cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Reproducible Research: A Retrospective

Advances in computing technology have spurred two extraordinary phenomena in science: large-scale and high-throughput data collection coupled with the creation and implementation of complex statistical algorithms for data analysis. These two phenomena have brought about tremendous advances in scientific discovery but have raised two serious concerns. The complexity of modern data analyses raises questions about the reproducibility of the analyses, meaning the ability of independent analysts to recreate the results claimed by the original authors using the original data and analysis techniques. Reproducibility is typically thwarted by a lack of availability of the original data and computer code. A more general concern is the replicability of scientific findings, which concerns the frequency with which scientific claims are confirmed by completely independent investigations. Although reproducibility and replicability are related, they focus on different aspects of scientific progress. In this review, we discuss the origins of reproducible research, characterize the current status of reproducibility in public health research, and connect reproducibility to current concerns about the replicability of scientific findings. Finally, we describe a path forward for improving both the reproducibility and replicability of public health research in the future.
Nonpoint source pollution control under incomplete and costly information

We analyze the efficient management of nonpoint source pollution (NPS) under a limited pollution control budget and incomplete information. We focus on the tradeoff between data collection and pollution abatement efforts by incorporating information acquisition into a NPS pollution control model. Comparative static results show conditions under which (i) a favorable change in the abatement costs at one source may lead to an increase in the treatment level at all sources, and vice versa, (ii) an increase in data collection cost leads to an increase in data collection level, and (iii) an increase in the efficiency of information acquisition leads to a decrease in the level of data collection. More importantly, the model simulations illustrate that acquiring and exploiting information on heterogeneity of sediment loading distributions across polluting sources leads to a more efficient budget allocation and hence a greater reduction in pollution damage than would be the case without such information.
The Sources of Debt Matter Too

This paper examines the effects of different types of private debt on firm cash balances, equity risk, and investment. Firms with more bank loans have more cash and investment, but lower equity risk. Firms with more nonbank private debt have more cash, lower equity risk, and less investment. Firms with more unused credit lines have less cash and lower eq uity risk, but greater investment. Results suggest that financial intermediaries' monitoring intensity increases with loan size. Depending on type, private debt mitigates information asymmetry or asset substitution, or both. Deposit relations associated with bank borrowing also contribute to banks' information advantage.
Rhetoric and Reality in Early American Legal History: A Reply to Gordon Wood

I thank Gordon Wood for his substantive engagement with the arguments in my book, and I welcome the opportunity to exchange views on these major historical and historiographical issues with one of the most important living US historians. There are many places in which we agree, although these might be obscured by the sharp tone of his review. But there are also many points on which we disagree, and I am eager to address those issues. Wood misstates the main argument of my book. My claim, in its strongest form, is that the debates of the 1760s through the 1780s culminated in a new constitutionalization of federalism, a process that continued into the 1800s. From a disconnected and sometimes ambiguous set of arguments about divided sovereignty in politics, American colonists and early republicans fashioned a new architecture of legal and constitutional authority built on a subject-matter division of governmental power. In contrast to earlier systems—whether formal or informal—of polycentric government, the federalism of the late eighteenthand early nineteenth-century United States was specifically designed to avoid the ancient problem of imperium in imperio, or dominion within a dominion, that had so troubled the British Atlantic political world for decades. The significant innovation of the American federal idea was to authorize the division of sovereignty and to create viable legal categories that could contain multiple sources of governmental power within one overarching system.
Revisiting 'Dreyfus': A More Complete Account of a Trial by Mathematics

Legal literature and case law depicts the infamous conviction of Alfred Dreyfus for treason and espionage in 1899 as a prime example of the irresistible power of even grossly fallacious mathematical demonstrations to overwhelm a legal tribunal. This essay shows that Dreyfus is not a case of mathematics run amok, unchecked and uncomprehended. To the contrary, the defects in the mathematical proof were dramatically exposed, and this evidence did not lead Dreyfus's judges to condemn him. This history undercuts the reliance of modern courts and commentators on Dreyfus as an indication or illustration of the alleged dangers of probability evidence in criminal cases.
Measuring the Implications of Sales and Consumer Inventory Behavior

Temporary price reductions (sales) are common for many goods and naturally result in large increases in the quantity sold. Demand estimation based on temporary price reductions may mismeasure the long-run responsiveness to prices. In this paper we quantify the extent of the problem and assess its economic implications. We structurally estimate a dynamic model of consumer choice using two years of scanner data on the purchasing behavior of a panel of households. The results suggest that static demand estimates, which neglect dynamics, (i) overestimate own-price elasticities by 30 percent, (ii) underestimate cross-price elasticities by up to a factor of 5, and (iii) overestimate the substitution to the no-purchase or outside option by over 200 percent. This suggests that policy analysis based on static elasticity estimates will underestimate price-cost margins and underpredict the effects of mergers.
A financial and public policy analysis of the meat industry

