cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Conscription and Military Service: Do They Result in Future Violent and Non-Violent Incarcerations and Recidivism?

Employing nonparametric bounds, we examine the effect of military service on incarceration outcomes using the Vietnam draft lotteries as a possibly invalid instrumental variable for military service. The draft is allowed to have a direct effect on the outcomes independently of military service, disposing of the exclusion restriction. We find: (i) suggestive but not strong statistical evidence that the direct effect of the draft increases the incarceration rate for violent offenses for a particular cohort of draft avoiders, and (ii) military service increases the incarceration rate for violent and nonviolent crimes of white volunteers and veterans in certain birth cohorts.
How Patterns of Past Guidance Provision Affect Investor Judgments: The Joint Effect of Guidance Frequency and Guidance Pattern Consistency

ABSTRACT: Theory suggests that the provision of voluntary disclosure, in itself, is informative to investors, but prior empirical research largely focuses on investors' reaction to the content of disclosure. We extend the literature on earnings guidance by experimentally examining how investors react to a firm's historical pattern of guidance provision, holding constant guidance content. We manipulate two dimensions of guidance provision—how often guidance is provided (frequency), and whether guidance is provided for the same quarter(s) across consecutive years (pattern consistency). We find that consistency positively impacts investors' confidence and likelihood of investing because investors associate consistency with lesser managerial opportunism, but consistency matters only when frequency is low. Our results shed light on an important dimension of guidance provision unexamined in prior research—guidance consistency—and highlight when it can influence investor judgments even when key elements of a fir...
Regulation, "Republican Moments," and Energy Policy Reform

During the last half decade, energy policy reform has made its way to the top of the American policymaking agenda, driven by a groundswell of concern over environmental issues (primarily climate change), energy security issues, and the desire for a more efficient and reliable energy delivery system. This groundswell has produced some recent policy changes, but have not been enough to satisfy proponents of reform, who remain frustrated with the unwillingness of Congress to pass legislation aimed at fundamentally changing the way Americans produce and consume energy. This article examines the reasons why fundamental energy policy reform has been so challenging.
The Future of Neuroimaged Lie Detection and the Law

Neuroscience will certainly change law. In fact, neuroscience research has the potential to influence a vast range of legal decisions. To the extent that neuroscientists increasingly make claims that neuroimaging reveals cognition, even the most unimaginative prognosticator might predict: (1) the preliminary investigative use of neuroimages to enhance witness interviews and police interrogations (including but not limited to lie-detection), (2) jury selection based on neuroimages that appear to reveal jurors' unconscious stereotypes or biases, and (3) arguments about intent or sentencing based on neuroimage-enhanced explanations of behavior and predictions of dangerousness. In anticipation of a brave new world of neuroscience 'enhanced' law, this Article suggests that if we want to predict or control future social and legal responses to cognitive neuroscience research, we must carefully and explicitly consider two basic preexisting realities: (1) our shared assumptions about the validity of the medical field of neuroscience and the accuracy of diagnostic neuroimaging technologies; and (2) our increasingly frequent exposure (even within the mainstream media) to uncritical reports of cognitive neuroscience research that purports to correlate brain activity with cognition, deception,or social behavior. The risk, is that if we ignore these realities, judges, jurors, and the general public will likely view all or most neuroscience-based evidence as legitimate 'hard' science because researchers rely on technologically sophisticated neuroimaging tools of demonstrated accuracy. The problem is that judges and jurors will mistakenly assume that technologies that are demonstrably valid medical diagnostic tools yield equally valid conclusions when they are used to map the neural correlates of deception and other forms of cognition.
Dividend distributions and closed-end fund discounts.

Abstract Empirical support for the hypothesis that closed-end fund discounts are related to overhanging tax liabilities has been mixed. We introduce a new approach to testing this hypothesis by examining changes in discount levels following distributions of dividends and capital gains. Since distributions reduce future shareholder tax liabilities, the tax liability hypothesis implies that closed-end fund discounts should decline following distributions. Focusing on changes in discounts isolates this tax effect by eliminating the impact of other fund-specific factors on discount levels. Our results support the tax liability hypothesis, showing that short-run fluctuations in discounts are directly affected by taxable distributions.
Patching Leaks in the Diversity Pipeline to Law School and the Bar

