Using HMDA Data as a Regulatory Screen for Fair Lending Compliance

This paper describes and evaluates the Federal Reserve System's recently developed program designed to use HMDA data as a screening device for fair lending enforcement. The program is designed to identify institutions showing potentially discriminatory patterns in their treatment of minority mortgage applicants vis-a`-vis nonminority applicants. The program also selects specific loan files to pull for additional information in cases where a more comprehensive evaluation might be appropriate. This paper discusses the motivation behind the adoption of the program and its innovative matched-pair method and assesses its value and potential shortcomings.     

Bank Consolidation and Small Business Lending: The Role of Community Banks

This paper examines how bank consolidation activity affected small business lending in local U.S. banking markets during two 3-year study periods, focussing on the role played by community banks in the process. During the 1994–1997 period, we find that consolidation activity involving big banks is associated with lower loan growth, whereas community bank consolidations and a greater presence of community banks in the market are associated with higher loan growth. During the 1997–2000 period, consolidation activity is either unrelated to small business loan growth or is associated with higher loan growth. In both study periods we find that, net of organization reclassifications due to consolidation or asset growth, the share of small business lending funded by community banks rose, particularly in markets undergoing consolidation.     

For fraud,look under ‘serious and organized crime’

ABSTRACT

The UK government’s response to fraud cannot be disentangled from its broader ‘serious and organized crime’ (SOC) strategy. In order to explore whether fraud should—in public policy, criminal justice and law enforcement terms—be seen primarily as an SOC issue, there is a need to consider questions about whether or not ‘SOC’ is a sensible object of policy-making in the first place. Several arguments in favour of an SOC policy are identified in the paper. However, the notion of an overarching SOC policy is problematic for three reasons. First, SOC is a fundamental misrepresentation of reality, which does not correspond to a real social problem. Second, SOC policy can limit the development of more problem-specific crime strategies, Third, the ‘SOC’ label can negatively transform how social problems are perceived over the long term. If fraud is to be better understood and dealt with, it may therefore be necessary to extract it from its current inclusion within wider SOC strategy.     

Enhancing performance in small professional firms through vision communication and sharing

Despite evidence of a positive relationship, vision’s effects on performance are not fully understood, particularly in small professional service settings. This study advances prior research using a multi-stakeholder, multi-measure approach. It reports a positive relationship between vision-communication and -sharing on performance in Australian retail pharmacies using five measures—financial assessments, employee and customer satisfaction, productivity, and staff retention. Organizations whose managers communicate the vision to staff and whose employees share this vision outperform their peers across all business indicators and retain their employees longer. Financial performance and productivity were higher with long-term staff and managers.     

Examining the Draw of Diversity: How Diversity Climate Perceptions Affect Job‐Pursuit Intentions

Organizations must target talented applicants, who will often be demographically diverse, to attract the most competent and competitive workforce possible. Despite the bottom‐line implications of attracting the best and brightest, surprisingly little is known about how and why diversity recruitment strategies affect recruitment outcomes (e.g., job‐pursuit intentions). To gain insight into this question, we conducted an initial experimental study (N = 194) to test the premise that other‐group orientation moderates the relationship between perceived organizational value of diversity and job‐pursuit intentions. In a follow‐up experiment (N = 255), identity affirmation was examined as the mediating mechanism for the interaction observed in the first study. Mediated moderation analyses supported the proposed model. Collectively, the studies indicate that job seekers high in other‐group orientation are more intent on pursuing employment with organizations deemed to value diversity because they feel that their salient identities are likely to be affirmed. No such indirect effect is present for those lower in other‐group orientation.     

Familial Risk for Exceptional Longevity

One of the most glaring deficiencies in the current assessment of mortality risk is the lack of information concerning the impact of familial longevity. In this article we update estimates of sibling relative risk of living to extreme ages using data from more than 1700 sibships, and we begin to examine the trend for heritability for different birth-year cohorts. We also build a network model that can be used to compute the increased chance for exceptional longevity of a subject, conditional on his or her family history of longevity. The network includes familial longevity from three generations and can be used to understand the effects of paternal and maternal longevity on an individual's chance to live to an extreme age.     

Daniel Riffe,Stephen Lacy,Frederick G. Fico,Analyzing Media Messages: Using Quantitative Content Analysis in Research,Lawrence Erlbaum Associates: Mahwah,New Jersey, 1998

Abstract

Basic Facts 208 pages. $29.95 softcover and $49.95 hardcover.     

The Accuracy of Diary Measures of Car Radio Audiences: An Initial Assessment

Abstract

Despite the importance of diary measures, the dominant method used to measure radio audiences, few studies have been published concerning the accuracy of those measures. Several different measures of car radio audiences were conducted over a three-month period, including an audio tape of each subject's car radio listenership, in order to assess the accuracy of diary measures of car radio audiences.     

Posted rates and mortgage lending activity

In many metropolitan areas (MSAs) newspapers post mortgage terms for lenders in a manner designed to permit an easy comparison of discount points and note rates. Using these advertised rates for 73 lenders in three MSAs we examine 1) how applicants respond to short-run changes in relative rates, and 2) the relationship between the services provided and quality of applications received by lenders and their long-term market positions. We find that applicant flows increase when lenders lower their rates. We also find that persistent cross-lender differences in rates are associated with differences in product quality reflected in processing times, loan sales, and FHA/VA lending; and that high-risk borrowers tend to apply to lenders posting above-average rates.