Debt Deception: How Debt Buyers Abuse the Legal System to Prey on Lower-Income New Yorkers

In this report, we examine lawsuits filed by debt buyers and their profound impact on low- and moderate-income New Yorkers, lower-income communities, and communities of color. We begin, in Part I, with background on the debt buying industry, including an analysis of the debt buyer business model and collection methods. Part II focuses on debt buyer lawsuits, particularly the systemic problems at the root of these lawsuits. In Part III, we highlight specific findings from a study of debt buyer lawsuits in New York City. We draw results from two data sets: (1) a 365-case sample of lawsuits brought by the 26 debt buyers who filed the greatest number of cases in New York City between January 2006 and July 2008 ("Court Sample"); and (2) a 451-case sample of callers to NEDAP's legal hotline who were sued by a creditor or debt buyer in 2008 ("Client Sample"). Finally, in Part IV, we recommend policy and legislative reforms to address the problems documented in this repor

Using stated preferences to estimate the environmental benefits of using biodiesel fuel in diesel engines

Using biodiesel fuel to reduce emissions from diesel engines is an area of increasing interest. Many environmental benefits associated with biodiesel are not traded in markets and their estimation requires economic valuation methods applied to non-market goods and services. This paper presents the results of a contingent valuation survey conducted in 2006 in two Ohio regions to estimate willingness to pay for air pollution reduction arising from using biodiesel fuel in diesel engines. The double bounded parametric formulation was used to estimate mean WTP ranging from $157 to$457. These results yield estimated aggregate benefits ranging from $123 to$429 million and can be used as a starting point for cost-benefit analysis.Biodiesel, diesel, air pollution, environmental benefits, contingent valuation, willingness to pay, double bounded model, Environmental Economics and Policy, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy, I18, L91, Q42, Q51, Q53,

Poverty rate and government income transfers: A spatial simultaneous equations approach

The poverty rate and income transfer are clearly correlated. However, not much research has attempted to determine the causal linkage between the two. Previous research has primarily focused on the poverty-reducing impact of income transfer. In this paper, we apply a simultaneous equation system of spatial regressions to uncover the spatial pattern of the relationship between the poverty rate and income transfer, using a sample of 3,001 U.S. counties. The results are in line with theoretical expectations; they provide evidence of a significant simultaneity effect between the poverty rate and income transfer. Our findings also confirm the presence of significant spatial autocorrelation. Contrary to previous studies, we find that more generous counties tend to do a better job of reducing poverty and that counties with more poor tend to be less generous, creating incentive for the poor to participate in the labor force. Furthermore, counties located in devolution states perform better in both poverty reduction and income transfer. These findings are missing from extant literature that focuses only on the poverty-reducing impact of welfare payments.endogeneity, income transfer, Poverty, SHAC, spatial econometrics,

Constructing Krinsky and Robb Confidence Interval for Mean and Median WTP Using Stata

The ultimate goal of most non-market valuation studies is to obtain welfare measures i.e. mean and/or median willingness to pay (WTP) and confidence intervals. While the delta (nlcom) and bootstrap (bs) methods can be used for constructing such confidence intervals in Stata, they are not recommended because WTP measures are non-linear functions of random parameters (Creel and Loomis, 1991). The best and widely used approach, which is not available in Stata, consists in simulating the confidence intervals using the Krinsky and Robb procedure (Haab and McConnell, 2002). Hole (2007) has recently introduced a useful command, wtp, which implements the Krinsky and Robb procedure in Stata, but does not feature mean and median WTP estimates and their confidence intervals. I present a Stata command, wtpcikr, which computes mean and median WTP, confidence intervals using the Krinsky and Robb procedure, achieved significance level (ASL) for testing the null hypothesis that WTP equals zero, and a relative efficiency measure (Loomis and Ekstrand, 1998). The command supports both linear and exponential contingent valuation models estimated with or without covariates using the Stata commands probit, logit, biprobit, and xtprobit. I will illustrate the use of wtpcikr by replicating empirical results in Haab and McConnell (2002).