Voting with your feet: consumers’ problems with credit cards and exit behaviors

On December 17, 2002 the Payment Cards Center of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia hosted a workshop led by Jeanne Hogarth and Marianne Hilgert of the Consumer and Community Affairs Department of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. The presentation and subsequent discussion focused on their paper “Voting With Your Feet: Consumers’ Problems with Credit Cards and Exit Behaviors,” that was co-authored with Jane Kolodinsky of the University of Vermont and Jinkook Lee of Ohio State University. The paper is the result of a study conducted through the Surveys of Consumers which examined attempts by consumers to resolve credit card disputes and the subsequent effect on their relationships with the card’s issuer. This short discussion paper summarizes key elements of the paper that were presented at the workshop.Credit cards

Managing global privacy

On May 7, 2002, Dr. Benjamin Robinson, chief privacy officer for MasterCard International, led a workshop on managing global privacy for the Payment Cards Center of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. Robinson described how changing business practices, industry consolidation, electronic commerce, and economic trends have positioned consumer privacy as a key issue in the financial services sector that must be managed. He discussed various privacy initiatives in other countries and compared them to the environment in the U.S. This paper summarizes the workshop discussion and is supplemented by additional research by the author.

Innovations in small dollar payments

On September 25, 2001, the Payment Cards Center of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia sponsored a workshop on innovations in small dollar payments. The moderated discussion was led by Richard Corl, an entrepreneur with 25 years of experience in the electronic payments industry.2 From his perspective as a director of Ecount, a small dollar payments innovator, Corl described a range of challenges and opportunities for innovators in their quest to convert small dollar cash and check payments into electronic transactions. In addition to broad market issues, he described a number of specific emerging applications. This paper is a summary of Corl's presentation.

Managing consumer credit risk

On July 31, 2001, the Payment Cards Center of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia hosted a workshop that examined current credit risk management practices in the consumer credit industry. The session was led by Jeffrey Bower, senior manager in KPMG Consulting’s financial services practice. Bower discussed "best practices" in the credit risk management field, including credit scoring, loss forecasting, and portfolio management. ; In addition, he provided an overview of developing new methodologies used by today's risk management professionals in underwriting consumer risk. This paper summarizes key elements of Bower's presentation.Consumer credit ; Credit cards

A panel discussion on dynamics in the consumer credit counseling service industry

On July 20, 2001 the Payment Cards Center of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia sponsored a workshop on the consumer credit counseling service industry. Leading the moderated discussion were four senior executives from regional credit counseling firms associated with the National Foundation for Credit Counseling (NFCC). Jerome Johnson, president and CEO and Ghyll Theurer, program manager represented the Consumer Credit Counseling Service (CCCS) of South Jersey, a program of Family Service Association. James Godfrey, executive vice president, Consumer Credit Counseling Service (CCCS) of Maryland and Delaware, Inc. and Patricia Hasson, president of Consumer Credit Counseling Service (CCCS) of Delaware Valley, Inc. rounded out the panel. The discussions were enriched by the breadth of experiences represented by the panelists who come from a variety of industry and nonprofit backgrounds. The panel discussed the role of credit counseling firms mediating between financially troubled consumers and their unsecured credit card lenders. This paper is a summary of those discussions.Consumer credit