This essay is based on the author's reflections as a member of the planning committee and a participant in the November 2005 conference co-sponsored by the American Bar Association (ABA) and the Law School Admissions Council (LSAC), entitled Embracing the Opportunities for Increasing Diversity into the Legal Profession: Collaborating to Expand the Pipeline. It discusses the future of diversity in legal education and the bar, focusing on the issue of diversity in the educational pipeline to college and law school. It argues that if the legal profession and law schools want a healthy flow into the law school end of the diversity pipeline, those working for law schools must take a long-term view and pay attention to the beginning of the pipeline. This essay suggests the need for lawyers, members of the law school community, and educators within K-12 and college educational institutions to collaborate in creating and implementing mentoring and other outreach programs for students throughout each major segment of the diversity pipeline to law schools, including ones that reach students as early as elementary school, while students still have time to make fundamental choices that may dictate which educational path they may take.
Does Universal Coverage Improve Health? The Massachusetts Experience

In 2006, Massachusetts passed health care reform legislation designed to achieve nearly universal coverage through a combination of insurance market reforms, mandates, and subsidies that later served as the model for national reform. Using data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, we provide evidence that health care reform in Massachusetts led to better overall self-assessed health. Various robustness checks and placebo tests support a causal interpretation of the results. We also document improvements in several determinants of overall health: physical health, mental health, functional limitations, joint disorders, and body mass index. Next, we show that the effects on overall health were strongest among those with low incomes, nonwhites, near-elderly adults, and women. Finally, we use the reform to instrument for health insurance and estimate a sizeable impact of coverage on health.
Exchange Rate Fluctuations and Output in Oil-Producing Countries: The Case of Iran

Conventional wisdom states that currency depreciation in oil-producing countries is contractionary because demand effects, limited by the prevalence of oil exports priced in dollars, are more than offset by adverse supply effects. Iran, however, has experienced a rapid increase in nonoil exports in the past decade. Against this background, the paper tests whether the conventional wisdom still applies to Iran and concludes that the emergence of the nonoil export sector has made currency depreciation expansionary. The expansionary effect is particularly evident regarding anticipated persistent depreciation in the long run. Notwithstanding the varying effects of exchange rate fluctuations on the demand and supply sides of the economy, managing a flexible exchange rate gradually over time toward achieving stability in the real effective exchange rate may strike the necessary balance.
The Effects of the Saving and Banking Glut on the U.S. Economy

Abstract We use a quantitative equilibrium model with houses, collateralized debt and foreign borrowing to study the impact of global imbalances on the U.S. economy in the 2000s. Our results suggest that the dynamics of foreign capital flows account for between one fourth and one third of the increase in U.S. house prices and household debt that preceded the financial crisis. The key to these findings is that the model generates the sustained low level of interest rates observed over that period.
Effects of cash flow statement reclassifications pursuant to the SEC’s one-time allowance

Abstract In February 2006, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced a one-time opportunity for firms with misclassified cash flow items to correct these errors without issuing an official restatement. To assess the impact of these reclassifications, we determine the types of firms affected by this allowance and the types of reclassifications in the operating, investing, and financing categories of the cash flow statement. We find that, consistent with the SEC’s concerns, firms overstated net operating cash flows and understated net investing cash flows, thereby misrepresenting cash flows. In addition, the most frequent line-item reclassifications echo the SEC’s concerns about the presentation of discontinued operations and dealer floor plan financing arrangements. Insurance claim proceeds and beneficial interests in securitized loans, however, appear less problematic than the SEC expected. Overall, our findings indicate that the SEC’s plan was relatively successful and, for firms that took advantage of the allowance period, these cash flow restatements only exerted a marginally negative effect in the capital market.
Strategic Trading, Liquidity, and Information Acquisition

We study endogenous liquidity trading in a market with long-lived asymmetric information. We distinguish between public information, tractable information that can be acquired, and intractable information that cannot be acquired. Besides information asymmetry and noise, the adverse-selection spread depends on the diffusion of intractable information and on the interest rate. With endogenous liquidity trading, efficiency is lower than that implied by noise-trading models. Liquidity traders benefit from the information released through the insider's trades in spite of their monetary losses. We study factors that affect the insider's information acquisition decision, including the amount of intractable information, observability, and information acquisition costs. Providing liquidity to investors who want to exchange financial assets for cash or vice versa without possessing superior information is a key role of financial markets [Amihud and Mendelson (1986), Grossman and Miller (1988)]. The choice problem faced by such liquidity traders and its effects on market performance are often overlooked in dynamic models of asymmetric information in financial markets. In this article, liquidity traders endogenously determine the quantities they trade, taking information asymmetry and asset riskiness into account. We study the effect of endogenous liquidity trading on market performance and on the informed trader's incentives to acquire information and to release it to the market. We propose a tractable model of endogenous liquidity trading and derive its equilibrium in closed form. The results enable us to make qualitative and quantitative predictions on the effects of different types of information on liquidity, efficiency, and welfare. We also formulate testable implications regarding the determinants of the spread, the nature of the price-adjustment process, and the effects of changes in the investor
Loss Causation in Fraud-on-the-Market Cases Post-Dura Pharmaceuticals

