cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and its Implications for the Rights of Elderly People Under International Law

To what extent does and should international human rights laws protect the right of elderly people? Specifically, how does the newly adopted Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities affect the rights of elderly people under international law? This Article presents the view that the new Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities has much to offer people who are elderly, both in terms of its substantive provisions as well as an example of what can be accomplished through advocacy efforts to codify human rights protections under international law.This Article begins with a brief discussion of the existing international human rights protections for people who are elderly. The second section of the Article reviews the newly adopted UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, including why it was needed and what it provides. The third section of the Article discusses the potential of the Convention to protect and expand the rights of elderly people under international law. The fourth section of the Article discusses the United States' position on the Convention and its potential to affect the rights of elderly people in the United States. Finally, the Article concludes with a recommendation for the consideration of a new UN Convention on the Rights of Elderly People.
INEQUALITY, INCENTIVES, CRIMINALITY, AND BLAME

The disadvantaged have incentives to commit crime, and to develop criminogenic dispositions, that limit the extent to which their co-citizens can blame them for breaking the law. This is true regardless of whether the causes of criminality are mainly “structural” or “cultural.” We need not assume that society as a whole is unjust in order to accept this conclusion. And doing so would neither stigmatize nor otherwise disrespect the disadvantaged.
An empirical model of advertising dynamics

This paper develops a model of dynamic advertising competition, and applies it to the problem of optimal advertising scheduling through time. In many industries we observe advertising “pulsing”, whereby firms systematically switch advertising on and off at a high-frequency. Hence, we observe periods of zero and non-zero advertising, as opposed to a steady level of positive advertising. Previous research has rationalized pulsing through two features of the sale response function: an S-shaped response to advertising, and long-run effects of current advertising on demand. Despite considerable evidence for advertising carry-over, existing evidence for non-convexities in the shape of the sales-response to advertising has been limited and, often, mixed. We show how both features can be included in a discrete choice based demand system and estimated using a simple partial maximum likelihood estimator. The demand estimates are then taken to the supply side, where we simulate the outcome of a dynamic game using the Markov perfect equilibrium (MPE) concept. Our objective is not to test for the specific game generating observed advertising levels. Rather, we wish to verify whether the use of pulsing (on and off) can be justified as an equilibrium advertising practice. We solve for the equilibrium using numerical dynamic programming methods. The flexibility provided by the numerical solution method allows us to improve on the existing literature, which typically considers only two competitors, and places strong restrictions on the demand models for which the supply side policies can be obtained. We estimate the demand model using data from the Frozen Entree product category. We find evidence for a threshold effect, which is qualitatively similar to the aforementioned S-shaped advertising response. We also show that the threshold is robust to functional form assumptions for the marginal impact of advertising on demand. Our estimates, which are obtained without imposing any supply side restrictions, imply that firms should indeed pulse in equilibrium. Predicted advertising in the MPE is higher, on average, than observed advertising. On average, the optimal advertising policies yield a moderate profit improvement over the profits under observed advertising.
Imagining the Open Road

I first read a draft of Nancy Leong’s Article, The Open Road and the Traffic Stop: Narratives and Counter-Narratives of the American Dream (“Open Road”), while my law school was preparing to host a conference on race and criminal justice. To our great fortune, Professor Leong accepted our invitation to present this thoughtful paper. I now have re-read the Open Road to write this response paper while additionally considering Articles by David Segal, Stanley Fish, and others debating aspects of legal education—in particular, the role of faculty scholarship. My repeated engagements with the Open Road confirm that it contributes beautifully to legal education as the sort of scholarship praised by Professor Fish: academic inquiry into a “purposive . . . vision” for the project of law. In this brief response paper, I first will summarize my understanding of the Open Road. Next, I will assess the value of Professor Leong’s Article in the context of recent debate about the relationship, or tension, between academic scholarship and education for the practice of law. In the end, I embrace the Open Road, not only as high-level scholarship, but as a virtue in legal education.
21st Century Arms Control Challenges: Drones, Cyber Weapons, Killer Robots, and WMDs

The world faces tough arms control challenges from preventing the development and use of weapons of mass destruction to regulating the new weapons of the computer revolution. This article considers what works in arms control. Using military force in violation of international law to destroy nuclear facilities, to stop weapons shipments, or to punish the use of prohibited weapons typically fails. Diplomacy paired with lawful counter-measures has the superior track record. Reviving the art of diplomacy and re-committing to authentic international law will pay dividends in peace and security.
Real Options and Risk Dynamics