This study provides an economic and financial performance analysis of prominent companies in the meat industry in the aftermath of public policy initiatives that divert corn to making biofuel and away from making food and animal feed. Results should be of interest to policy makers, investors, and other stakeholders. An important part of personal and societal wellness is the issue of a healthy diet. Meat provides essential nutrients, notably protein, B vitamins, vitamin D, and iron. Eating a proper diet has been a concern from ancient times to the present. For example, the Bible story of Daniel, written about 540 B.C., describes the benefits of eating healthy food (Daniel 1:15). The meat industry is a major agricultural sector that plays an important economic role in many countries of the world. In light of the meat industry's important contributions to the economy and to people's health, great care should be given when developing public policies that affect the industry. Diverting corn crops to make biofuel, perhaps well motivated public policy when initiated, is now questionable.
Circadian Rhythm of Dune-Field Activity

Wind-blown sand dunes are both a consequence and a driver of climate dynamics; they arise under persistently dry and windy conditions, and are sometimes a source for airborne dust. Dune fields experience extreme daily changes in temperature, yet the role of atmospheric stability in driving sand transport and dust emission has not been established. Here we report on an unprecedented multi-scale field experiment at the White Sands Dune Field (New Mexico, USA), where we demonstrate that a daily rhythm of sand and dust transport arises from non-equilibrium atmospheric boundary layer convection. A global analysis of 45 dune fields confirms the connection between surface wind speed and diurnal temperature cycles, revealing an unrecognized climate feedback that may contribute to the growth of deserts on Earth and dune activity on Mars.
Real Rape Too

The author discusses the legal aspect of male rape victimization and its prevalence in several prison facilities and gay communities in the U.S. It highlights the major case areas of male-on-male rape including provocation and self-defense and cites the struggles encountered by these victims during police interrogations. Changes to be made on rape law, which includes male victimization are also discussed. Language: en
Internal Control Weaknesses and Information Uncertainty

We analyze a sample of 330 firms making unaudited disclosures required by Section 302 and 383 firms making audited disclosures required by Section 404 of the Sarbanes‐Oxley Act. We find that Section 302 disclosures are associated with negative announcement abnormal returns of −1.8 percent, and that firms experience an abnormal increase in equity cost of capital of 68 basis points. We conclude that Section 302 disclosures are informative and point to lower credibility of disclosing firms' financial reporting. In contrast, we find that Section 404 disclosures have no noticeable impact on stock prices or firms' cost of capital. Further, we find that auditor quality attenuates the negative response to Section 302 disclosures and that accelerated filers—larger firms required to file under Section 404—have significantly less negative returns (−1.10 percent) than non‐accelerated filers (−4.22 percent). The findings have implications for the debate about whether to implement a scaled securities regulation system ...
Destabilizing effects of exchange-rate escape clauses

Abstract This paper studies policy rules with escape clauses, analyzing as an example fixed exchange rate systems that allow member countries the freedom to realign in periods of stress. While well-designed, escape-clause rules can raise society's welfare in principle, limited credibility makes it difficult to implement such rules in practice. An EMS-type institution that imposes political costs on policymakers who realign may raise welfare, but can also produce equilibria far inferior to an irrevocably fixed exchange rate. Switches between multiple equilibria may have the character of sudden speculative attacks.
State Action and the Constitution's Middle Band

On conventional accounts, the state action doctrine is dichotomous. When the government acts, constitutional limits take hold and the government action is invalid if those limits are exceeded. When the government fails to act, the state action doctrine leaves decisions to individuals, who are permitted to violate what would otherwise be constitutional constraints. It turns out though that the modern state action doctrine creates three rather than two domains. There is indeed a private, inner band where there is thought to be insufficient government action to trigger constitutional constraints, but often there is also a public, outer band where there is too much state action for the Constitution to apply. The Constitution takes hold only in a middle band—the Goldilocks band—sandwiched between these two domains. For constitutional limitations to have force, the government must act just enough—but not too much. This Article’s first aim is to identify and describe this puzzling structure. It also examines a variety of doctrinal principles that produce and, perhaps, justify the state action doctrine’s three bands. The Article then argues that these seemingly disparate principles are all related to the special constitutional problems produced by the emergence of the middle band of government regulation. Finally, the Article concludes with some brief speculation about whether the modern tripartite structure can survive.
Happiness Is the Wrong Metric

