On August 8, 2017, the New York Times published the article “2 Senators Question Effects of a Reverse Mortgage Proposal.” This article overviews a joint letter Senator Marco Rubio, R-FL, and Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, D-NV, sent to Ben Carson, the secretary of U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and Mick Mulvaney, director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

I recently published a white paper discussing risk and credit subsidy estimation best practices. These best practices were learned from serving Federal Credit offices over the last 15 years, particularly since the re-release of OMB Circular A-129.

What is housing counseling? How can borrowers use housing counseling to their advantage? And what are some of the trends in the industry?

This week, Summit launched its new podcast and video series, Complexity Simplified.

Summit's Dr. Shane Thompson writes about the importance of administrative data in impact evaluations in his three-part blog series. In his third blog, below, he writes about the synthetic control method. Those interested in reading more about program evaluation can download Summit's latest white paper here.

We noted in the last post that an impact evaluator’s challenge with administrative data is in identifying a control group. This post describes how an evaluator would use the synthetic control method to establish a control group and conduct an impact evaluation.

Here at Summit, we guide Federal agencies, financial institutions, and litigators as they decode their most complex analytical challenges. But we know our clients aren't the only ones who want to hear what economics and statistics can teach us about our daily lives.

That's why we're launching a new podcast and video series: Complexity Simplified. Through interviews, panels, and question-and-answer series with our staff of economists, econometricians, and data scientists, we'll break down topics in statistics, economics, and data analytics.

Last week, I attended the Data Intelligence Conference hosted by Capital One in McLean, Virginia. The three-day conference focused on a community of practitioners in the field of machine learning and artificial intelligence modeling. The talks at the conference centered on predictive modeling methods, real-life case studies involving machine learning and predictive analytics, data governance and security issues, and other data cleaning and visualization methods.

Summit's Dr. Shane Thompson writes about the importance of administrative data in impact evaluations in his three-part blog series. In his second blog, below, he writes about administrative data methodologies. Those interested in reading more about program evaluation can download Summit's latest white paper here.

Much more often than not, your administrative dataset is not immediately ready for an impact evaluation. The dataset holds a wealth of information, but without a proper methodological approach you may only be able to extract summary statistics of the program, leaving the true impact of the program left unmeasured. (See the previous post in this series for the pitfalls of substituting summary statistics for impact evaluations).

Last week, I presented the webinar, “Improving Administrative Data Quality for Research and Analysis”, for members of the Association of Public Data Users (APDU). APDU is a national network that provides a venue to promote education, share news, and advocate on behalf of public data users.

Summit's Dr. Shane Thompson writes about the importance of administrative data in impact evaluations in his three-part blog series. In his first blog, below, he writes about transforming summary statistics into actionable evidence. Those interested in reading more about program evaluation can download Summit's latest white paper here.