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Author Archives: Sabrina I. Pacifici

The relationship between the housing and labor market crises and doubling up

BLS – The relationship between the housing and labor market crises and doubling up: an MSA-level analysis, 2005–2011. August 2013 “It is now well established that the U.S. housing market crisis preceded the labor market crisis and that, in the wake of these crises, doubling up and cohabitation increased and homeownership fell. What is less… Continue Reading

New resources available to help consumers navigate the Health Insurance Marketplace

“Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced $67 million in grant awards to 105 Navigator grant applicants in Federally-facilitated and State Partnership Marketplaces. These Navigator grantees and their staff will serve as an in-person resource for Americans who want additional assistance in shopping for and enrolling in plans in the Health Insurance Marketplace… Continue Reading

EIA releases state fact sheets on household energy use

“The Residential Energy Consumption Survey (RECS) gathers information through personal interviews with a nationwide sample of homes and energy suppliers. The 2009 survey was the largest RECS to date and the larger sample size allowed for the release of data for 16 individual states, in addition to national, regional, and division-level estimates. See a closer… Continue Reading

NY Gov launches searchable database to create transparency around government meetings

News release: “Governor Andrew M. Cuomo announced the launch of an online, easily searchable Project Sunlight database which gives the public an in-depth view of the individuals and entities that are appearing before New York State government on non-legislative matters. Project Sunlight lists meetings between government officials and outside individuals, entities, and their internal or… Continue Reading

IMF – Dismal Employment Growth in EU Countries

Dismal Employment Growth in EU Countries: The Role of Corporate Balance Sheet Repair and Dual Labor Markets, Bas B. Bakker; Li Zeng. August 15, 2013 “This paper argues that the large differences among EU countries in post-crisis employment performance are to a large extent driven by the need to adjust corporate balance sheets, which had… Continue Reading

IMF – Determinants of Sovereign Bond Spreads in Emerging Markets

Determinants of Sovereign Bond Spreads in Emerging Markets: Local Fundamentals and Global Factors vs. Ever-Changing Misalignments. Balazs Csonto; Iryna V. Ivaschenko. July 10, 2013 “We analyze the relationship between global and country-specific factors and emerging market debt spreads from three different angles. First, we aim to disentangle the effect of global and country-specific developments, and… Continue Reading

Cisco – The Internet of Everything in Motion

“In 2012, there were 8.7 billion connected objects globally, constituting 0.6% of the ‘things’ in the world. In 2013, this number is exceeding 10.0 billion. Driven by reducing price per connection and the consequent rapid growth in the number of machine-to-machine (M2M) connections, we expect the number of connected objects to reach 50bn by 2020… Continue Reading

Google – In-depth articles in search results

Posted by Pandu Nayak, Member of Technical Staff – In-depth articles in search results “Users often turn to Google to answer a quick question, but research suggests that up to 10% of users’ daily information needs involve learning about a broad topic. That’s why today we’re introducing new search results to help users find in-depth… Continue Reading

The Real Value of Big Data is Difficult to Measure

Is Big Data an Economic Big Dud? by James Glanz, August 17, 2013 – See related graphic here. “If pencil marks on some colossal doorjamb could measure the growth of the Internet, they would probably be tracking the amount of data sloshing through the public network that spans the planet. Christened by the World Economic Forum as… Continue Reading

Secrecy News – Military Tests Data Mining of Social Media for Special Ops

“The U.S. military has been investigating the use of sophisticated data mining tools to probe social media and other open sources in order to support military operations against money laundering, drug trafficking, terrorism and other threats.  But the window for doing so may be closing as the social media landscape changes, according to an internal… Continue Reading

Federal Judge rules NY police use of stop-and-frisk tactics unconsitutional

ABA Journal, Debra Cassens Weiss “A federal judge in Manhattan has ruled that New York police violated the Constitution when they targeted “the right people” with stop-and-frisk tactics. Minorities were disproportionately targeted under policies that encouraged more police stops to combat crime, U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin wrote in a 195-page decision (PDF). “A police… Continue Reading