People are motivated not only by a quest for satisfaction but also by an ambition to live up to their sense of what is moral. This sense cannot be reduced to a form of satisfaction or pleasure maximization because, among other reasons, it often engenders pain and sacrifice. Further more, studies repeatedly show that income beyond a certain level does not make people happier, while “higher” sources, like spirituality, community involvement, intellectual activity, and family bonding, pay dividends with respect to individual happiness. Analysis and public policy are enriched when we realize that people take moral commitments seriously and will sometimes eschew their own pleasure to pursue them. This conception of well-being, which crucially incorporates moral affirmation, is a step forward in a deep-rooted dialogue in the social sciences and philosophy about human motivation, behavior, ethics, and how one goes about living “the good life.”
Putting Religious Symbolism in Context: A Linguistic Critique of the Endorsement Test

The Supreme Court's jurisprudence concerning public displays of religious symbols is notoriously unpredictable. In this Article, Professor Hill argues that the instability and apparent incoherence of the Supreme Court's religious symbolism jurisprudence is due to certain difficulties inherent in discerning the "meaning" or "message" of a religious display. In particular, she attributes the unpredictability of the jurisprudence to the fact that the meaning of the display is dependent on the "context," which is itself an unmanageable and unformalizable concept. This Article, which draws on insights from literary and linguistic theory, breaks with previous commentators' claims that the difficulties with the Court's jurisprudence in this area are due to doctrinal incoherence, thinly veiled politics, or unconscious bias, arguing instead that the problems reflected by the Supreme Court's case law inhere in the task of discerning the "social meaning" of a religious display.
Loving Gender Balance: Reframing Identity-Based Inequality Remedies

The egalitarian voice of the U.S. Supreme Court resonates forty years after it abolished antimiscegenation laws in Loving v. Virginia.1 While Loving’s vigor influences contemporary debates on sex-related marriage restrictions, its impact extends to the hopes and tensions that undergird and unite equality movements. Half a world away, Norway’s Corporate Board Quota (CBQ), recently began enforcing a forty percent floor for both sexes on publicly traded companies’ boards of directors.2 At first glance, Loving’s affirmation of an interracial marriage in the face of the state’s opprobrium seems impossibly divergent from the CBQ. Loving concerned de jure racial discrimination while the CBQ remedies de facto corporate gender inequality. Loving also struck down state-sanctioned criminal penalties for interracial marriage, while the CBQ aims at the private sector. Loving is the prototypical test-case litigation, complete with the perfectly named plaintiff and a compelling story. In contrast, the CBQ coldly regulates publicly listed corporations. Finally, and perhaps most significantly, race and gender inequality remedies differ sharply from one another. Even so, parallels exist between Loving and the CBQ. Both attempt to subvert inequalities—marriage’s restriction on same-race couples and corporate leadership’s maleness. Each also involves government attempts to insert equality into inherently “private,” yet state-defined, institutions.3 Given these consistencies, present-day attempts to remedy inequality, such as the CBQ, reflect the purchase Loving still carries.
Form and Substance in Consumer Financial Protection

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), created by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010, went live on July 21, 2011. Less than three months later, the CFPB published its Supervision and Examination Handbook, which outlines, among other topics, how the bureau is using its new authority to regulate abusive practices as well as unfair and deceptive ones. This Article examines the theory underlying the new agency’s anti-abuse regulatory power and its early implementation efforts. Armed with insights from behavioral economics supported by extensive research, the CFPB is targeting credit products designed to exploit consumer error. This new approach, based mostly on the substance of deals rather than disclosure, is arguably the most exciting development in consumer protection since the advent of the modern consumer movement in the 1960s. Some states can be expected to follow the federal lead and incorporate “abusive practices” into their laws, creating UDAAP powers (for unfair, deceptive, and abusive acts and practices) that support and extend those of the CFPB.
Convergence in the Treatment of Dominant Firm Conduct: The United States, the European Union, and the Institutional Embeddedness of Economics

Discussions of the competition law treatment of dominant firms often center on the issue of whether EU and U.S. law in this area are likely to converge and thereby provide a more uniform legal terrain for the activities of such firms. Curiously, however, discussions of convergence seldom pay careful attention to key issues, such as "What are the differences in the role of economics in the respective legal systems and which factors are likely to affect significantly the likelihood of convergence?" They often hover in a somewhat mystical realm in which convergence is just expected to "happen."
The Political Economy of Global Finance Capital