We examine the asset pricing implications of a neoclassical model of repeated investment and disinvestment. Prior research has emphasized a negative relation between productivity and equity risk that results from operating leverage when capital adjustment is costly. In general, however, expansion and contraction options affect risk in the opposite direction: they lower equity risk as profitability declines. The general prediction is a non-monotonic overlay of opposing real option and operating leverage effects. For parameters chosen to match empirical firm characteristics, the predicted non-monotonicities are quantitatively important, and are detectable in the data. The calibrated model implies that real option effects dominate operating leverage effects, and the average firm is best described by an increasing risk profile, a conclusion supported by conditional beta estimates. The baseline calibration helps explain the profitability premium in the cross-section, but makes the value puzzle worse. Panels with heterogeneous firms can deliver simultaneous profitability and value effects that match empirical levels.
Short-or Long-Duration Coupons: The Effect of the Expiration Date on the Profitability of Coupon Promotions

United States firms collectively spend over $6.5 billion annually on coupon promotions and are becoming increasingly concerned with their profitability. FSI free-standing-insert data show that coupon duration varies across brands. In this paper, we show how coupon duration can affect coupon profitability. We also provide answers for some empirical observations on coupon duration. We explain, for example, why i coupon duration will vary across firms, such that large market share firms will give short-duration coupons and small market share firms will give long-duration coupons; ii longer coupon duration for one brand will increase redemption for coupons of that brand and of a competing brand; iii coupon duration will affect coupon profitability.
The 'new cleavage' thesis and the social basis of radical right support.

Synopsis: The rise of the radical right is open to multiple interpretations. The question addressed in this paper is whether many of these parties have fostered an enduring social base among core voters and, if so, which social sectors are most likely to support them. Part I discusses the alternative theoretical frameworks provided by the classic accounts of the 1950s and 1960s, the ‘new social cleavage’ thesis common during the last decade, and the theory of partisan dealignment. The chapter then compares evidence to analyze rival hypotheses about the social basis of the radical right vote across fifteen nations, using data drawn from the European Social Survey, 2002 and the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, 1996-2001. Part II focuses upon the role of socioeconomic indicators, while Part III considers the enduring gender gap and patterns of generational support. The conclusion considers the implications of these results for understanding the basis of radical right popularity, and for the stability and longevity of these parties.
In search of responsible CEOs: The case of CEOs with non-profit experience

Abstract We advance, and test, two competing hypotheses that relate prior non-profit experience to mismanagement and/or negligence against the null of no relationship. The evidence supports the hypothesis that the bureaucratic and chaotic culture of many non-profits often attracts and/or molds individuals with subpar managerial habits. We find that firms headed by CEOs with non-profit experience are more likely to restate financial statements than other firms, even after controlling for variables that have been shown to affect restatements, and that the returns around announcements of class action securities litigation are more negative for firms with “non-profit” CEOs.
Workers and flexible manufacturing systems: Three installations compared

This paper presents and compares case studies of three Flexible Manufacturing Systems (FMSs). Interviews, observation and questionnaire data from two installations are compared to data presented in previous studies of a third installation. Whereas the previous research found that FMS workers suffered from a lack of autonomy and control, this does not characterize work on the two new installations. While in one of the new cases, the difference may have been due to its semi-autonomous team organization, the other new installation was organized along rather conventional lines. Despite its conventional organization, workers in this latter FMS expressed high levels of satisfaction and motivation and their system operated at a very high level of efficiency. This result suggests that future research might fruitfully reconsider whether the relevant factor of satisfaction and motivation is autonomy or efficacy.
The Media and Mispricing: The Role of the Business Press in the Pricing of Accounting Information

ABSTRACT: This study investigates the role of the business press in the pricing of accounting information. Using a comprehensive dataset of more than 111,000 earnings-related business press articles published from 2000 to 2010, we find that press coverage of the annual earnings announcement mitigates cash flow mispricing, but has a negligible effect on accrual mispricing. We provide evidence that this impact is driven primarily by the press disseminating the information more broadly, rather than by the creation of new content that helps investors understand the implications of accounting information. Our results suggest that the business press plays an important role in facilitating the market's ability to efficiently impound accounting information into stock prices and provide new insights into the role of the business press as an information intermediary in capital markets.
Institutionalization of University Research Centers: The Case of the National Cooperative Program in Infertility Research

