More errors surface in HMDA data

The 1990 Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data contains significant errors in state coding, with Alaska's actual error rate reaching 35 percent due to misclassified Arizona loan applications, far exceeding the Federal Reserve's accepted 3 percent threshold.

More problems have surfaced in the 1990 Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) data.

Last month Anchorage Daily News reporter Bruce Melzer told Uplink that the Feds used the state abbreviation "AK" for Arkansas as well as Alaska in the bank address file.

This didn't seem like a problem at the time since the loan applications, listed in a separate file, used a numeric code to identify states.

However, Melzer found that "02", the code for Alaska, was also used for Arizona part of the time. Of course, this means Alaska records could be hidden under some other state code.

When asked about this, Cornelius Driggins at the Federal Reserve said the problem falls within their accepted 3 percent error rate.

Unfortunately for Melzer, the error rate in Alaska runs closer to 35 percent, with 2,077 Arizona loan applications recorded under "02".