The globalization of finance in recent years and the concurrent growth in the financial sector's influence, manifested most dramatically in the recent financial crisis, highlights the importance for political scientists of understanding the political economy of global finance. The authors review six important books that are representative of recent thinking by political scientists on the topic. They address the central questions that have been at the heart of the literature on global finance from its beginning in new and interesting ways. The most important developments highlighted in this article are the move from a predominant focus on state-centered patterns of regulation to the consideration of transnational governance regimes that mix public and private regulation; the effort to understand the causal forces that shape the political economy of global finance by allowing for an interaction among interests, institutions, and ideas; and giving increased attention to new sources of systemic risk in the global financial system, as well to the consequences for domestic politics of interactions with the global financial system. Notwithstanding the progress that has been made in coming to grips with the political economy of global finance, the authors highlight a number of questions that need to be addressed in future research. Although various nonstate actors have been recognized as important in the constitution of the rules of global finance, it is also necessary to understand the behavior of the actors who enact these rules. It is also important to generate evidence that forges some agreement on the causes of the globalization of finance, especially as the arguments made become more complex. Finally, there is a need for a more realistic assessment of the costs and benefits of financialization at the global and national levels. This last challenge is essential for a thorough understanding of the current global financial crisis.
The Rules of Inference

Although the term “empirical research” has become commonplace in legal scholarship over the past two decades, law professors have in fact been conducting research that is empirical—that is, learning about the world using quantitative data or qualitative information—for almost as long as they have been conducting research. For just as long, however, they appear to have been proceeding with little awareness of, much less compliance with, many of the rules of inference, and without paying heed to the key lessons of the revolution in empirical analysis that has been taking place over the last century in other disciplines. The tradition of including some articles devoted exclusively to the methodology of empirical analysis—so well represented in journals in traditional academic fields—is virtually nonexistent in the nation’s law reviews. As a result, readers learn considerably less accurate information about the empirical world than the studies’ stridently stated, but overly confident, conclusions suggest. To remedy this situation both for the producers and consumers of empirical work, this Article adapts the rules of inference used in the natural and social sciences to the special needs, theories, and data in legal scholarship, and explicates them with extensive illustrations from existing research. The Article also offers suggestions for how the infrastructure of teaching and research at law schools might be reorganized so that it can better support the creation of first-rate empirical research without compromising other important objectives.
Political and Social Foundations for Environmental Sustainability

This article quantitatively investigates several possible foundations for environmental sustainability, as measured across countries with varying geography, development patterns, social customs, an...
The New Crowdfunding Registration Exemption: Good Idea, Bad Execution

Title III of the JOBS Act, signed by President Obama on April 5, 2012, sets forth a new exemption from federal and state securities registration for so-called “crowdfunding” promotions. Crowdfunding is an increasingly popular form of raising capital through broad-based internet solicitation of donors. Many promotions simply seek charitable or other donations. But the lure of raising funds through the internet has also led to promotions for potentially profitable ventures that offer an economic return to donors. These efforts invoke the federal and state securities laws, as there are no de minimis standards protecting even the smallest of offerings. Registration exemptions under the 1933 Securities Act and those created by the Securities & Exchange Commission have not been useful for such small offerings and certainly cannot be used for internet-based offerings. In the face of SEC inaction with regard to such small-scale promotions, Congress took it upon itself to create a new exemption. Unfortunately, as described in this Essay, despite good intentions, the newly-created exemption is fraught with regulatory requirements that go beyond even existing exemptions and raise transaction costs and liability concerns that may substantially reduce the exemption’s utility for small capital-raising efforts.
Revealing Privilege—Why Bother?

Fifteen years ago, Stephanie Wildman wrote a provocative and compelling book entitled Privilege Revealed: How Invisible Preference Undermines America, with contributions by Margalynne J. Armstrong, Adrienne D. Davis, and Trina Grillo. In a thorough but concise examination of different and seemingly unrelated topics including, among others, housing, the workplace, and language, Wildman made visible what was and, unfortunately, remains the hidden but normative baseline of whiteness, maleness, and heterosexuality against which all “others” are judged. More than that, the book revealed that institutionalized but invisible systems of privilege define and continue to uphold the status quo. In this short Essay, I delineate what I perceive to be Wildman’s challenge to progressives to reveal privilege in the work we do. But I also question whether taking up Wildman’s call to arms is even worth doing. After all, as Derrick Bell told us, inequality is here to stay. So, why bother challenging it? The short, honest answer is that we challenge inequality because we must. I therefore take up Wildman’s challenge by revealing privilege in contract law in the form of class privilege and bargaining power. Professor of Law, Southwestern Law School; LL.M. Harvard Law School; J.D. William S. Richardson School of Law, University of Hawaii; B.A. Whitman College. Southwestern Law School provided generous research support for this Essay. My sincere thanks go to Gowri Ramachandran for reading and commenting on various drafts. I would also like to thank the editors at the Washington University Journal of Law & Policy. Washington University Open Scholarship 132 Journal of Law & Policy [Vol. 42:131
An Economic Analysis of Limited Shareholder Liability in Contractual Claims

