scholarly journals SUBPRIME MORTGAGES AND LENDING BUBBLES

2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-228
Author(s):  
Ali Yavuz Polat

We consider a model with two types of households; the poor with no initial endowment and the rich with positive endowment; and two types of assets; properties in a poor area and properties in a rich area. In the model, poor agents need credit to buy an asset whereas the rich can draw from their endowment. We show that credit-fuelled housing bubbles sometimes may improve welfare, making the poorer individuals better-off. More precisely, there exist two types of equilibria in both markets: One is a bubble equilibrium, and the other is an equilibrium where asset prices are stable over time. While the poor always obtain a positive surplus in the bubble equilibrium, this is not necessarily true for the rich. Our results suggest that there may be scope for market interventions aimed at sustaining the value of assets held by credit-constrained agents after the burst of a credit bubble.

2007 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 527-543
Author(s):  
Robert E. Rodes

But let the brother of low degree glory in his high estate: and the rich, in that he is made low.—James 1:9-10I am starting this paper after looking at the latest of a series of e-mails regarding people who cannot scrape up the security deposits required by the local gas company to turn their heat back on. They keep shivering in the corners of their bedrooms or burning their houses down with defective space heaters. The public agency that is supposed to relieve the poor refuses to pay security deposits, and the private charities that pay deposits are out of money. A bill that might improve matters has passed one House of the Legislature, and is about to die in a committee of the other House. I have a card on my desk from a former student I ran into the other day. She works in the field of utility regulation, and has promised to send me more e-mails on the subject. I also have a pile of student papers on whether a lawyer can encourage a client illegally in the country to marry her boyfriend in order not to be deported.What I am trying to do with all this material is exercise a preferential option for the poor. I am working at it in a large, comfortable chair in a large, comfortable office filled with large, comfortable books, and a large—but not so comfortable—collection of loose papers. At the end of the day, I will take some of the papers home with me to my large, comfortable, and well heated house.


2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 189-207
Author(s):  
AN Ras Try Astuti ◽  
Andi Faisal

Capitalism as an economic system that is implemented by most countries in the world today, in fact it gave birth to injustice and social inequalityare increasingly out of control. Social and economic inequalities are felt both between countries (developed and developing countries) as well as insociety itself (the rich minority and the poor majority). The condition is born from the practice of departing from faulty assumptions about the man. In capitalism the individual to own property released uncontrollably, causing a social imbalance. On the other hand, Islam never given a state model that guarantees fair distribution of ownership for all members of society, ie at the time of the Prophet Muhammad established the Islamic government in Medina. In Islam, the private ownership of property was also recognized but not absolute like capitalism. Islam also recognizes the forms of joint ownership for the benefit of society and acknowledges the ownership of the state that aims to create a balance and social justice.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felix Cheung

The widening income gap between the rich and the poor has important social implications. Governmental-level income redistribution through tax and welfare policies presents an opportunity to reduce income inequality and its negative consequences. The current longitudinal studies examined whether within-region changes in income redistribution over time relate to life satisfaction. Moreover, I examined potential moderators of this relationship to test the strong versus weak hypotheses of income redistribution. The strong hypothesis posits that income redistribution is beneficial to most. The weak hypothesis posits that income redistribution is beneficial to some and damaging to others. Using a nationally representative sample of 57,932 German respondents from 16 German states across 30 years (Study 1) and a sample of 112,876 respondents from 33 countries across 24 years (Study 2), I found that within-state and within-nation changes in income redistribution over time were associated with life satisfaction. The models predicted that a 10% reduction in Gini through income redistribution in Germany increased life satisfaction to the same extent as an 37% increase in annual income (Study 1), and a 5% reduction in Gini through income redistribution increased life satisfaction to the same extent as a 11% increase in GDP (Study 2). These associations were positive across individual, national, and cultural characteristics. Increases in income redistribution predicted greater satisfaction for tax-payers and welfare-receivers, for liberals and conservatives, and for the poor and the rich. These findings support the strong hypothesis of income redistribution and suggest that redistribution policies may play an important role in societal well-being.


