Capital markets, CDFIs, and organizational credit risk

Can Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) get unlimited amounts of low cost, unsecured, short- and long-term funding from the capital markets based on their organizational credit risk? Can they get pricing, flexibility, and procedural parity with for-profit corporations of equivalent credit risk? One of the key objectives of this book is to explain the reasons why the answer to the two questions above remains “no.” The other two key objectives are to show the inner workings of what has been done to date to overcome the obstacles so that we don’t have to retrace the same steps and recommend additional disciplines that position CDFIs to take advantage of the mechanisms of the capital markets once the markets stabilize

The Potential Role For CDFIs in the Opportunity Zones of the Investing in Opportunities Act (IIOA)

The Opportunity Zones legislation was designed to mobilize new levels of capital into low- and moderate-income (LMI) communities – areas that have historically been overlooked and underserved by mainstream capital markets. As longstanding financial partners to LMI communities, Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs), it would seem, are positioned to play a pivotal role in the Opportunity Zones ecosystem. Yet the legislation presents a challenge on that front. As the law dictates, the mechanism through which Qualified Opportunity Zone Fund investments must be made are equity instruments, while CDFIs tend to operate more on the lending side. For this reason, the CDFI industry has struggled to determine exactly how it can harness the potential power of the Opportunity Zones tax incentive to advance their efforts to support LMI communities. This report, then, is timely. As our partners at the University of New Hampshire’s Center for Impact Finance show in the pages that follow, there is indeed a role for CDFIs in the emerging Opportunity Zones space – or, more accurately, several potential roles, both financial and non-financial alike. Enterprise is proud to support this report and is grateful for its contribution to the field. It is now up to us, as CDFIs and mission-aligned partners, to convert the ideas held within this report into action. In so doing, we can help realize the original intent of the Opportunity Zones legislation: to responsibly direct significant capital into communities that have been financially marginalized for too long

TRUTHSCAN-A COMPUTERIZED INSTRUMENT FOR CREDIBILITY ASSESSMENT: Initial Field Testing Data For New Exculpatory Verification of Veracity Technology

In Tansey,1 the results of an initial field study as to the efficacy ofTruthScan, a fully automated computerized instrument for credibility assessment, implemented on a NeXT computer running under Unix, were published. TruthScan's code has been rewritten and expanded under MSDOS enabling it to run on a portable computer. In this, it again utilizes standardized, computer delivered auditory stimuli, and the identical computer-scoring algorithm for picking "truth" as found in TruthScan's initial field-testing running under Unix. In the current MSDOS implementation, T ruthScan then computed four separate numeric verification indexes in the same manner as T ansey.l Two numeric verification indexes were computed for males. A numeric verification index was computed based on a commonly held "truthful" brainwave signature as well as a numeric verification index based on a commonly held "falsehood" brainwave signature (n ::: 10). Two numeric verification indexes were computed for females. A numeric verification index was computed based on a commonly held "truthful" brainwave signature as well as a numenc verification index based on a commonly held "falsehood" brainwave signature (n 10)

Does Exercise Reduce the Risk of Falling in Parkinson’s Patients?

Objective: The objective of this selective EBM review is to determine whether or not exercise reduces the risk of falls in Parkinson’s patients Study Design: Review of three English language randomized control trials (RCTs) published in 2003, 2007 and 2010. Data Sources: 3 randomized controlled trials published after 1999 were obtained using Pubmed. Outcomes Measured: The Allen study used a Parkinson’s disease fall risk scoring. The Ashburn study used patient dairies to record incidence of falls. The Hirsch study used Sensory Orientation testing assessing the trials resulting in falls. Results: Allen et al and Ashburn et al found no significant reduce in the incidence in falls while Hirsch et al was able to show a significant reduction in the incidence of falls. Conclusion: Evidence supporting the role of exercise in reducing the incidence of falls in Parkinson’s patients in inconclusive and conflicting at this time. A more standard exercise program and method of collecting results is needed for studies that can last longer and represent a larger portion of the population of Parkinson’s patients

