American dream or American obsession? The economic benefits and costs of homeownership

Homeownership, like baseball and hotdogs, is an integral part of the American culture. Over the past 70 years, the U.S. government has devoted significant public resources to encouraging and promoting homeownership. The recent financial crisis has prompted the government to spend even more on preserving homeownership, despite the fact that the financial crisis itself was led by the meltdown of the U.S. housing market. Now, an increasing number of academicians and media reporters are questioning the previously unquestionable: Has the American dream turned into an American obsession? In “American Dream or American Obsession? The Economic Benefits and Costs of Homeownership,” Wenli Li and Fang Yang analyze the economic benefits and costs associated with owning one’s residence. They re-examine a variety of rationales that have been put forward in support of homeownership and examine the evidence for an economic cost associated with homeownership.Home ownership

EFFECTS OF SPATIAL RESOLUTION AND LANDSCAPE STRUCTURE ON LAND COVER CHARACTERIZATION

This dissertation addressed problems in scaling, problems that are among the main challenges in remote sensing. The principal objective of the research was to investigate the effects of changing spatial scale on the representation of land cover. A second objective was to determine the relationship between such effects, characteristics of landscape structure and scaling procedures. Four research issues related to spatial scaling were examined. They included: 1) the upscaling of Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI); 2) the effects of spatial scale on indices of landscape structure; 3) the representation of land cover databases at different spatial scales; and 4) the relationships between landscape indices and land cover area estimations. The overall bias resulting from non-linearity of NDVI in relation to spatial resolution is generally insignificant as compared to other factors such as influences of aerosols and water vapor. The bias is, however, related to land surface characteristics. Significant errors may be introduced in heterogeneous areas where different land cover types exhibit strong spectral contrast. Spatially upscaled SPOT and TM NDVIs have information content comparable with the AVHRR-derived NDVI: Indices of landscape structure and spatial resolution are generally related, but the exact forms of the relationships are subject to changes in other factors including the basic patch unit constituting a landscape and the proportional area of foreground land cover under consideration. The extent of agreement between spatially aggregated coarse resolution land cover datasets and full resolution datasets changes with the properties of the original datasets, including the pixel size and class definition. There are close relationships between landscape structure and class areas estimated from spatially aggregated land cover databases. The relationships, however, do not permit extension from one area to another. Inversion calibration across different geographic/ecological areas is, therefore, not feasible. Different rules govern the land cover area changes across resolutions when different upscaling methods are used. Special attention should be given to comparison between land cover maps derived using different methods

Consumption and time use over the life cycle

The authors incorporate home production in a dynamic general equilibrium model of consumption and saving with illiquid housing and a collateralized borrowing constraint. They show that the model is capable of explaining life-cycle patterns of households' time use and consumption of different categories. Specifically, households' market hours and home hours are fairly stable early in the life cycle. Market hours start to decline sharply at age 50, while home hours begin to increase at age 55. Households' consumption of the market good, home input, and housing services all exhibit hump shapes over the life cycle, with the market good having the most pronounced hump, followed by the home input, and then housing services. A plausibly parameterized version of the authors' model predicts that the interaction of the labor efficiency profile and the availability of home production technology explain households' time use over the life cycle. The resulting income profiles, the endogenous borrowing constraint and the presence of home production account for the initial hump in all three consumption goods. The consumption profiles in the second half of the life cycle are mostly driven by the complementarity of home hours, home input, and housing in home production.Consumption (Economics) ; Production (Economic theory)

Relativistic Ab initio Study On PtF and HePtF

The electronic structures and spectroscopic constants of the first three low-lying electronic states (Omega = 1/2, 3/2, and 5/2) of the linear HePtF complex were investigated by highly accurate relativistic ab initio methods, in which the spin-orbit coupling was taken into account, and compared with the results of PtF. It shows that the complex is significantly different from the typical van der Waals systems because of short He-Pt bond distances (1.80 similar to 1.87 angstrom), large He-Pt stretching frequencies (500 similar to 600 cm(-1)), considerable binding energies (1400 similar to 2500 cm(-1) with corrections), and a small electron transfer from helium (about 0.06). However, the topological analysis of the electron density distribution indicates that there is strong van der Waals interaction in the He-Pt bond instead of weak covalent one.Welch Foundation F-100Chemistr

CHARACTERISTICS OF BOARD OF DIRECTORS AND PERFORMANCE OF GEM LISTED COMPANIES FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF VENTURE CAPITAL PARTICIPATION

Using the difference-in-differences (DID) model and taking the sample of companies listed from 2009 to 2014 on the Growth Enterprises Market (GEM) of the Shenzhen Stock Exchange in China, this paper studies the impact of Venture Capital (VC) participation on board characteristics, which is measured by the chief executive officer (CEO) duality, the scale of the board of directors and the proportion of independent directors, and it also studies how the board characteristics influence the company performance. The findings are as follows: VC-backed GEM listed companies are more inclined to choose the mode of CEO duality and to have a larger board of directors and a higher proportion of independent directors, all of which are conducive to improving company performance

VENTURE CAPITAL AND CORPORATE INNOVATION INPUT FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF SYNDICATED INVESTMENT

Using data for 341 enterprises listed on the Growth Enterprise Market (GEM) of the Shenzhen Stock Exchange and taking R&D expenditure as an indicator of innovation investment, this paper implements multiple linear regression to test whether venture capital promotes corporate innovation input. It also considers the relationship between the syndicated investment of venture capital and innovation input. The results showthat venture capital indeed promotes R&D in the invested enterprises. The innovation input of syndicated investment enterprises is significantly higher than that of sole investment enterprises. Under syndicated investment, the higher the number of syndicated investment members and the greater the heterogeneity of the shareholding ratio among the members, the higher is the innovation input. The reputation of the syndicated investment team, however, has no significant impact on innovation input.Using data for 341 enterprises listed on the Growth Enterprise Market (GEM) of the Shenzhen Stock Exchange and taking R&D expenditure as an indicator of innovation investment, this paper implements multiple linear regression to test whether venture capital promotes corporate innovation input. It also considers the relationship between the syndicated investment of venture capital and innovation input. The results showthat venture capital indeed promotes R&D in the invested enterprises. The innovation input of syndicated investment enterprises is significantly higher than that of sole investment enterprises. Under syndicated investment, the higher the number of syndicated investment members and the greater the heterogeneity of the shareholding ratio among the members, the higher is the innovation input. The reputation of the syndicated investment team, however, has no significant impact on innovation input

Open Source GIS Connectors to NASA GES DISC Satellite Data

The NASA Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC) houses a suite of high spatiotemporal resolution GIS data including satellite-derived and modeled precipitation, air quality, and land surface parameter data. The data are valuable to various GIS research and applications at regional, continental, and global scales. On the other hand, many GIS users, especially those from the ArcGIS community, have difficulties in obtaining, importing, and using our data due to factors such as the variety of data products, the complexity of satellite remote sensing data, and the data encoding formats. We introduce a simple open source ArcGIS data connector that significantly simplifies the access and use of GES DISC data in ArcGIS