The period 2004?005 showed a significant increase in Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) rate spread reporting. Following the Oaxaca (1973), Blinder (1973), and Fairlie (2005) decomposition techniques, this study identifies the fraction of the increase due to the flattening of the yield curve....

Checking accounts with an overdraft protection line of credit can be seen as the first steps in accessing credit for some households, specifically for Low- to Moderate-Income (LMI) borrowers. In this paper, we assess a lender's decision to grant LMI consumers an overdraft protection line of...

We study the effect of gender in a new financial behavior context: the choice of a mortgage. While adjustable rate mortgages are initially cheaper, they expose the borrower to interest rate risk. Using national lender data, we find that propensity to apply for an adjustable rate mortgage among...

Most of the literature on the evaluation of training programs focuses on the effect of participation on a particular outcome (e.g. earnings). The “treatment” is generally represented by a binary variable equal to one if participation in the program occurs, and equal to zero if no...

Recent research indicates that college students who transfer from community colleges are significantly less likely to complete a four-year college degree than students who begin at four-year institutions. This paper estimates models of college completion for both types of students. Based on...

During the past two decades two-year colleges have become an increasingly important part of the American higher education system, especially for Hispanics who are disproportionately likely to start their careers two-year colleges. Given that today's economy rewards college attendance more than...

The National Job Corps Study (NJCS) was a four-year longitudinal social experiment in which over 15,000 Job Corps eligible applicants were randomized into treatment and control groups. Using experimental estimators, Job Corps was found to have positive impacts in the weekly earnings of white and...