Linking institutional investors to communities

Public pension funds, insurance companies, foundations, and universities increasingly pursue community investments because they deliver on twin goals: high financial returns and economic growth in underserved areas. Since 2000, mission-related investments have grown at a 19.5 percent compound annual rate.Investments ; Community development ; Community development - New England

Using new markets tax credits to mitigate the impact of foreclosures on communities

The author presents an overview of what is being done and offers community development practitioners’ ideas about how to refine and strengthen the federal program. One example: change the program to allow a separate, additional allocation of tax credits for the purchase and resale of foreclosed property in low-income areas.Foreclosure

See No Evil: Information Chains and Reciprocity in Teams

Transparency in teams can facilitate cooperation. We study contribution decisions by agents when previous decisions can be observed. We find that an information chain, in which each agent directly observes only the decision of her immediate predecessor, is at least as effective as a fully-transparent protocol in inducing cooperation under increasing returns to scale. In a comparable social dilemma, the information chain leads to high cooperation both in early movers when compared to a non-transparent protocol and in late movers when compared to a fully-transparent protocol. we conclude that information chains facilitate cooperation by balancing positive and negative reciprocity.team production, public goods, incentives, externality, information, transparency, conditional cooperation

The endogeneity of money and the eurosystem

The endogenous theory of money, developed by Basil Moore, argues that the supply of central bank money in modern economies is not under the control of the central bank. According to this view, a central bank typically supplies cash reserves automatically on demand at its minimum lending rate, resulting in a clearly horizontal money supply function. While the paper agrees with Moore that the supply of central bank money cannot be determined exogenously by the central bank, it wonders whether the supply is determined completely by the demand of the commercial banks. The paper suggests that the central bank has some exogenous power to control the quantity of its supply by rationing. More importantly, the central bank is forced to do so! The central bank cannot not merely exist as an automat responding to the wishes of the commercial banks. Part I discusses the cause why the central bank has to restrict its supply, while part II demonstrates how the supply of central bank money can be controlled by looking at the monetary policy operations of the Eurosystem. In accordance with this analysis, the paper offers a modified horizontal or “staircase” supply function of central bank money. --

Transient engine simulation program. NERVA program

IBM 7094 transient engine simulation program for NERV

The role of community partners in urban investments

Institutional investors seeking to deploy capital to underserved areas do not have either the time or the expertise to actively manage these specialized investments. Investment vehicles intervene by using their financial expertise to pool assets and lower transaction costs. Community partners, in turn, link the investment vehicle to the neighborhood. This paper develops a typology of community partners and their unique characteristics that enable them to overcome information asymmetries in certain markets. The paper also discusses the business models that establish the relationship between the investment vehicle and community partner to highlight strengths of the different models for delivering community transformation.Community development