This Article evaluates the economic basis for limited liability in contractual claims and proposes the introduction of unlimited liability for such claims against closely held corporations. It argues that the existing justifications for limited liability are unconvincing, and that unlimited liability is an economically more efficient rule for these corporations in light of savings in monitoring costs and more efficient allocation of risks. It rejects the frequently made argument that limited liability is justified in contractual claims because the contractual counterparty had a prior opportunity to negotiate for modifications. This argument demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the bargaining process between a corporation and its various groups of contractual creditors, many of which are simply not in a position to negotiate for modifications to the default rule. It further examines some of the implementation problems for unlimited liability and suggests possible solutions for them.
Control Over Exemption Clauses: A Comparative Synthesis

In a comparative examination of techniques employed by nations to regulate the use of exemption clauses, which limit contract liability, Professor Shalev finds general agreement that some degree of control must be exerted, but great diversity in the manner in which this is achieved. Upon an examination of several systems of control, the author discovers that justice is best served when courts are granted wide discretion to avoid giving effect to such clauses when their operation would produce an unreasonable or inequitable result.
Some Questions About Gender and the Death Penalty

This article examines the apparent disparity of treatment between men and women in the application of capital punishment.
The Age of Forgotten Innocence: The Dangers of Applying Analog Restrictions to Innocent Infringement in the Digital Era

Recently, two popular topics of discussion within intellectual property law have been the statutory damage regime and the legality of peer-to-peer (P2P) downloading. This Note examines a rarely discussed interplay between these two concepts: the innocent infringement defense. Innocent infringement allows a court to dramatically reduce the minimum statutory damage award for an act of copyright infringement from $750 to $200 per act. Both the Fifth and Seventh Circuits have found that § 402(d) of the Copyright Act eliminates innocent infringement as a matter of law in a P2P download setting. This Note examines those circuits’ reasoning as well as the various responses from the legal academic community. It argues against those circuits’ interpretation of the phrase “access to published phonorecords,” found in § 402(d), to mean a general availability and a duty to inquire as to the copyright status of the songs in question. By viewing § 402(d) in this light, those courts have effectively eliminated the defense when applied to P2P downloading. This Note advocates for an actual inquiry into a defendant’s state of mind to determine if they had “reason to believe” their actions constituted infringement, which would preserve innocent infringement in a digital environment.
Patience as a Political Virtue: Delayed Gratification and Turnout

A number of scholars have demonstrated that voter turnout is influenced by the costs of processing information and going to the polls, and the policy benefits associated with the outcome of the election. However, no one has yet noted that the costs of voting are paid on or before Election Day, while policy benefits may not materialize until several days, months, or even years later. Since the costs of voting must be borne before the benefits are realized, people who are more patient should be more willing to vote. We use a “choice game” from experimental economics to estimate individual discount factors which are used to measure patience. We then show that patience significantly increases voter turnout.
Significant Entanglements: A Framework for the Civil Consequences of Criminal Convictions

A significant and growing portion of our population is in or has recently been in prison. Nearly all members of this population will face significant obstacles as they struggle to reintegrate into society. A key source of these obstacles is the complex, sometimes unknown, and often harmful collection of civil consequences that flow from a criminal conviction. As the number and severity of these consequences have grown, courts, policymakers, and scholars have struggled with how to identify and understand them, how to communicate them to defendants and the public, and how to treat them in the criminal and civil processes. Padilla v. Kentucky, heralded by some as a watershed and others as an anomaly, is a first step in matching the law to the practical reality of the civil consequences of criminal convictions. This article examines Padilla and the context in which it was decided and suggests that, although the dissenters in Padilla may be correct that the opinion will be difficult to apply in a coherent way, the solution to this challenge can be found in the decision itself, which has laid the foundation for a legal doctrine of civil consequences that reflects the reality of these consequences. The Supreme Court’s recent decision in Turner v. Rogers underscores that the Court’s approach in these two cases creates the opportunity for a more realistic, consistent, and just doctrine of civil consequences of criminal convictions. This article begins the process of defining this doctrine by suggesting that instead of inquiring into whether consequences are direct or collateral, the test used in the past, courts should inquire into whether these civil consequences are “significant entanglements” of civil and criminal law. First, courts should analyze whether the civil consequence is significant, in both an objective and subjective sense. Second, courts should examine whether the consequence is entangled with the criminal process. Where significant entanglements exist, corresponding protections should follow. The article goes on to suggest that the significant entanglement framework can be used to analyze whether Sixth Amendment protections should apply to a particular civil consequence at a particular stage of the criminal process. Further, the significant entanglement framework applies outside the Sixth Amendment to understand the other constitutional protections that may be applied by courts to civil consequences of criminal convictions. Thus, the significant entanglement framework is the next step in developing a new doctrine for the protections that apply to civil consequences of criminal convictions.
CREDIBILITY: A FAIR SUBJECT FOR EXPERT TESTIMONY?

