paper considers the costs and benefits of Sweden joining the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). We pay particular attention to the costs of abandoning the krona in terms of a loss of monetary policy independence. For this purpose, we apply a cointegrated VAR framework to examine the degree of monetary independence that the Sveriges Riksbank enjoys. Our results suggest that Sweden has in fact relatively little to lose from joining EMU, at least in terms of monetary independence. We complement our analysis by looking into other criteria affecting the cost-benefit calculus of monetary integration, which, by and large, support our positive assessment of Swedish EMU membership

Chinese Monetary Policy and the Dollar Peg

This paper investigates to what extent Chinese monetary policy is constrained by the dollar peg. To this end, we use a cointegration framework to examine whether Chinese interest rates are driven by the Fed's policy. In a second step, we estimate a monetary model for China, in which we include also other monetary policy tools besides the central bank interest rate, namely reserve requirement ratios and open market operations. Our results suggest China has been relatively successful in isolating its monetary policy from the US policy and that the interest rate tool has not been effectively made use of. We therefore conclude that by employing capital controls and relying on other instruments than the interest rate China has been able to exert relatively autonomous monetary policy

Simulating properties of the likelihood ratio test for a unit root in an explosive second order autoregression

This paper provides a means of accurately simulating explosive autoregressive processes, and uses this method to analyse the distribution of the likelihood ratio test statistic for an explosive second order autoregressive process. Nielsen (2001) has shown that for the asymptotic distribution of the likelihood ratio unit root test statistic in a higher order autoregressive model, the assumption that the remaining roots are stationary is unnecessary, and as such the approximating asymptotic distribution for the test in the difference stationary region is valid in the explosive region also. However, simulations of statistics in the explosive region are beset by the magnitude of the numbers involved, which cause numerical inaccuracies, and this has previously constituted a bar on supporting asymptotic results by means of simulation, and analysing the finite sample properties of tests in the explosive region.

Understanding foreclosures in Massachusetts

Recent increases in foreclosure rates in New England and other parts of the United States are raising concerns. Distressful for individual borrowers and potentially destabilizing for their communities, the negative effects of foreclosures flow beyond the impact on housing markets and the financial consequences for creditors. Public officials, lenders, current and potential homeowners, community organizations, and other stakeholders are paying careful attention. ; In low- and moderate-income communities in New England, community leaders view current trends as especially worrisome. Among possible explanations, they stress the expansion of high-cost and subprime lending in these communities; and they cite aggressive or unscrupulous mortgage practices, and even mortgage fraud. Historically, however, other factors have been responsible for foreclosure activity. Regional job losses, rising interest rates, weak housing markets, and stretched borrowers facing negative life events are among the factors that usually push up foreclosure rates. And even critics of current mortgage lending practices acknowledge that homeownership is an effective asset-building strategy and that expanding the availability of credit to previously underserved population groups is a worthy goal. ; This paper describes recent trends in New England foreclosure rates, discusses possible causes, and looks at the prevalence of foreclosures in Massachusetts cities and towns with significant populations of low- and moderate-income households. It finds that the prevalence of higher cost lending is associated with higher foreclosure rates.Mortgage loans - Massachusetts ; Mortgage loans - New England ; Foreclosure - Massachusetts ; Foreclosure - New England

Information and predictability: bookmakers, prediction markets and tipsters as forecasters

The more information is available, and the more predictable are events, the better forecasts ought to be. In this paper forecasts by bookmakers, prediction markets and tipsters are evaluated for a range of events with varying degrees of predictability and information availability. All three types of forecast represent different structures of information processing and as such would be expected to perform differently. By and large, events that are more predictable, and for which more information is available, do tend to be forecast better