2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 349
Author(s):  
Ivana Gačanović

The issue of understanding, empathy and the relationship to the poor, the socially and economically marginalized segments of most contemporary societies, represents one of the most challenging political socio-economic, humanist, and scientific problems of today. The paper compares two ways of understanding and representing the urban poor - anthropological and cinematographic. The theoretical and practical achievements of Oscar Lewis and his idea of the "culture of poverty" are given as an example of the anthropological study and understanding of the poor. On the other hand, an analysis of the representation of the poor in Vittorio De Sica's film Miracle in Milan (1951) is given as an example of the cinematographic treatment of the issue. The aim of this comparison is the confronting of two viewpoints – one which aims to get to the scientific truth about poverty and the other – which gives a subjective artistic interpretation of the "old and romantic story about the rich man and the pauper" and the consideration of their cognitive and interpretative effects and potential for an anthropological theory and practice on the issue which would be "better" and wider in scope.


2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Hoyer

An avid reader of history will be quite familiar with the rich, emotive narratives detailing the tragic decline and ultimate fall of once mighty civilizations; Rome succumbing to barbarian hordes, Alexander of Macedon’s and Chinggis Khan’s spear-won empires splitting into warring factions, and the demise of the great Inca or Maya civilizations are just a few such examples. On the other side of the stacks, similarly grandiose narratives document some group’s incredible growth and spread taking over vast territories and populations. These tell typically of societies coming to dominate a region, often in the face of overwhelming odds and tribulation or through some precocious development of a key technology or strategy that later becomes widespread. Here, I take stock of previous approaches to studying function – from growth and development to crisis and collapse to resilience – and ask what is the most fruitful lens with which to view fluctuations in how societies function and change over time, as this review essay attempts to accomplish.


2005 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 293-307
Author(s):  
C J A Vos
Keyword(s):  
The Poor ◽  

This article focuses on the energy that must fill the homiletic space, in order for an effective sermon about reconciliation, to be created. Of concern is the liturgical situation in which, sermons about reconciliation take place – the  homiletic process through which a homiletic theory is established, the sermon as a work of art and its structure. All these liturgical and homiletic motivators release energy, which enables preaching about reconciliation to take place in a way that moves the listener. Reconciliation means to overcome the divide between the rich and the poor and looking at other people the other person through different eyes.


2016 ◽  
Vol 110 (2) ◽  
pp. 342-352 ◽  
Author(s):  
DENNIS C. RASMUSSEN

This article explores Adam Smith's attitude toward economic inequality, as distinct from the problem of poverty, and argues that he regarded it as a double-edged sword. On the one hand, as has often been recognized, Smith saw a high degree of economic inequality as an inevitable result of a flourishing commercial society, and he considered a certain amount of such inequality to be positively useful as a means of encouraging productivity and bolstering political stability. On the other hand, it has seldom been noticed that Smith also expressed deep worries about some of the other effects of extreme economic inequality—worries that are, moreover, interestingly different from those that dominate contemporary discourse. In Smith's view, extreme economic inequality leads people to sympathize more fully and readily with the rich than the poor, and this distortion in our sympathies in turn undermines both morality and happiness.


2004 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 285-300 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sangyoub Park ◽  
Eui Hang Shin

Despite its embedded ambiguity, conventional wisdom tends to prevail over time. This may be because old adages recurrently embrace some ingredients of truth. As James A. Mathisen highlights, conventional wisdom plays a significant role in constituting knowledge as a starting point. For many people, numerous adages (the rich get richer while the poor get poorer; birds of a feather flock together) are most commonly perceived as true. More interestingly, the accuracy of the two folk wisdoms appears to be more salient in culture-producing industries, including the motion picture industry. Concomitantly, the two adages have long been connected to diverse societal phenomena and sociological knowledge.


2009 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 781-789 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nina Liao

Hailed as the “foundation of the next industrial revolution,” nanotechnology is reshaping the landscape of technological innovation and creating hope around the world. Some believe that nanotechnology can address the critical needs of developing countries, but others are less optimistic. At one end of the spectrum, scientists predict that, among other accomplishments, nanotechnology can alleviate poverty, provide safe drinking water, and cure diseases. At the other end, skeptics warn that nanotechnology can further widen the gap between the rich and the poor, contributing to an already imbalanced global landscape. What can nanotechnology bring to the 21st century? How and in what ways should it intersect with law, public policy, and the plight of the developing world?This article argues that the international community can harness nanotechnology to create sustainable development, particularly in the field of water remediation and treatment, but it must learn from its past missteps and adopt a strategy that combines two competing theories: instrumentalism and contextualism. Instrumentalism is the concept that technology is superb and stakeholders can easily transfer it from one application to another. In contrast, contextualism places technology in a socioeconomic context and conditions technological success on the stakeholders’ ability to meet local needs.


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