This article explores the ways in which experts can assist the jury to assess the credibility of other witnesses and suggests analytical approaches to such expert testimony. The article argues that the courts should be more receptive to expert testimony bearing on witness credibility and engage in a more nuanced consideration of the role played by proffered expert testimony and how the role of the evidence affects its admissibility. Doing so should lead the courts to embrace the promise of the modern rules of evidence and permit experts to assist juries as they
Compiling Spiking Neural Networks to Mitigate Neuromorphic Hardware Constraints

Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs) are efficient computation models to perform spatio-temporal pattern recognition on resource- and power-constrained platforms. SNNs executed on neuromorphic hardware can further reduce energy consumption of these platforms. With increasing model size and complexity, mapping SNN-based applications to tile-based neuromorphic hardware is becoming increasingly challenging. This is attributed to the limitations of neuro-synaptic cores, viz. a crossbar, to accommodate only a fixed number of pre-synaptic connections per post-synaptic neuron. For complex SNN-based models that have many neurons and pre-synaptic connections per neuron, (1) connections may need to be pruned after training to fit onto the crossbar resources, leading to a loss in model quality, e.g., accuracy, and (2) the neurons and synapses need to be partitioned and placed on the neuro-sypatic cores of the hardware, which could lead to increased latency and energy consumption. In this work, we propose (1) a novel unrolling technique that decomposes a neuron function with many pre-synaptic connections into a sequence of homogeneous neural units to significantly improve the crossbar utilization and retain all pre-synaptic connections, and (2) SpiNeMap, a novel methodology to map SNNs on neuromorphic hardware with an aim to minimize energy consumption and spike latency.
Judicial Recusal and Disqualification: The Need for a Per Se Rule on Friendship (Not Acquaintance)

Legal Ethics rules have become both more objective and more specific. There are already enemy rules for recusal. The recent debacle of the Antonin Scalia/Dick Cheney hunting trip when VP Cheney was a named defendant, and Scalia's refusal to disqualify himself shows there is a problem. But Scalia was correct, friendship does not mandate recusal. However, friendship, properly defined, as herein, must be added to the recusal factors. Former Chief Justice Rehnquist refusing to disqualify himself when he was involved in a lower court case as prosecutor caused an analogous change in the judicial conduct rules. This paper traces case law, defines friendship, and gives examples of the effect of a clearly drafted friendship recusal rule.
Weber, Marx, and work values: Evidence from transition economies

Abstract Are work values a cause (Weber) or consequence (Marx) of the economic environment? The collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991 provides a unique opportunity to investigate this link. Using data collected from an employee survey conducted in over 340 workplaces in Armenia, Azerbaijan and Russia, we investigate generational differences in adherence to the Protestant work ethic (PWE). Our results indicate that Marx was ‘right’ about the link between work values and economic environment. That is, despite economic and cultural differences emerging during the transformation process, in all three countries, participating workers born after 1981 adhere more strongly to PWE than workers born before 1977. Moreover, the estimate magnitudes are very similar across these economically and culturally diverse countries. More generally, PWE adherence is stronger among participating workers with an internal locus of control and among supervisors. PWE adherence also tends to be stronger among participants with high relative earnings, as well as among those working in organizations that reward hard work with the chance to develop new skills or learn new things.
Socioeconomic Rights in the Indian Constitution: Toward A Broader Conception of Legitimacy

