Current Debt Levels Research Articles

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“The Walking Wounded”: Youth, Public Education, and the Turn to Precarious Pedagogy

In his reflections on the realities of being young in postwar America, Paul Goodman warned in 1956 that living and learning under capitalist societies would stay “desperately hard” for youth so lon...

Heterogeneity within compulsive buyers: A Q‐sort study

This study investigated how compulsive buyers make sense of their excessive shopping behaviour to explore possible sources of heterogeneity between compulsive buyers. Twenty female participants met 'caseness' for compulsive buying (CB) on the CB Scale (CBS), prior to completing a Q-sort specifically related to their experiences of shopping. Participants provided details of occupation, income, and debt levels and completed two psychometric scales: the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) and Yale Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale-Shopping Version (YBOCS-SV). Principle component analysis (PCA) identified two groups within the compulsive buyers (labelled positive reinforcement and emotional distress) that explained 44% of the study variance. Ten women defined the positive reinforcement factor and tended to identify with pleasurable aspects of buying. Six women characterized the emotional distress factor and endorsed varied financial, emotional, and interpersonal difficulties associated with their CB. The emotional distress group carried significantly greater current debt levels and had significantly more severe CB. The study illustrates that compulsive buyers can relate to their 'symptoms' in dissimilar ways. The clinical implications of such heterogeneity are discussed, methodological shortcomings identified, and areas for future research indicated.

In the Wake of the Crisis: Dealing with Distressed Debt Across the Transition Region

Summary This article reviews the origin and spread of the distressed debt problem in the transition region. We argue that while the crisis was triggered abroad, the current high level of distressed debt in various transition countries mainly reflects home-grown vulnerabilities. As in the West, the root causes of the debt problem were abundant and cheap funding and a gradual relaxation of banks’ lending standards – in particular an excessive reliance on rising real estate values. We document a strong positive relationship between pre-crisis house price increases, house price collapses during the crisis and subsequent increases in non-performing loans (NPLs). Policy options to deal with distressed debt range from decentralised approaches in which banks restructure NPLs on a caseby-case basis to more centralised options, such as a “London approach”, bad banks, or asset management companies. Centralised options may be called for if case-by-case debt restructuring is suboptimal from a system-wide perspective because of negative externalities or capacity constraints in either the banking or the judicial system.

Constraints of Running Autonomus Fiscal Policy: Narrowing of Fiscal Space

One of the concepts that came to the forefront in struggle and exit strategies out of the Global Crisis 2008 is ‘policy space’. ‘Policy space’ can be defined as budgetary resources which can be used for a particular aim without effecting the state’s public position or stability negatively. It can also be defined as the difference between current debt level and debt ceiling. Increase of debt level can hinder policy autonomy of countries. In connection with development level of country, structural problems and matters related with crisis narrow policy space and prevent debt sustainability. Besides, decrease in debt sustainability also cause policy space to narrow. In this article, the vice versa relationship between narrowing of policy space and debt sustainability is handled with aspects of sovereignty and efficiency in application of public policies. ‘Contingent claim liabilities’ are going to be examined in order to analyze how state would be affected in case private sector comes to an impasse.

Income contingent student loans for Thailand: Alternatives compared

There is significant irresolution in many countries concerning the design of student loan schemes. In no country recently has there been more uncertainty as to the form that loans should take than Thailand. The Student Loans Fund (SLF), a conventional approach to financing, was introduced in 1996, discontinued at the end of 2005, and re-introduced in 2007. In its place an income contingent loan (ICL) was implemented for one year only, 2006. As part of this debate we contribute to an understanding of the repayment burdens associated with the SLF in Chapman, Lounkaew, Polsiri, Sarachitti and Sitthipongpanich (in this issue). There are important issues with all ICL, and in this paper we consider the critical matter of interest rate subsidies. These are calculated for four different possible ICL arrangements for Thailand: the Thai Income Contingent and Allowance Loan (TICAL), a variant of TICAL, and two alternatives. With a broad-brush approach the subsidies for TICAL-type arrangements and for current debt levels turn out to be between 25 and 40 per cent, but are about zero for our suggested alternative ICLs. Using a better, more disaggregated, approach, subsidies for TICAL-type schemes are estimated to be about 30–55, and 3 and 18 per cent for our alternative ICLs. But with very large debts, the subsidies of all schemes are very high, implying that ICL are likely to be expensive until Thai graduate incomes rise. Importantly for equity however, the interest rate subsidies are delivered to graduates with relatively low lifetime incomes.