As a critical matter, class action securities fraud plaintiffs employing the fraud-on-the-market theory of reliance must still plead and eventually prove loss causation and damages. The Supreme Court's April 2005 decision in Dura Pharmaceuticals v. Broudo disapproved of the Ninth Circuit's simple price inflation theory of pleading loss causation (namely that a plaintiff's loss occurs at the time she purchases stock at a price artificially inflated by fraud) without expressly sanctioning any of the other prevailing approaches to loss causation. This leaves open the question of precisely how courts should properly handle loss causation. Consequently, this Article critically examines the Dura Court's rationale, along with what it did not say and its context, in an effort to frame the best view of loss causation under Section 10(b) and Rule 1Ob-5. The author provides an analysis of the history of the loss causation element, and of Supreme Court and significant circuit court precedent, as well as a review of relevant basic principles of corporate finance. Ultimately, considering the Dura Court's emphasis on the common-law roots of the securities fraud cause of action, the Article demonstrates that at least two avenues for proof of a fraud-on-themarket plaintiff's damages must be available. First, as has been the case since before Dura, the plaintiff can plead and prove a corrective disclosure that results in a reduction in value of the plaintiff's investment, thereby causally linking the fraud to post-transaction losses. But equally consistent with Dura is the author's view that where fraud artificially inflates the price paid for a security--assuming plaintiffs plead and prove the inflation has been removed from the value of the stock for any reason-the fraud premium paid is itself a recoverable loss, irrespective ofpost-transaction price movement. tAnn Morales Olazfbal, Associate Professor of Business Law, University of Miami School of Business Administration. The author invites comments at aolazabal@miami.edu and wishes to thank Robert Prentice for his insight on an earlier draft of this Article at the 2005 Annual Meeting of the Academy of Legal Studies in Business. Berkeley Business Law Journal
I Could Have Been a Contender: Summary Jury Trial As a Means to Overcome Iqbal's Negative Effects Upon Pre-Litigation Communication, Negotiation and Early, Consensual Dispute Resolution

With its recent decisions in Ashcroft v. Iqbal and Bell Atlantic v. Twombly, the Supreme Court may be intentionally or unintentionally “throwing the fight,” at least in the legal contests between many civil rights claimants and institutional defendants. The most obvious feared effect is reduction of civil rights claimants’ access to the expressive and coercive power of the courts. Less obviously, the Supreme Court may be effectively undermining institutions’ motivation to negotiate, mediate - or even communicate with and listen to - such claimants before they initiate legal action. Thus, the Supreme Court’s recent decisions have the potential to deprive marginalized claimants - and our society - of alternative, effective avenues for the airing and resolution of disputes with powerful institutional players. Ironically, it was just this sort of deprivation that led the Supreme Court to announce its expansive vision of notice pleading in Conley v. Gibson. Conley foretells the need for our courts to maintain a robust public forum for those who are marginalized by the default procedures of normal life - not only to provide redress to the parties directly involved in particular disputes but because the viability of such a forum has the indirect and salutary effect of forcing institutional players to find a way to sufficiently approximate the fair dialogue and resolution modeled in our courts. In an attempt to acknowledge legitimate concerns regarding the inefficiency and costs of today’s civil litigation process in some cases, while still protecting the courts’ essential role in providing a forum for marginalized parties, this Article will suggest that courts take a second look at the summary jury trial, an expedited form of trial conducted before an advisory jury and followed by negotiation or mediation between the parties and their lawyers. Relatively early and appropriate use of this process could effectively prompt resolution and dialogue - i.e., private dialogue between the parties before the process is to occur; a stylized form of public dialogue during the trial phase of the process itself; and another private dialogue, potentially with assistance from a judge or mediator, after the advisory jury has been dismissed.
The Epistemic Costs and Benefits of Collaboration

