Search Results
Working Paper
Financial Vulnerability and Personal Finance Outcomes of Natural Disasters
I evaluate the effects of hurricanes of varying intensity on the financial condition of a typical resident in both affected and unaffected census tracts, where the degree of affect is determined by the relative location of a census tract?s boundary with buffers around the tracks of hurricane eyes that occurred in the years 2000-2014. The primary question in the article is whether financial vulnerability, or, alternatively, ?financial preparedness,? affects post-hurricane disaster financial outcomes. {{p}} I find that hurricanes tend to lower credit scores, for the most, but outcomes are far ...
Journal Article
A new perspective on rising nonbusiness bankruptcy filing rates : analyzing the regional factors
Nonbusiness bankruptcy filing rates have increased almost five-fold since 1980. This alarming growth was largely the impetus for the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005. The intent of the new law, which went into effect in October, 2005, was to eliminate alleged abuses of the bankruptcy system and to reduce filing rates. ; In deliberations on the new law, Congress expressed concern about the underlying causes of bankruptcy. The tools currently available for analysis leave serious gaps in understanding bankruptcy behavior. While many studies have sought to discover ...
Working Paper
Worker's compensation and state employment growth
Workers Compensation reforms have been on the table in virtually every state over the last several years, and many states have launched comprehensive reforms. At least nine states undertook major reforms of their workers compensation systems in 2004 alone, and the reforms were driven largely by claims that higher workers compensation costs are driving away businesses and the employment that comes with them. Given the nearly universal assertion by promoters of workers compensation reforms that high cost states lose jobs to relatively low cost states, one would expect that substantial research ...
Working Paper
Nexus, throwbacks, and the weighting game
This paper modifies a model proposed by Anand and Sansing (2000) to explain why states have chosen different formulas for corporate income apportionment. I demonstrate that nexus assumptions and allocation rules can have significant effects on the outcomes of the model, and are important considerations in analyzing the impetus for and effects of apportionment competition.
Journal Article
The role of small and large businesses in economic development
Increasingly, economic development experts are abandoning traditional approaches to economic development that rely on recruiting large enterprises with tax breaks, financial incentives, and other inducements. Instead, they are relying on building businesses from the ground up and supporting the growth of existing enterprises. This approach has two complementary features. The first is to develop and support entrepreneurs and small businesses. The second is to expand and improve infrastructure and to develop or recruit a highly skilled and educated workforce. Both efforts depend in large part ...
Journal Article
The low- and moderate- income population in recession and recovery: results from a new survey
The worst recession in U.S. postwar history, starting in late 2007, confronted low- and moderate-income families and individuals with distinct challenges. To address the severe lack of data on the "LMI," population, the Kansas City Fed launched its LMI Survey in 2009. ; Distributed to more than 700 organizations that provide services to the LMI population, the Survey elicits a wealth of qualitative reporting. It also produces quantitative data, including several quarterly indexes that track changes in LMI financial conditions over time. ; Edmiston summarizes insights from the Survey on ...
Journal Article
Could restrictions on payday lending hurt consumers?
The payday loan, or more generally, the deferred deposit loan, is among the most contentious forms of credit. It typically signifies a small-dollar, short-term, unsecured loan to a high-risk borrower, often resulting in an effective annual percentage rate of 390 percent a rate well in excess of usury limits set by many states. Consumer advocates argue that payday loans take advantage of vulnerable, uninformed borrowers and often create ?debt spirals.? Debt spirals arise from repeated payday borrowing, using new loans to pay off old ones, and often paying many times the original loan amount in ...
Journal Article
A look at bankruptcy in the Tenth District and beyond
Working Paper
Student loans: overview and issues
This report provides a detailed overview of the student loan market, presents new statistics that highlight student loan debt burdens and delinquency rates, and discusses current concerns among many Americans about student loans, including their fiscal impact. The report is intended to enhance awareness of the state of student loan debt and delinquency and highlight issues facing borrowers, creditors, the federal government, and society at large. ; Student loan debt has been increasing at a rapid pace in the last decade, climbing from about $364 billion in the first quarter of 2005 to $904 ...
Journal Article
Why Aren’t More People Working in Low- and Moderate-Income Areas?
Although the U.S. labor market has seen strong growth in recent years, labor market conditions have been weaker in low- and moderate-income (LMI) communities. In particular, residents in LMI communities are much less likely to work than residents in higher-income (non-LMI) communities. As of 2017, 35 percent of residents in LMI communities age 18–64 were not working compared with 24.9 percent in non-LMI communities.In this article, I use a formal text analysis of a unique set of survey comments to examine prominent obstacles to working, and compare the prevalence of these obstacles, or ...