Crowd-funding: An Infant Industry Growing Fast – Staff Working Paper of the IOSCO Research Department. Eleanor Kirby and Shane Worner, February 2014 “Crowd-funding is an umbrella term describing the use of small amounts of money, obtained from a large number of individuals or organisations, to fund a project, a business or personal loan, and other needs through an online web-based platform.… Continue Reading
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Monthly Archives: February 2014
Post-Employment, “Revolving Door,” Laws for Federal Personnel
Post-Employment, “Revolving Door,” Laws for Federal Personnel, Jack Maskell, Legislative Attorney. January 7, 2014 “Federal personnel may be subject to certain conflict of interest restrictions on private employment activities even after they leave service for the United States government. These restrictions— applicable when one enters private employment after having left federal government service—are often referred to as “revolving door” laws.… Continue Reading
Constitutional Analysis of Suspicionless Drug Testing Requirements for the Receipt of Governmental Benefits
CRS – Constitutional Analysis of Suspicionless Drug Testing Requirements for the Receipt of Governmental Benefits. David H. Carpenter, Legislative Attorney. January 29, 201 “For decades, federal policymakers and state administrators of governmental assistance programs, such as the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grants (formerly Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC)), the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly… Continue Reading
Federal Reserve Board – The Interest Rate Elasticity of Mortgage Demand
The Interest Rate Elasticity of Mortgage Demand: Evidence From Bunching at the Conforming Loan Limit, Anthony A. DeFusco and Andrew Paciorek. 2014-11 “The relationship between the mortgage interest rate and a household’s demand for mortgage debt has important implications for a host of public policy questions. In this paper, we use detailed data on over 2.7 million… Continue Reading
Report – In Developing World, A Push to Bring E-Waste Out of Shadows
Mike Ives: “For decades, hazardous electronic waste from around the world has been processed in unsafe backyard recycling operations in Asia and Africa. Now, a small but growing movement is seeking to provide these informal collectors with incentives to sell e-waste to advanced recycling facilities…Researchers say printed circuit boards, which often contain gold and other valuable… Continue Reading
Cognitive Ability and Post-Retirement Asset Decumulation
Browning, Chris and Huston, Sandra J. and Finke, Michael S., Cognitive Ability and Post-Retirement Asset Decumulation (February 4, 2014). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2390862 “There is evidence that retirees are decumulating their assets very slowly or not at all. This behavior does not follow the normative framework of the life-cycle hypothesis (LCH). Decumulating in a manner… Continue Reading
Bipartisan Policy Center Releases Three Commissioned Papers Related to the Renewable Fuel Standard
[February 4,, 2014] the Bipartisan Policy Center’s (BPC) Energy Project published three of five commissioned background papers on the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS). The remaining two, which are two separate law firms’ perspectives on the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to amend the RFS, will be released by the end of February. Throughout the course of this year, BPC… Continue Reading
Payment System Improvement – Public Consultation Paper and Industry Response
On September 10, 2013, the Federal Reserve Banks released the Payment System Improvement – Public Consultation Paper. The paper shares Federal Reserve perspectives on the key gaps and opportunities in the current U.S. payment system and identifies the desired outcomes that close these gaps and capture these opportunities. “The U.S. payment system is undergoing a remarkable period… Continue Reading
Popular Science – Why Robot Trucks Could Be Headed To Afghanistan
Erik Sofge: “In Afghanistan, the shipments are about to hit the fan. Along with pulling all of its combat troops from the country by the end of this year, the Pentagon has to clean up after itself, hauling away most of the weapons, supplies and assorted infrastructure accumulated over 13 years of local war. Defense… Continue Reading
2013 was a record-breaking year for exonerations in the United States
“The National Registry of Exonerations is a joint project of the University of Michigan Law School and the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University School of Law. We provide detailed information about every known exoneration in the United States since 1989—cases in which a person was wrongly convicted of a crime and later cleared of all the charges based on new… Continue Reading
Report – US: For-Profit Probation Tramples Rights of Poor
Human Rights Watch – “Every year, US courts sentence several hundred thousand misdemeanor offenders to probation overseen by private companies that charge their fees directly to the probationers. Often, the poorest people wind up paying the most in fees over time, in what amounts to a discriminatory penalty. And when they can’t pay, companies can… Continue Reading
Report – Tree roots in the mountains ‘acted like a thermostat’ for millions of years
University of Oxford: “For the first time, scientists have discovered how tree roots in the mountains may play an important role in controlling long-term global temperatures. Researchers from Oxford and Sheffield Universities have found that temperatures affect the thickness of the leaf litter and organic soil layers, as well as the rate at which the… Continue Reading
