Developments in the provision of housing finance in the UK
Recommended reading for providers and designers of housing. The results of the housing finance changes in the UK included a wider range of institutions involved, significant developments in the source and delivery of that finance, as well as important changes in government policy opening up social housing to the private finance market, targeting subsidy more directly at particular groups of individuals and introduction of specific supply subsidies to new private rented sector. The considerable unease with certain outcomes is dealt with.
Financing social housing without guarantee: An English case study
The paper examines the way that the market for private finance for social housing has matured over the eight years since its introduction. It reports on two surveys of private lenders in 1993/94 and 1996 respectively which show how the range of lenders has increased, the different approaches that particular categories of lenders have for evaluating financial viability, and the changing terms and conditions on which loans are available. The results of the surveys suggest that the market has become more competitive, with falling margins and greater consistency among lenders' approaches to evaluating the financial strengths of housing associations. There is, however, concern that lenders may be offering such good terms because of the lack of other business in recession but also because the regulatory role of the Housing Corporation is seen as protecting lenders so that fundamental market risks do not have to be fully evaluated.
Speci fi cation Test for Panel Data Models with Interactive Fixed E ff ects ∗
In this paper, we propose a consistent nonparametric test for linearity in a large dimensional panel data model with interactive fixed effects. Both lagged dependent variables and conditional heteroskedasticity of unknown form are allowed in the model. We estimate the model under the null hypothesis of linearity to obtain the restricted residuals which are then used to construct the test statistic. We show that after being appropriately centered and standardized, the test statistic is asymptotically normally distributed under both the null hypothesis and a sequence of Pitman local alternatives by using the concept of conditional strong mixing that was recently introduced by Prakasa Rao (2009). To improve the finite sample performance, we propose a bootstrap procedure to obtain the bootstrap -value. A small set of Monte Carlo simulations illustrates that our test performs well in finite samples. An application to an economic growth panel dataset indicates significant nonlinear relationships between economic growth, initial income level and capital accumulation.