An Examination of the Impact of Induction on Teacher Efficacy

States have turned to effective induction programs in response to rising teacher attrition rates and a widening student achievement gap. Comprehensive induction programs that develop highly efficacious teachers report a decline in teacher attrition, an increase in job satisfaction, and a rise in student achievement. The intent of this research was to assess the level of the perceived self-efficacy of fourth-year teachers across the domains of instructional strategies, student engagement, and classroom management following the completion of the county’s induction program. The study explored the induction program’s structure in a large, urban North Carolina county to evaluate the extent of participant self-efficacy levels and to what degree best practices are utilized, as defined in the review of the literature. Data were collected during the spring of the fourth year of teaching following completion of the district’s induction program. This mixed-methods study utilized an interview with the program coordinator and a focus group of seven teachers from the district. A survey instrument known as the Teacher Sense of Self-Efficacy Scale (TSES) instrument was given to 32 participating teachers. The TSES is a 24-item instrument used to assess the level of efficacy teachers feel in the three domains of instructional strategies, student engagement, and classroom management. Results indicated that fourth-year teachers felt highly efficacious in all three domains, although trends in data suggested strengths and weaknesses for teachers after completing the induction program. Despite high efficacy scores, the focus group communicated negative perceptions regarding their experiences and the program’s impact in all three domains. A thorough evaluation of the district’s program framework revealed purposeful planning and deliberate effort to incorporate three of the four best practices identified in this study. The researcher recommended more application-based support in the teaching environment, professional development that allows teachers to play an active role, and increased accountability measures for induction coaches and mentors to ensure fidelity across the district

Symmetric chain decomposition for cyclic quotients of Boolean algebras and relation to cyclic crystals

The quotient of a Boolean algebra by a cyclic group is proven to have a symmetric chain decomposition. This generalizes earlier work of Griggs, Killian and Savage on the case of prime order, giving an explicit construction for any order, prime or composite. The combinatorial map specifying how to proceed downward in a symmetric chain is shown to be a natural cyclic analogue of the $\mathfrak{sl}_2$ lowering operator in the theory of crystal bases.Comment: minor revisions; to appear in IMR

Higher-twist contributions to large pT hadron production in hadronic collisions

The scaling behavior of large-pT hadron production in hadronic collisions is investigated. A significant deviation from the NLO QCD predictions is reported, especially at high values of xT=2pT/sqrt(s). In contrast, the prompt photon and jet production data prove in agreement with leading-twist expectations. These results are interpreted as coming from a non-negligible contribution of higher-twist processes, where the hadron is produced directly in the hard subprocess. Predictions for scaling exponents at RHIC are successfully compared to PHENIX preliminary measurements. We suggest to trigger on isolated large-pT hadron production to enhance higher-twist processes, and point that the use of isolated hadrons as a signal for new physics at colliders can be affected by the presence of direct hadron production processes.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures. Talk given at the 45th Rencontres de Moriond QCD and High Energy Interactions, La Thuile, Italy, 13-20 March 201

Review of \u3cem\u3eThe Loyal West: Civil War and Reunion in Middle America\u3c/em\u3e by Matthew E. Stanley

Interest in Civil War memory and post–Civil War sectional reconciliation has expanded greatly in recent years, as two 2016 historiographical essays attest.1 Matthew E. Stanley\u27s new book, The Loyal West: Civil War and Reunion in Middle America is thus well timed to make an important contribution to our evolving understanding of the process of sectional reconciliation in the decades following the Civil War. With his focus on Kentucky\u27s northern neighbors in the lower portions of Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, the editorial staff of the Register of the Kentucky Historical Society believe Stanley\u27s book will help historians better understand the role Kentucky played in the events of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, which saw a white supremacist version of Civil War memory eclipse an emancipationist version nationally. We have asked four nineteenth-century historians to consider Stanley\u27s book from varying perspectives. M. Keith Harris teaches history at a private high school in Los Angeles, California. He is the author of Across the Bloody Chasm: The Culture of Commemoration among Civil War Veterans (2014) and is currently writing a book on D. W. Griffith\u27s controversial 1915 silent film, The Birth of a Nation. Anne E. Marshall is an associate professor of history at Mississippi State University and the author of Creating a Confederate Kentucky: The Lost Cause and Civil War Memory in a Border State (2012). James Marten is professor and chair of the history department at Marquette University. His most recent books are Sing Not War: The Lives of Union and Confederate Veterans in Gilded Age America (2011) and America\u27s Corporal: James Tanner in War and Peace (2014). Kristopher Maulden is a visiting assistant professor of history at Columbia College in Missouri. He is completing a book manuscript on the influence of Federalist politics and federal policy in the Ohio River Valley, and he is engaged in a study of nineteenth-century Ohio newspaper editor Charles Hammond. Finally, the author of The Loyal West, Matthew E. Stanley, assistant professor of history at Albany State University, will respond to the reviews