Economic Impact Analysis

Ø  PERC researchers have carried out a variety of economic impact analyses, including examining the impacts on all levels of analysis from the individual to the macro-economy.

Ø  Specific expertise has been developed in understanding the social and economic impacts resulting from data expansions (e.g. the impact on national economies, consumers, and lenders when changing national credit reporting regimes) and data restrictions (the impact upon the national health care system from prohibitions on the commercial use of presriber identifiable data).

Ø  PERC’s ground-breaking study on alternative data, Give Credit Where Credit Is Due, used advanced analytical tools to calculate the effects on consumers and lenders of including alternative data in credit files.

Ø  PERC’s research routinely involves the manipulation, cleaning, merging, and analysis of very large and complex data sets, consisting of millions of observations.

Ø  PERC’s impact analysis usually goes beyond basic estimates of economic outcomes and includes detailed breakdowns of findings and segmentation analysis (socio-economic impact analysis).

Education and Outreach

Ø  PERC scholars have worked to educate  all levels of government officials, effectively interact with the media, and convey critical information to the general public.

Ø  PERC scholars have testified before the United States Congress, and have spoken with and educated members of both parties in the United States Congress, state legislatures, and senior officials with dozens of governments spread across five continents.

Ø  PERC scholars have been interviewed by USA Today, The Economist, BusinessWeek, Time Magazine and The National Journal, among other publications, and by various radio and television programs, such as C-SPAN and SkyNews.

Ø  Releases of PERC reports coincide with increased local interest, such as interviews on local radio stations and news channels. PERC’s Gulf Coast Economic Renewal reports have been met with such local interest that their roll-outs have been standing room only and their findings reported on the front page of USA Today’s business section.

Public Policy Research

Ø  Since 2002, PERC has released dozens of quantitative policy studies that have had real impacts on national, state, and international policy outcomes.

Ø  Most significantly, in 2003, PERC published a report quantifying the economic and social impacts of the 30 year-old FCRA national credit reporting regime. This report was the most cited document during the Congressional debate that resulted in the full adoption of all of PERC's policy prescriptions by Congress as embodied in the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act (FACT Act).

Ø  PERC has worked for the South African government to produce a report identify unused data sets that could be collected for  small, medium, and micro-enterprise (SMME) risk-assessment and credit extension. l.

Ø  PERC’s research has assisted credit reporting reform in Brazil and Australia, and has aided policy advocates and reformers across Latin America.

Ø  PERC has conducted quantitative research on the impact of proposed changes to regulations covering the credit industry at the request of the Federal Reserve Board.

Expert Witness Services

Ø  PERC scholars have testified as expert witness in several major cases, including a federal anti-trust case, two federal cases involving first amendment issues and the health information industry, and cases in lower courts involving consumer credit issues.

Ø  PERC scholars have expertise in:

o  Consumer and commercial credit reporting;

o  Consumer or retail credit;

o  Economic and social impacts from data expansions/restrictions;

o  Data privacy and data security; and,

o  Information policy and the economic value of information flows.

Development Services

Ø  Managing the development of credit bureaus, expansion of credit bureau services, the build out of credit bureaus with development objectives, and similar projects.

Ø  Advising credit bureaus, governments, and lenders.

Ø  Coordinating key stakeholders during the development or expansion of credit bureau services and similar projects.

Ø  Managing and implementing public policy, government affairs, media relations efforts around a specific policy outcome.

Event Programming

Ø  PERC has hosted a number of successful international conferences.

Ø  In 2008, PERC, along with Peking University, hosted a blue-ribbon conference in Beijing on credit reporting reform in China. Scholars from five continents were invited to speak, and bankers, academics, and government policy makers in China heavily attended.

Ø  PERC has also hosted a number of conferences for its Alternative Data Initiative that bring together representatives from the credit reporting agencies, utilities and telecoms, government regulators, consumer advocates, and analytic firms.

Application Development

Ø  PERC has a proven track record of developing economic "dashboards" for monitoring both long- and short-term changes in the economic well being of families, communities, and small businesses exposed to exogeneous shocks (e.g. hurricane, plant closing)..

Ø  Developing financial vulnerability indices to help communities adjust business portfolio to minimize losses from exogeneous shock. PERC's disaster recovery dashboard has already been adopted by the World Bank for use in emerging markets.

Ø  Developing and testing community economic development program metrics that rely upon granular data sets and that provide near real-time measures of program efficacy. This enables development agencies to identify unmet needs, assess the relative efficacy of varying programs, and more efficiently allocate scarce resources across competing program needs. This also increases transparency and accountability for funders.