In “How to Collaborate,” Paul Thagard tries to explain why there is so much collaboration in science, and so little collaboration in philosophy, by giving an epistemic cost-benefit analysis. In this paper, I argue that an adequate explanation requires a more fully developed epistemic value theory than Thagard utilizes. In addition, I offer an alternative to Thagard's explanation of the lack of collaboration in philosophy. He appeals to its lack of a tradition of collaboration and to the a priori nature of much philosophical research. I claim that philosophers rarely collaborate simply because they can usually get the benefits without paying the costs of actually collaborating.
DOMA and Presidential Discretion: Interpreting and Enforcing Federal Law

By creating a federal definition of “marriage,” the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) denies married same-sex couples more than 1,000 benefits under federal law. But DOMA does not prevent the federal government from granting benefits to same-sex couples under all circumstances. By interpreting laws other than DOMA, the Obama Administration has extended domestic partner benefits to married and unmarried same-sex couples in areas such as employment, housing, and health care. Moreover, in the unique context of immigration law, the Obama Administration has exercised prosecutorial discretion to prevent the foreign-born spouses and partners of U.S. citizens from facing removal from the United States. By exercising discretion in the interpretation and enforcement of federal law, the Administration serves its twin obligations of promoting equal protection while faithfully executing the laws — including complying with DOMA. These features of executive discretion highlight the President’s broader role in a conversation with the coordinate branches on questions of constitutional meaning.
Do we reject too often?: Small sample properties of tests of rational expectations models

Abstract We examine the small sample properties of tests of rational expectations models. We show using Monte Carlo experiments that the asymptotic distribution of test statistics can be extremely misleading when the time series examined are highly autoregressive. In particular, a practitioner relying on the asymptotic distribution will reject true models too frequently. We also show that this problem is especially severe with detrended data. We present correct small sample critical values for our canonical problem.
Capital structure choice: macroeconomic conditions and financial constraints

Abstract This paper provides new evidence of how macroeconomic conditions affect capital structure choice. We model firms’ target capital structures as a function of macroeconomic conditions and firm-specific variables. We split our sample based on a measure of financial constraints. Target leverage is counter-cyclical for the relatively unconstrained sample, but pro-cyclical for the relatively constrained sample. Macroeconomic conditions are significant for issue choice for unconstrained firms but less so for constrained firms. Our results support the hypothesis that unconstrained firms time their issue choice to coincide with periods of favorable macroeconomic conditions, while constrained firms do not.
Political Cycles in a Developing Economy : Effect of Elections in Indian States

The author studies the effect of state legislative assembly elections, on the policies of state governments in 14 major states of India, from 1960 to 1996. She identifies the effect of the timing of elections using an instrument for the electoral cycle that distinguishes between constitutionally scheduled elections, and midterm polls. She contrasts two levers of policy manipulation - fiscal policy and public service delivery - to distinguish between alternative models of political cycles. The predictions of three models are tested: 1) Populist cycles to woo uninformed and myopic voters. 2) Signaling models with asymmetric information. 3) A moral hazard model with high discounting by political agents. The empirical results for fiscal policy show that election years have a negative effect on some commodity taxes, a positive effect on investment spending, but no effect on deficits, primarily because consumption spending is reduced. With regard to public service delivery, elections have a positive and large effect on road construction by state public works departments. Strikingly, the fiscal effects are much smaller than the effect on roads. The author argues that the pattern of evidence is inconsistent with the predictions of models of voter myopia, and asymmetric information. She explores an alternative moral hazard model in which the cycle is generated by high political discounting, and career concerns persuade politicians to exert greater effort in election years on the management of public works.
Causes and consequences of goodwill impairment losses

The paper examines the reaction of market participants to the announcement of a goodwill impairment loss, the nature of the information conveyed by the loss, and whether a cause of goodwill impairment can be traced back to overpayment for targets at the time of prior acquisitions. Our evidence suggests that both investors and financial analysts revise their expectations downward on the announcement of an impairment loss. We find that the negative impact of the loss is significant under different reporting regimes, that is, pre-SFAS-142, transition period and post-SFAS-142, though it is lower in the post period. We further show that goodwill impairment serves as a leading indicator of a decline in future profitability. Our tests also reveal that proxies for overpayment for targets can predict the subsequent goodwill impairment. Indirect evidence suggests that firms with potentially impaired goodwill that did not report an impairment loss may have used their managerial discretion to avoid taking the loss.
Optimal approximate sampling from discrete probability distributions