The contribution of foreign borrowing to the New Zealand economy

New Zealand's persistent current account deficits and high external debt level remain central to ongoing economic policy debate. However, what is often overlooked is the potentially positive macroeconomic contribution made by foreign finance. This paper suggests that foreign capital inflows, the counterpart of current account deficits, have in fact made a significant contribution to New Zealand national income from a growth accounting perspective. A stylised national balance sheet that includes New Zealand's assets and foreign liabilities also places the stock of foreign debt in proper context and reveals that national wealth gains have been significant as well.

Anticipated debt and financial stress in medical students

Background: While medical student debt is increasing, the effect of debt on student well-being and performance remains unclear.Aim: As a part of a larger study examining medical student views of their future profession, data were collected to examine the role that current and anticipated debt has in predicting stress among medical students.Method: A survey was administered to medical students in all four years at the University of Toronto. Of the 804 potential respondents across the four years of training, 549 surveys had sufficient data for inclusion in this analysis, for a response rate of 68%. Through multiple regression analysis, we evaluated the correlation between current and anticipated debt and financial stress.Results: Although perceived financial stress correlates with both current and anticipated debt levels, anticipated debt was able to account for an additional 11.5% of variance in reported stress when compared to current debt levels alone.Conclusions: This study demonstrates a relationship between perceived financial stress and debt levels, and suggests that anticipated debt levels might be a more robust metric to capture financial burden, as it standardizes for year of training and captures future financial liabilities (future tuition and other future expenses).

College on Credit: How Borrowers Perceive Their Education Debt

The fourth Nellie Mae survey of student loan borrowers in repayment reveals that education debt burdens remain manageable for most borrowers. A clear majority of those in repayment report that the benefits of the educational opportunities made possible through borrowing are well worth any problems associated with paying off the loans. There are, however, indications that negative attitudes towards education debt are increasing over time. Moreover, borrowers from low-income families are more likely than others to report repayment difficulties, even when controlling for current incomes and debt levels.

How Uzawa preferences improve the simulation properties of the small open economy model

This paper compares a form of preferences introduced by Uzawa with additive preferences by simulating for a small open economy the optimal consumption response to permanent and temporary shocks to the world rate of interest. In simulations of permanent changes to the rate of interest, additive preferences suffer from the apparent disadvantage of requiring the rate of time preference to be changed exogenously. They also make optimal current account balances and foreign debt levels excessively sensitive to permanent and temporary changes in the world rate of interest. The simulations show that a linear specification of Uzawa preferences can yield similar patterns to simulations using additive preferences but have the advantage of yielding levels of current account deficits and foreign debt that do not exceed the actual levels observed in these variables for most economies. The paper includes a practical application using Uzawa preferences. This application calculates the impact on the prospective aging structure of Australia's population on the optimal rate of saving. The application shows that Uzawa preferences considerably reduce the optimal response of saving to the prospective aging of the Australian population.

An Investigation of Current Debt Levels of Equity REITs

Executive Summary. This study investigates the current debt levels of equity real estate investment trusts (EREITs) and the ability of these companies to meet their interest and dividend payments. Critical financial ratios for the aggregate industry show that EREIT debt levels have consistently fallen since the recession of the early 1990s. In addition, lower debt levels and improved cash flows have reduced the risk of default as indicated by increasing debt coverage levels. However, this trend significantly reversed in 1998 when the industry experienced sharp increases in debt and reductions in interest coverage ratios.

Primary diseases of the cerebral blood vessels

There is a national shortage of physicians in brain related specialties (neurology, neurosurgery and psychiatry), with fewer students training in these specialties. This study explored socio-economic and experiential factors that determined medical trainees' interest in brain related specialties.Medical students and house-staff at a state university medical school completed a 46-item questionnaire sent as an anonymous email survey.Survey response rate was 22% (n = 258). Eighty-eight (34.1%) trainees were interested in brain related specialties. Prior neuroscience experience (29.6%) and effective medical school neuroscience courses (23.9%) were identified as important by those interested in brain related specialties, while “neurophobia” was reported by 30% of those not interested. Multivariate regression model showed that effective college neuroscience course increased the likelihood for interest in brain related specialties (OR = 2.28, 95% CI 1.22, 4.28). Factors which decreased the likelihood included parent's possessing professional degree (OR = 0.37, 95% CI 0.17, 0.80), personal annual income > $50,000 (OR = 0.40, 0.18, 0.87) and current debt level ≥ $100,000 (OR = 0.33, 0.17, 0.64). The proportion of trainees interested in brain related specialties decreased from 51.7% (1st year medical students) to 27% (4th year students) and 25.3% among house-staff (χ2 test of trend p = 0.001).Socioeconomic (current personal debt and annual income) and experiential factors (college neuroscience course) influence a medical trainee's interest in brain related specialties. Career guidance and improved, better and early exposure to neurosciences may help mitigate trend for decreased interest in brain related specialties.