Abstract This study uses an institutional design theoretical framework and a cross-case analysis qualitative research methodology to consider the National Cooperative Program in Infertility Research (NCPIR) centers as an effort to enhance scientific and technical knowledge by designing institutions (in this case the NCPIR centers) to promote the growth of knowledge by promoting collaboration, building collaborative networks and promoting “scientific and technical human capital.” In considering the NCPIR centers from an institutional design perspective, we consider their level and type of institutionalization of the centers. Then we seek to assess the extent to which the level and type of institutionalization developed within these centers optimizes the objectives that have been set forth. We found that although the NCPIR centers have some if not many administrative elements found in fully articulated research centers and substantial quantities and varied types of research and training outputs, they are not sufficiently institutionalized to achieve the ambitious and challenging goals of serving as a national infertility research source, national training resource, and national inter-institutional linkages over the long run.
Originalism and Its Discontents (Plus a Thought or Two About Abortion)

In Abortion and Original Meaning/ Jack Balkin presents an intriguing new argument for the soundness of the result, though not the reasoning, of Roe v. Wade. 2 Balkin is one of his generation's widest ranging and most consistently engaging legal theorists, and his analyses of the original principles undergirding the Fourteenth Amendment and how they bear on the debate over abortion is characteristically thought-provoking. But they are offered in service of a "larger purpose" -namely, "to demonstrate why the debate between originalism and living constitutionalism rests on a false dichotomy.''' Once we "reject the assumption that fidelity to the [constitutional] text means fidelity to original expected application," Balkin contends, we ought instead to agree that "constitutional interpretation requires fidelity to the original meaning of the Constitution and to the principles that underlie the text." In maintaining such fidelity, however, "[e]ach generation makes the Constitution their Constitution by calling upon its text and its principles and arguing about what they mean in their own time. " It follows, Balkin claims, that " [ t ]he choice between original meaning and living constitutionalism ... is a false choice.""
Properties and geoeffectiveness of magnetic clouds during solar cycles 23 and 24

We report on a study that compares the properties of magnetic clouds (MCs) during the first 73 months of solar cycles 23 and 24 in order to understand the weak geomagnetic activity in cycle 24. We find that the number of MCs did not decline in cycle 24, although the average sunspot number is known to have declined by ~40%. Despite the large number of MCs, their geoeffectiveness in cycle 24 was very low. The average Dst index in the sheath and cloud portions in cycle 24 was −33 nT and −23 nT, compared to −66 nT and −55 nT, respectively, in cycle 23. One of the key outcomes of this investigation is that the reduction in the strength of geomagnetic storms as measured by the Dst index is a direct consequence of the reduction in the factor VBz (the product of the MC speed and the out-of-the-ecliptic component of the MC magnetic field). The reduction in MC-to-ambient total pressure in cycle 24 is compensated for by the reduction in the mean MC speed, resulting in the constancy of the dimensionless expansion rate at 1 AU. However, the MC size in cycle 24 was significantly smaller, which can be traced to the anomalous expansion of coronal mass ejections near the Sun reported by Gopalswamy et al. (2014a). One of the consequences of the anomalous expansion seems to be the larger heliocentric distance where the pressure balance between the CME flux ropes and the ambient medium occurs in cycle 24.
Equal Protection- The Social Dimension of European Community Law

There are two reasons for drawing attention to the social dimension of European Community law. First, the EEC treaty comprises different provisions on social policy whose importance is consistently underestimated: the treaty is often considered as merely establishing a "common market" and as only concerning economic problems. This approach is prominent in the United States, where the business world is primarily interested in trade with, and within, the common market, and where much literature is devoted to this subject. Second, social provisions of teh EEC treaty have given rise to an interesting evolution in the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Communities, on equal protection in particular. As a result, the Court's case law has gradually begun to show some interesting parallels with previous developments in American law.
Clean Sweep: Informed Trading through Intermarket Sweep Orders

An intermarket sweep order (ISO) is a limit order that automatically executes in a designated market center even if another market center is publishing a better quotation. An investor submitting an ISO must satisfy order protection rules by concurrently submitting orders to the markets with better prices. We find that ISOs represent 46% of trades and 41% of volume in our sample. ISO trades have a significantly larger information share despite their small trade size relative to non-ISO trades. Post trade return analysis suggests that informed institutions are the main users of ISO trades.
Changing Household Financial Opportunities and Economic Security