This paper addresses a fundamental problem in random variate generation: given access to a random source that emits a stream of independent fair bits, what is the most accurate and entropy-efficient algorithm for sampling from a discrete probability distribution (p1, …, pn), where the probabilities of the output distribution (p1, …, pn) of the sampling algorithm must be specified using at most k bits of precision? We present a theoretical framework for formulating this problem and provide new techniques for finding sampling algorithms that are optimal both statistically (in the sense of sampling accuracy) and information-theoretically (in the sense of entropy consumption). We leverage these results to build a system that, for a broad family of measures of statistical accuracy, delivers a sampling algorithm whose expected entropy usage is minimal among those that induce the same distribution (i.e., is “entropy-optimal”) and whose output distribution (p1, …, pn) is a closest approximation to the target distribution (p1, …, pn) among all entropy-optimal sampling algorithms that operate within the specified k-bit precision. This optimal approximate sampler is also a closer approximation than any (possibly entropy-suboptimal) sampler that consumes a bounded amount of entropy with the specified precision, a class which includes floating-point implementations of inversion sampling and related methods found in many software libraries. We evaluate the accuracy, entropy consumption, precision requirements, and wall-clock runtime of our optimal approximate sampling algorithms on a broad set of distributions, demonstrating the ways that they are superior to existing approximate samplers and establishing that they often consume significantly fewer resources than are needed by exact samplers.
Intellectual Property Politics and the Private International Law of Copyright Ownership

Examining private international law principles relating to copyright ownership, this paper argues that the law of the place of creation should govern ownership questions, an approach that is broadly in line with the decision of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Itar-Tass Russian News Agency v Russian Kurier, 153 F 3d 82 (2d Cir. 1998). This approach, which defers to the laws that create the "context" within which creative activity occurs, is preferable to that adopted by the Full Federal Court of Australia in Enzed Holdings Ltd v Wynthea Pty Ltd (1984) FCR 450, which reasoned that ownership issues run with the law of the copyright, and therefore the lex protectionis should govern.
A Transaction-Level Analysis of Spatial Arbitrage: The Role of Habit, Attention, and Electronic Trading

Despite the central role of arbitrage in finance and economic theory, there is limited evidence of the factors that create and eliminate arbitrage opportunities, how often arbitrage occurs, and how profitable it is. We address these gaps via a transaction-level analysis of spatial arbitrage in the wholesale automotive market. We investigate why arbitrage opportunities are created by analyzing how sellers choose where to sell vehicles. We find that the attention sellers pay to the distribution of a vehicle is negatively related to the probability that it is arbitraged. Arbitrage occurs in approximately 1% of transactions, although electronic trading is making arbitrage less prevalent by improving buyer/seller matching across locations. Arbitrage yields a 5.6% return on average, although arbitrageurs take a loss 14% of the time. Our results contribute to the literature on arbitrage, the effect of attention allocation on market outcomes, and the effect of information technology on market efficiency. This paper was accepted by Brad Barber, Teck Ho, and Terrance Odean, special issue editors.
Firm boundaries matter: Evidence from conglomerates and R&D activity

This paper examines the impact of the conglomerate form on the scale and novelty of corporate Research and Development (R&D) activity. I exploit a quasi-experiment involving failed mergers to generate exogenous variation in acquisition outcomes of target firms. A difference-in-differences estimation reveals that, relative to failed targets, firms acquired in diversifying mergers produce both a smaller number of innovations and also less-novel innovations, where innovations are measured using patent-based metrics. The treatment effect is amplified if the acquiring conglomerate operates a more active internal capital market and is largely driven by inventors becoming less productive after the merger rather than inventor exits. Concurrently, acquirers move R&D activity outside the boundary of the firm via the use of strategic alliances and joint ventures. There is complementary evidence that conglomerates with more novel R&D tend to operate with decentralized R&D budgets. These findings suggest that conglomerate organizational form affects the allocation and productivity of resources.
The Effect of Relative Performance Information on Performance and Effort Allocation in a Multi-Task Environment

ABSTRACT : This study investigates how relative performance information (RPI) affects employee performance and allocation of effort across tasks in a multi-task environment. Based on behavioral theories, we predict that the social comparison process inherent in RPI induces both a motivation effect that results in increased effort as well as an effort distortion effect that results in the distortion of effort allocations across tasks away from the firm-preferred allocations. We also predict that both effects are magnified when the RPI is public compared to private. We argue that although the motivation effect will generally benefit performance, the effort distortion effect may be detrimental to performance. We design an experiment that isolates these two effects. Consistent with our predictions, we find that RPI induces both motivation and effort distortion effects and that both effects are magnified when the RPI is public rather than private. Although the motivation effect increases performance, we demons...
Quantum Solution of Coordination Problems

