Should Las Vegas Bet on Homeownership? Trends in Housing Affordability and Homeownership

In many parts of the U.S., rents and housing prices are rising faster than household incomes. Low-income families have always been stretched to pay for housing without sacrificing other necessities. In recent years, housing costs have become a larger source of financial stress for middle-income families. While homeownership has been the primary channel for wealth building in the U.S., two recent trends raise questions about whether this is a viable strategy. First, many homeowners suffered severe financial losses due to housing price declines during the Great Recession (2007-2009). Second, homeownership rates for Black and Latino families lag those of white and Asian families – a challenge as the nation’s population becomes increasingly diverse. The Las Vegas metropolitan area is at the forefront of both of these trends. In this paper, I explore recent trends in housing affordability and homeownership in Las Vegas and discuss implications for financial security and wealth-building

The DIRAC experiment at CERN

The DIRAC experiment at CERN aims to measure the lifetime of the pionium atom ($A_{2\pi}$), a $\pi^+\pi^-$ bound state with an accuracy of 10%. The experimental setup consists of a high precision magnetic double arm spectrometer, located at the high intensity proton beam of the CERN Proton Synchrotron. This measurement will provide - in a model independent way - the S-wave pion scattering length difference $|a_0 - a_2|$ with 5% precision.Comment: Talk presented at the XXXVIIIth Rencontres de Moriond session devoted to QCD and High Energy Hadronic Interactions. We give a status report of the DIRAC experiment and present new analysis result

Are Mortgage Loans the New Toasters? The Roles of Housing Demand and Political Patronage in Mexican Housing Finance Author-Name: Jenny Schuetz

This paper tests for evidence of political manipulation in the allocation of subsidized mortgage loans in Mexico during the 1990’s. First, I develop a baseline model of loan allocation across states as a function of housing need, eligibility for lending programs, and administrative capacity to deliver housing. Then, I add measures of political competitiveness to the model. Empirical results suggest that the two largest lenders generally allocated loans according to their eligibility criteria, granting more loans to states with more income- and employment-eligible households and poorer quality housing. Tests for political manipulation suggest that more loans were, in fact, granted in federal election years and in states where the ruling party did not perform well in the previous election. However, the numbers lack statistical significance. As a result, it can be assumed that political motivation played a relatively small role in the allocation of loans.Mortgage loans; Housing subsidies; Political patronage; Mexico