The principal force behind the many changes in household finances during the past several decades has been an expansion of financial opportunities. More elaborate tools for assessing and pricing risk, increased lending to households without strong collateral, and technologies that allow households to access a wide array of investment opportunities more easily have all enabled more people to engage in more financial activities. The shift in employer-based retire ment benefits from defined benefit plans toward defined contribution plans has also given many households more direct control of their finances. Such opportunities can yield benefits in terms of household economic security. The democratization of credit and development of new lending approaches in creased the options for families looking to borrow against future income or accumulated home equity in order to enjoy a smoother path of consumption. Indeed, a wide range of indicators showed significantly less aggregate economic volatility between the early 1980s and mid-2000s than during the preceding two decades?a phenomenon linked by some researchers (including me) to this type of financial innovation. New financial opportunities also allowed households to choose to take more risks in pursuit of higher expected utility?an important reminder that reducing risk is not always good and increasing risk is not always bad. However, the financial crisis that began in 2007 has powerfully illustrated that expanded financial opportunities can also pose dangers for households. By increas ing the scope for investment in risky assets, people may end up with larger swings
Adoption Consents: Legal Incentives for Best Practices

When a state places its legal imprimatur on the unmaking of one family and the making of another, the state should insure to the greatest extent possible that all the individuals involved have followed or have been afforded the best practices that ethics and humanity demand. The Uniform Adoption Act sets out commonly accepted goals of state adoption laws, among them the goals of protecting minor children against unnecessary separation from their birth parents and of ensuring that a decision by a birth parent to relinquish a minor child and consent to the childs adoption is informed and voluntary. With respect to achieving these goals in connection with services for mothers of newborn infants, the laws governing the timing of their consents and the provision of counseling to them can create powerful incentives for service providers to follow the best practices that characterize ethical and humane services. This is possible when the laws are based on an understanding that for mothers considering placing their children for adoption, skilled, unbiased counseling is invaluable; complete, well-communicated information is indispensable; and adequate time is, perhaps, the wisest counsellor of all.
Promoting cooperation in the field

We review the growing literature of field experiments designed to promote cooperative behavior in policy-relevant settings outside the laboratory (e.g. conservation, charitable donations, voting). We focus on four categories of intervention that have been well studied. We find that material rewards and increased efficacy, interventions focused on altering the costs and benefits of giving, have at best mixed success. Social Interventions based on observability and descriptive norms, conversely, are consistently highly effective. We then demonstrate how a theoretical framework based on reciprocity and reputation concerns explains why Social Interventions are typically more effective than Cost–Benefit Interventions, and suggests ways to make Cost–Benefit Interventions more effective. We conclude by discussing other less-studied types of intervention, and promising directions for future research.
Actively Learning by Pricing: A Model of an Experimenting Seller

This article presents a model of a rational seller who is actively learning the slope of his demand curve via his pricing strategy. Consequently, this seller optimally experiments with his price. Resulting price patterns show a tendency for discreteness (as observed in the data), which has proved to be a major challenge to most price setting models. The experimentation motive can also replicate the observation that prices are more volatile than costs, as well as the presence of many idiosyncratic price changes in the data. It can do so without a need to assume the existence of large idiosyncratic shocks.
Portia's Deal

The New Deal, one of the greatest expansions of government in U.S. history, was a “lawyers’ deal”: it relied heavily on lawyers’ skills and reflected lawyers’ values. Was it exclusively a “male lawyers’ deal”? This Essay argues that the New Deal offered important opportunities to women lawyers at a time when they were just beginning to graduate from law school in significant numbers. Agencies associated with social welfare policy, a traditionally “maternalist” enterprise, seem to have been particularly hospitable. Through these agencies, women lawyers helped to administer, interpret, and create the law of a new era. Using government records and archived personal papers, this Essay examines three under-studied women lawyers of the New Deal. Sue Shelton White, an outspoken feminist from Tennessee, came to the New Deal after a long career as a court reporter, political organizer, and senate staffer. Records of her time in government suggest the difference that gender, and specifically gendered opportunity structures, made to the work of a New Deal lawyer. Marie Remington Wing, a prominent politician and lawyer in her native Cleveland, joined the New Deal as the lead attorney in a regional office. Her biography encourages scholars to remember that just as the New Deal was national in scale, so too was its legal work. Regional outposts of the New Deal provided some women lawyers with a taste of the power that the men in Washington enjoyed. Bernice Lotwin Bernstein was in age, brains, and social networks the equivalent of one of Felix Frankfurter’s “Happy Hotdogs.” She joined the New Deal in 1933 and stayed for forty-five years, narrowly surviving a Cold War loyalty-security investigation. Her life offers a case study in the appeal, and the dangers, that government work held for women lawyers. Taken together, these three biographies suggest the need for sustained scholarly attention to the “Portias” of the New Deal.
The Presidential Puzzle: Political Cycles and the Stock Market