We present a quantum solution to coordination problems that can be implemented with existing technologies. Using the properties of entangled states, this quantum mechanism allows participants to rapidly find suitable correlated choices as an alternative to conventional approaches relying on explicit communication, prior commitment or trusted third parties. Unlike prior proposals for quantum games our approach retains the same choices as in the classical game and instead utilizes quantum entanglement as an extra resource to aid the participants in their choices. PACS: 03.67.-a; 02.50.Le; 89.65.Gh
Lilikoi V2.0: a deep learning–enabled, personalized pathway-based R package for diagnosis and prognosis predictions using metabolomics data

Background previously we developed Lilikoi, a personalized pathway-based method to classify diseases using metabolomics data. Given the new trends of computation in the metabolomics field, it is important to update Lilikoi software. Results here we report the next version of Lilikoi as a significant upgrade. The new Lilikoi v2.0 R package has implemented a deep learning method for classification, in addition to popular machine learning methods. It also has several new modules, including the most significant addition of prognosis prediction, implemented by Cox-proportional hazards model and the deep learning-based Cox-nnet model. Additionally, Lilikoi v2.0 supports data preprocessing, exploratory analysis, pathway visualization, and metabolite pathway regression. Conculsion Lilikoi v2.0 is a modern, comprehensive package to enable metabolomics analysis in R programming environment.
Public and private enforcement of securities laws: Resource-based evidence ☆

Abstract Ascertaining which enforcement mechanisms work to protect investors has been both a focus of recent work in academic finance and an issue for policy-making at international development agencies. According to recent academic work, private enforcement of investor protection via both disclosure and private liability rules goes hand in hand with financial market development, but public enforcement fails to correlate with financial development and, hence, is unlikely to facilitate it. Our results confirm the disclosure result but reverse the results on both liability standards and public enforcement. We use securities regulators’ resources to proxy for regulatory intensity of the securities regulator. When we do, financial depth regularly, significantly, and robustly correlates with stronger public enforcement. In horse races between these resource-based measures of public enforcement intensity and the most common measures of private enforcement, public enforcement is overall as important as disclosure in explaining financial market outcomes around the world and more important than private liability rules. Hence, policymakers who reject public enforcement as useful for financial market development are ignoring the best currently available evidence.
A conversation with 590 Nascent Entrepreneurs

This paper summarizes interviews from 1998 with 590 individuals trying to create a business centered around five questions: “Who are you?”, “What are you trying to accomplish?”, “What have you and others put into the business?”, “What have you accomplished?”, “What remains to be done?” These Nascent Entrepreneurs are remarkably similar to the general population. Most have already made personally significant investments of time and money in their firms. For about half of them, these investments have yielded a fully specified product. Their most substantial sources of seed money are their own savings and loans from family and friends. A small minority of Nascent Entrepreneurs have applied for formal business loans, and only half of those applications have been approved.
Gender Differences in the Labor-Market Effects of the Dollar

A study finds that women, like men, experience most of the expected wage response to dollar fluctuations at times of job transitions, rather than when they remain with the same employer. In this context, dollar-depreciation periods, which are generally viewed as providing positive labor demand shocks, reduce the penalties that often are associated with a job change. Since women have higher job-changing rates than their male counterparts, these findings suggest that the average female worker has more sensitive wages than her male counterpart. Within the population there is diversity in these effects, with the least-educated women having both the highest job-transition rates and the largest response to exchange rates at these transitions.
Cosmography from two-image lens systems: overcoming the lens profile slope degeneracy

The time delays between the multiple images of a strong lens system, together with a model of the lens mass distribution, allow a one-step measurement of a cosmological distance, namely, the ‘time-delay distance’ of the lens (DΔt) that encodes cosmological information. The time-delay distance depends sensitively on the radial profile slope of the lens mass distribution; consequently, the lens slope must be accurately constrained for cosmological studies. We show that the slope cannot be constrained in two-image systems with single-component compact sources, whereas it can be constrained in systems with two-component sources provided that the separation between the image components can be measured with milliarcsecond precisions, which is not feasible in most systems. In contrast, we demonstrate that spatially extended images of the source galaxy in two-image systems break the radial slope degeneracy and allow DΔt to be measured with uncertainties of a few per cent. Deep and high-resolution imaging of the lens systems are needed to reveal the extended arcs, and stable point spread functions are required for our lens modelling technique. Two-image systems, no longer plagued by the radial profile slope degeneracy, would augment the sample of useful time-delay lenses by a factor of ∼6, providing substantial advances for cosmological studies.
The Holocaust, Museum Ethics and Legalism

