Early Retirement Across Europe. Does Non-Standard Employment Increase Participation of Older Workers?

Hervorming Sociale Regelgevin

Discrimination, Competition, And Loan Performance In Fha Mortgage Lending

This study tests for the presence of prejudicial or "noneconomic" discrimination on the part of mortgage lenders by evaluating the performance of home mortgage loans. The approach differs from that of previous studies of loan performance in that it is based on the proposition that noneconomic discrimination should be more pronounced in less competitive lending environments, while statistical discrimination should not. Using a rich set of FHA-insured loan records and measures of local market concentration to proxy the competitive environment, we test for the prediction of better loan performance by minority borrowers relative to white borrowers in more concentrated markets. We argue that this approach substantially reduces the potential for omitted-variable bias that has cast a shadow on previous studies of lending discrimination. Results fail to reject the null hypothesis of no noneconomic discrimination. © 1998 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Access to consumer credit in the UK

This paper investigates household access to consumer credit in the UK using information on 58,642 households between 2001 and 2009. Employing a treatment-effects model and propensity score matching, we find that non-white households are less likely to have financing compared to white households. We also find that even if they obtain financing, the intensity of borrowing is lower than for white households. Overall, non-white households seem to be in a weaker position to access consumer credit in the UK