The Indian Constitution contains “Directive Principles of State Policy” that require the state to pursue socioeconomic justice. In contrast to justiciable fundamental rights, these principles are explicitly non-justiciable, and the Constitution’s framers intended them to guide elected representatives towards improving socioeconomic conditions. However, the Indian Supreme Court has held that the right to life in Article 21 of the Constitution should be read more broadly to encompass a “right to live with dignity.” The Court has relied on this interpretation to make many Directive Principles justiciable, including rights to food and education. Much scholarship has been devoted to the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence in this area, focusing mostly on the judiciary’s role in democratic government. These works either criticize the Court for “judicial activism” or applaud it for proactively defending the rights of the poor and marginalized.This Article analyzes socioeconomic rights in India from a social contractarian perspective, which illuminates a neglected aspect of this debate. While addressing concerns of judicial overreach, the Article argues that the Supreme Court’s reasoning for locating justiciable socioeconomic rights in the Indian Constitution raises a more fundamental concern: it threatens the Constitution’s legitimacy. The Court’s reasoning is vague and non-transparent, which prevents rational and reasonable citizens from knowing with any clarity or conviction what the Constitution requires in the realm of socioeconomic justice. Thus, drawing on Rawls’s concept of public reason, citizens might not agree to be governed by the Constitution, which then loses its legitimacy as a basis for democratic political rule. The Article aims to make two contributions to the existing literature. First, it surveys Indian constitutional history to distinguish between procedural changes that may lead to judicial overreach and interference in representative government, and substantive changes in the law – such as the widening interpretation of Article 21 – that detract from the Constitution’s legitimacy. Second, and more broadly, the Article moves past the notion that a legitimate constitutional system simply requires acceptable institutional arrangements and desirable political outcomes. A legitimate system also requires that public institutions, particularly the Supreme Court, present clear and transparent reasons for their decisions, accessible to all citizens in light of their common reason.
Stock Return Predictability: A Bayesian Model Selection Perspective

Attempts to characterize stock return predictability have resulted in little consensus on the important conditioning variables, giving rise to model uncertainty and data snooping fears. We introduce a new methodology that explicitly incorporates model uncertainty by comparing all possible models simultaneously and in which the priors are calibrated to reflect economically meaningful information. Our approach minimizes data snooping given the information set and the priors. We compare the prior views of a skeptic and a confident investor. The data imply posterior probabilities that are in general more supportive of stock return predictability than the priors for both types of investors. Copyright 2002, Oxford University Press.
Pension design with a large informal labor market: Evidence from Chile

This article investigates the fiscal and welfare trade-offs involved in designing a pension system when workers can avoid contributing by working informally. Using a life-cycle model of labor supply and saving decisions, I structurally estimate preferences and earnings opportunities in the formal and informal sectors using data on Chilean households. I find limited support for formal jobs rationing. Instead, mandatory pension contributions significantly encourage informality. Policy experiments show that Chile could lower minimum pension spending by 23%—while guaranteeing the same income to retirees—if the minimum pension's implicit tax rate was increased to 60%.
The International Criminal Court and the Prevention of Atrocities: Predicting the Court's Impact

Supporters of the International Criminal Court have claimed that the Court is well-suited to preventing the occurrence of humanitarian atrocities. They often argue that the Court will, for instance, have a general deterrent effect and serve to reinforce ethical norms against genocide and war crimes. Critics, on the other hand, contend that the Court will fail to prevent atrocities and may even sometimes aggravate the conditions that lead to them. Neither side of the debate has mustered sufficient useful empirical support for its position. Moreover, it is unlikely that scholars will, in the near term, produce evidence credible enough to actually inform countries' decisions about how to relate to the Court. The Court has a number of historically novel characteristics and a short track record. Any rigorous attempt to calculate the Court's expected preventive impact is stymied by a number of "wild card" variables, any one of which might have an unforeseeably large effect. In light of such difficulties, persistent arguments about this subject reveal more about commentators' commitments to internationalism or sovereigntism than they reveal about the Court. Prevention discourse has so far generally served merely as a proxy for broader policy commitments.
Investment shocks and business cycles

Abstract The origins of business cycles are still controversial among macroeconomists. This paper contributes to this debate by studying the driving forces of fluctuations in an estimated new neoclassical synthesis model of the U.S. economy. In this model, most of the variability of output and hours at business cycle frequencies is due to shocks to the marginal efficiency of investment. Imperfect competition and, to a lesser extent, technological frictions are the key to their transmission. Although labor supply shocks explain a large fraction of the fluctuations in hours at very low frequencies, they are irrelevant over the business cycle. This finding is important because the microfoundations of these disturbances are widely regarded as unappealing.
The Elastic Provision of Liquidity by Private Agents

I study a model of investment by financially constrained firms that are heterogeneous with respect to their exposure to an aggregate liquidity shock. A firm that is susceptible to the shock will mitigate its exposure by purchasing claims issued by a firm that is not. Liabilities of an unaffected firm may earn a liquidity premium due to their fungibility, and because they are backed by productive investment, their supply is elastic to the demand. This segmentation implies that an aggregate liquidity shock has different consequences across sectors of the economy.
Cognitive Constraints on Valuing Annuities