The “Holocaust art movement” has led to significant and controversial restitutions from museums. This article focuses on two emotionally driven claims to recover a suitcase stolen from a murdered man and watercolors a woman was forced to paint for Josef Mengele to document his pseudo-scientific theories of racial inferiority and his cruel medical experiments. Both claims are asserted against the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Poland, which has refused to return the objects. These claims provide insightful case studies for examining the emotional and ethical aspects of such disputes. Drawing from a number of disciplines, this article demonstrates the inadequacy of the dominant frameworks influencing the cultural property field, which are grounded in property law, morality and utilitarianism, for evaluating the Holocaust-related claims. This article also demonstrates that the International Council of Museums (“ICOM”) * Associate Professor of Law, Chase College of Law, Northern Kentucky University; J.D., Georgetown University Law Center; B.A., University of Florida. The Author was a litigation associate at Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy LLP, where she worked on art disputes and inter-governmental Holocaust negotiations and litigation before entering academia. The Author wishes to thank Kristin Messer and Megan Mersch for their superb research assistance, Zan Burkhardt for her technological assistance and Chase College of Law and Northern Kentucky University for their support. Thanks also to participants in the Ohio Legal Scholarship Workshop for their comments on this article and the Washington University in St. Louis Junior Faculty Workshop for helping refine my approach to the Holocaust and law. Particular thanks to Professors Patty Gerstenblith, Deborah Lipstadt, John H. Merryman and Matthias Weller and Practitioner Charles Goldstein for their input. The author may be contacted via e-mail at krederj1@nku.edu. 2 REVIEW OF LAW AND SOCIAL JUSTICE [18:1 Code of Ethics provides a useful construct for evaluating the claims. ICOM Principle 6.7, which calls on museums “to promote well-being,” should be the guiding light for museums deciding whether to return Holocaust-related objects. The article concludes that the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum’s refusal to return the objects is faulty ethically, counter to its mission and reflective of the inadequacy of Poland’s approach to postwar restitution.
Split-award procurement auctions with uncertain scale economies: Theory and data☆

Abstract In a number of observed procurements, the buyer has employed an auction format that allows for a split-award outcome. We focus on settings where the range of uncertainty regarding scale economies is large and, depending on cost realizations, the efficient allocations include split-award outcomes as well as sole-source outcomes (one active supplier). We examine the price performance and efficiency properties of split-award auctions under asymmetric information. In equilibrium, both award outcomes can occur: the split-award outcome arises only when it minimizes total costs; sole-source outcomes, however, occur too often from an efficiency viewpoint. Equilibrium bids involve pooling at a common price for the split award, and separation for sole-source awards. We provide conditions under which the buyer and suppliers all benefit from a split-award format relative to a winner-take-all unit auction format. Model predictions are assessed with data on submitted ‘step-ladder’ bid prices for a U.S. defense split-award procurement.
Do Firms Incur Costs to Avoid Reducing Pre‐Tax Earnings? Evidence from the Accounting for Low‐Income Housing Tax Credits

ABSTRACT: Examining corporate investment in low‐income housing tax credits reveals that firms are willing to incur costs in order to manage the income statement classification of an expense. Accounting rules allow investors who purchase a tax benefit guarantee to amortize their equity in a real estate partnership as a tax expense, rather than as an operating expense, thus avoiding a reduction in pre‐tax earnings. Using confidential data from tax credit syndicators, I model the market price of a tax credit as a function of the existence of the guarantee, controlling for foreclosure risk on the underlying real estate. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that an economically significant amount of the guarantee fee is paid by corporate investors for the right to use an accounting method that avoids reductions in pre‐tax earnings.
Does Reform Prevent Rebellion? Evidence From Russia’s Emancipation of the Serfs:

Contemporary models of political economy suggest that reforms intended to reduce grievances should curtail unrest, a perspective at odds with many traditional accounts of reform and rebellion. We explore the impact of reform on rebellion with a new data set on peasant disturbances in 19th-century Russia. Using a difference-in-differences design that exploits the timing of various peasant reforms, we document a large increase in disturbances among former serfs following the Emancipation Reform of 1861, a development counter to reformers’ intent. Our analysis suggests that this outcome was driven by peasants’ disappointment with the reform’s design and implementation—the consequence of elite capture in the context of a generally weak state—and heightened expectations of what could be achieved through coordinated action. Reform-related disturbances were most pronounced in provinces where commune organization facilitated collective action and where fertile soil provoked contestation over land.
The effect of insurance on emergency room visits: An analysis of the 2006 Massachusetts health reform ☆