A COMPUTERIZED INSTRUMENT FOR FORENSIC CREDIBILITY ASSESSMENT: Initial Standardization and Test-Retest Findings

A fully automated computerized instrument for forensic credibility assessment was field tested with one hundred and three experimental trials utilizing an experimental population of ninetyfour. One of the group participants thereafter participated in further test-retest experiments. A core digital brainwave signature enabling the affirmation of truth and falsehood was found to be held in common across the entire experimental population. While the aforementioned core brainwave signature was found to be extant and common across the test population, the testretest data found that an individual's core brainwave signature included additional idiosyncratic relational brainwave indices which served as robust indicators in the thirty-six test-retest experimental trials. The implications of these findings relative to credibility forensic assessments free of technician/examiner bias are discussed

A Path to Conventional Equity for CDFIs: CDFI Equity Project Report

In this report designed to serve the Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) sector, authors Charles Tansey and Michael Swack describe a step-by-step blueprint for accessing private equity in Stage One and conventional equity in the public market in Stage Two through participating CDFIs. In addition to providing a blueprint, the report documents the affirmation that a portion of CDFI equity can be—and should be—self-sustaining. It also demonstrates how this equity can be widely accessible by the broader CDFI industry over time

Complexity of public interest in ethical analysis of genomics: Ethical reflections on salmon genomics/aquaculture

This paper describes the use of focus groups to support ethical analysis of pubic interests related to genomics and biotechnology. This work represents one “stream” of the research encompassed by the Genome Canada funded project, Democracy, Ethics and Genomics: Consultation, Deliberation and Modeling. The objectives of the paper are to describe the moral dimensions and perspectives of the issues raised by focus group participants, to assess the information required to support informed dialogue about issues, and to describe some necessary components of ethical analysis of these issues. As such, the paper presents a sample analysis which the reader can compare with the other empirical approach in the project, Norms Evolving in Response to Dilemmas (NERD) (see Ahmad et al., 2006). The purpose of this comparison is to evaluate the relative strengths and weaknesses of two approaches for assessing public input on common topics—in this case, salmon genomics and aquaculture—a surprisingly rare activity (Abelson et al., 2003)

The Gravity Model Of Trade Applied To Africa

The gravity model states that trade between any two countries is proportional, other things equal, to the product of the two countries’ GDPs, and diminishes with the distance between the two countries. The logic is that larger economies tend to spend large amounts on imports and attract large share of other countries spending (exports) because they produce large quantity and variety of goods and services. Distance, on the other hand, tends to lessen trade between countries because of transportation costs and other intangible barriers, such as language, geography, and historic colonial relationships.  The following specific hypotheses from the gravity model of trade are tested with respect to African countries alone:  The amount of exports by one African country to another is inversely related to the distance between the two countries,  The amount of exports by one African country to another reflects the GDP of the country to whom the exports are sent, The amount of exports directly reflects a country’s own GDP, and Countries associated with the same colonial power experience greater trade.  Each of these hypotheses is tested with logarithmic forms of the variables in the hypotheses.  While the resulting logarithmic model works is statistically significant and bears the correct signs, it does not show colonial patterns to be a strong as those found in other studies that are focused on inter-continental trade relationships.  The significance of colonization in other studies may be a surrogate for the degree of development of nations.  Since trade grows less than proportionately both with respect to the GDP of the importing nation and with respect to the GDP of the exporter, this study shows a disappointing trade impact of growth in the developing world on the potential development of Africa through export growth

The meanings of genomics: a focus group study of “interested” and lay classifications of salmon genomics

Risk researchers have traditionally examined technologies that have become stigmatized in the public realm. In this study, we examine a prior cognitive phenomenon, which assumes that technologies are classified according to the non-scientific taxonomies that individuals use to make sense of the world. We describe the coarse taxonomies revealed during five focus groups involving expert and non-expert participants. The study suggests that in discussions of salmon genomics, participants consistently conflate genomic research with transgenic applications. The authors discuss the implications of this phenomenon for public policy