This paper documents consumers’ difficulty valuing life annuities. Using a purpose-built experiment in the American Life Panel, we show that the prices at which people are willing to buy annuities are substantially below the prices at which they are willing to sell them. We also find that buy values are negatively correlated with sell values and that the sell–buy valuation spread is negatively correlated with cognition. This spread is larger for those with less education, weaker numerical abilities, and lower levels of financial literacy. Our evidence contributes to the emerging literature on heterogeneity in financial decision-making abilities, particularly regarding retirement payouts. (JEL: D14, D91, G11, H55)
State social capital and individual health status.

Recent studies have found that two state-level measures of social capital, average levels of civic participation and trust, are associated with improvements in individual health status. In this study we employ these measures, together with the Putnam (2000) index, to examine several key aspects of the relationship between state social capital and individual health. We find that for all three measures, the association with health status persists after carefully adjusting for household income, and that for two measures, mistrust and the Putnam index, the size of this association warrants further attention. Using the Putnam index, we find particular support for the hypothesis that social capital has a more pronounced salutary effect for the poor. Our findings generate both support for the social capital and health hypothesis and a number of implications for future research.
Doomed to Deficits? Aggregate U.S. Trade Flows Re-Examined

This paper examines the stability of import and export demand functions for the United States over the 1975q1–2001q2 period. Using the Johansen maximum likelihood approach, an export demand function is readily identified. In contrast, there appears to be a structural break in the import demand function in 1995; specifications incorporating this break pass tests for cointegration, although the price elasticity is not statistically significant. Only when excluding computers and parts from the import series is a stable import demand function detected. The resulting point estimates confirm the persistence of the income asymmetry first noted by Houthakker and Magee, although in a slightly diminished form. One policy implication of these findings is that dollar depreciation—unaccompanied by a realignment of growth trends—is insufficient to substantially reduce the U.S. trade deficit.
Would Population Aging Change the Output Effects of Fiscal Policy

Would population aging affect the effectiveness of fiscal stimulus? Despite the renewed focus on population aging, there are few empirical studies on the output effects of fiscal policy in aging economies. Our study fills this gap by analyzing this issue in OECD countries. We find that, as population ages, the output effects of fiscal spending shocks are weakened. We also find that, while high-debt countries generally face weaker fiscal multipliers, high-debt aging economies face even weaker multipliers. These results point to important policy implications: population aging would call for a larger fiscal stimulus to support aggregate demand during recession and thus require larger fiscal space to allow a wider swing of the fiscal position without creating concerns for fiscal sustainability. Our analysis also suggests that policy measures to promote labor supply could help increase the output effect of fiscal stimulus in aging economies.
Examining a Comparative Law Myth: Two Hundred Years of Riparian Misconception

This article is a first step in an effort to critically examine - and to debunk - some of the myths that persist about the degree to which the common and civil law systems differ. Specifically, the article questions the validity of recent scholarly commentary suggesting that the primary differences between the systems can be found in their substantive legal rules or in their respective "spirits." A relatively narrow issue of riparian access perfectly highlights the problem. Nearly all of the high courts in the United States that have examined this particular riparian issue have chosen to adopt either the so-called "common law rule" or the so-called "civil law rule" of riparian access. In fact, these courts are perpetuating a false choice. The "civil law rule" adopted by at least six of our states' high courts is not actually a rule of the civil law at all. It is, instead, the relatively modern and spontaneous generation of one European jurisdiction in response to peculiar policy choices. The rule at civil law is exactly the same as that at common law. But the United States Supreme Court made an error of interpretation years ago that pulled a distorted rule into American jurisprudence and falsely attributed it to civilian sources. That error has been perpetuated by courts around the country ever since. This article seeks to correct that two-hundred year-old mistake as an important step towards preserving judicial integrity and discovering and benefiting from the true differences between the common and civil law systems.
Local News Online: Aggregators, Geo‐Targeting and the Market for Local News*

We examine how placement of geo‐targeted local news links on Google News affected local news consumption. Using a sample of news visits by 36,876 U.S. households before and after a Google News design change, we find that aggregation increased the level and share of local news consumed online. Magnitudes are modest: consumption of local news among heavy Google News users rose by 25% after the redesign, but from a low base. Geo‐targeting increased weekly consumption variety and reduced concentration among local outlets but did not raise overall consumption variety, suggesting that aggregators play a limited role in product discovery.