Abstract This paper analyzes the impact of a major health reform in Massachusetts on emergency room (ER) visits. I exploit the variation in pre-reform uninsurance rates across counties to identify the causal effect of the reform on ER visits. My estimates imply that the reform reduced ER usage by between 5 and 8%, nearly all of which is accounted for by a reduction in non-urgent visits that could be treated in alternative settings. The reduction in emergency room visits is most pronounced during regular office hours when physician's offices are likely to be open. In contrast, I find no effect for non-preventable emergencies such as heart attacks. These estimates are consistent with a large causal effect of insurance on ER visits and imply that expanding insurance coverage could have a substantial impact on the efficiency of health services.
How the Establishment Clause Can Influence Substantive Due Process: Adultery Bans After Lawrence

Criminal adultery bans, despite widespread transgression and lax enforcement, remain on the books in a substantial minority of states. The landmark Lawrence v. Texas decision casts doubt on all state interference with consensual sexual activity among adults, including adultery bans. Additionally, adultery bans on their face implicate the Establishment Clause, due to adultery bans’ and marriage’s roots in religious doctrine and religiosity. This Note examines the constitutionality of adultery bans after Lawrence v. Texas, and proposes a novel approach to substantive due process analysis that applies Establishment Clause values. In proposing what this Note dubs the “Establishment Clause prism,” through which a facially legitimate state interest is delegitimized if substantially motivated by religious forces, this Note concludes that adultery bans are unconstitutional.
Knapsack Voting for Participatory Budgeting

We address the question of aggregating the preferences of voters in the context of participatory budgeting. We scrutinize the voting method currently used in practice, underline its drawbacks, and introduce a novel scheme tailored to this setting, which we call “Knapsack Voting.” We study its strategic properties—we show that it is strategy-proof under a natural model of utility (a dis-utility given by the e1 distance between the outcome and the true preference of the voter) and “partially” strategy-proof under general additive utilities. We extend Knapsack Voting to more general settings with revenues, deficits, or surpluses and prove a similar strategy-proofness result. To further demonstrate the applicability of our scheme, we discuss its implementation on the digital voting platform that we have deployed in partnership with the local government bodies in many cities across the nation. From voting data thus collected, we present empirical evidence that Knapsack Voting works well in practice.
The Justiciability of Water Rights: Mazibuko v. City of Johannesburg

Abstract This paper uses the case of Mazibuko v. City of Johannesburg, now set down on appeal in the Constitutional Court of South Africa, as the basis of a discussion of judicial enforcement of social and economic rights, with special emphasis on the right of access to sufficient water. The paper compares the conditions of the black township residents who brought the lawsuit and residents of wealthier, white areas of Johannesburg and calls attention to trends in water policy in South Africa running counter to egalitarian goals of the Constitution. The paper argues that judicial enforcement of social and economic rights can (although it does not necessarily) advance democracy by affording every person the minimum conditions necessary for meaningful political participation and enjoyment of his or her political, social, and economic rights. The paper proposes a new legal approach for analyzing access-to-water and other socioeconomic rights issues—the ‘developmental-reasonableness’ test which incorporates eq...
The Politics of the Personal: A Liberal Approach

The feminist project of politicizing the personal is thought by some to be such a radically new approach to politics that it cannot be incorporated within contemporary liberal theories. Not only had these theories largely neglected injustices within thefamily,butalsosomefeministcriticshavesuggested that the very ideal of liberal citizenship, with its emphasis on the public sphere, is incompatible with feminist concerns. Therefore, these thinkers suggest that liberalism should be abandoned in favor of theories that can directly address injustices within the family. In this article, I argue that liberalism is not fundamentally incompatible with feminism; rather, one of liberalism’s mostprominentcontemporaryincarnations,thetheory of political liberalism, can be reconstructed to address central feminist concerns. Contemporary thinkers, I suggest, need not choose between a commitment to political liberalism and a commitment to feminist concerns.
A Tractable Model of Reciprocity and Fairness

Abstract We introduce a parametric model of other-regarding preferences in which my emotional state determines the marginal rate of substitution between my own and others' payoffs, and thus my subsequent choices. In turn, my emotional state responds to relative status and to the kindness or unkindness of others' choices. Structural estimations of this model with six existing data sets demonstrate that other-regarding preferences depend on status, reciprocity, and perceived property rights.