The excess return in the stock market is higher under Democratic than Republican presidencies: 9 percent for the value-weighted and 16 percent for the equal-weighted portfolio. The diierence comes from higher real stock returns and lower real interest rates, is statistically signi¢cant, and is robust in subsamples. The diierence in returns is not explained by business-cycle variables related to expected returns, and is not concentrated around election dates. There is no diierence in the riskiness of the stock market across presidencies that could justify a risk premium. The diierence in returns through the political cycle is therefore a puzzle. IN THE RUN-UP TOALL PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS, the popular press is awash with reports about whether Republicans or Democrats are better for the stock market. Unfortunately, the popular interest has not been matched by academic research. This paper ¢lls that gap by conducting a careful empirical analysis of the relation between presidential elections and the stock market. Using data since 1927, we ¢nd that the average excess return of the valueweighted CRSP index over the three-month Treasury bill rate has been about 2 percent under Republican and 11 percent under Democratic presidentsFa striking diierence of 9 percent per year! This diierence is economically and statistically signi¢cant. A decomposition of excess returns reveals that the diierence is due to real market returns being higher under Democrats by more than 5 percent, as well as to real interest rates being almost 4 percent lower under Democrats. The results are even more impressive for the equal-weighted portfolio, where the diierence in excess returns between Republicans and Democrats reaches 16 percent. Moreover, we observe an absolute monotonicity in the diierence between size-decile portfolios under the two political regimes: From 7 percent for the largest ¢rms to about 22 percent for the smallest ¢rms.
The Master Norm: On the Question of Redressing Slavery

The fact that redress of slavery still is debatable is itself an indicator of that the harm of slavery and segregation still persist in our time. If the legacy of slavery and segregation were a mere historical concern, the debate of redress would not draw such heat and passion on both sides of the argument. Descendents of slavery and segregation would not perceive that there was a need for redress, if racial discrimination was not still a very real and painful experience today. If the legacy of slavery and segregation was still not influencing our society today, the claim for a redress would not meet such blanket rejections, but instead be possible to address, without people feeling threatened by a redress.
Dissembling and Disclosing: Physician Responsibility on the Frontiers of Tort Law

This Commentary addresses an issue that emerges as a common theme in dealing with legal considerations in advising physicians: Are there circumstances in which telling "less than the whole truth" is warranted? I discuss two categorical instances in which a physician's responsibility to be entirely forthcoming in dealing with medical matters, as well as the correlative legal consequences of abandoning candor, have proven to be especially vexing. Initially, I discuss "the blameless medical excuse" in organ transplant cases; more specifically, the common practice of providing prospective organ transplant donors a medical excuse as a cover for their unwillingness to donate an organ to a family member or close friend. I then turn from questions of dissembling the truth to compunctions about revealing it. The latter survive as a lively, ongoing dialogue in both the medical and legal arenas, in the context of the role of apology for medical negligence. I conclude with some summary observations about physician disclosure and its fit within a regime of medical malpractice law.
Learning From Disasters: Twenty-One Years After the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill, Will Reactions to the Deepwater Horizon Blowout Finally Address the Systemic Flaws Revealed in Alaska?

Twenty years ago, after the calamitous Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska’s Prince William Sound, the pervasive systemic flaws - that according to the Alaska Oil Spill Commission had made a major calamity not just possible but probable - were largely cloaked behind the figure of a captain with a drinking problem. In 2010, after suffering another horrific oil incident - this one almost 20 times! larger than the Exxon Valdez spill - the question for national energy law and policy is whether, this time around, we’ll acknowledge and implement the hard systemic lessons largely avoided two decades ago. The Deepwater Horizon blowout will be a doubly disastrous occasion if it doesn’t produce systemic changes for the future, as the Exxon Valdez markedly failed to do. The Obama Administration’s Gulf of Mexico BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Commission, like the Alaska Commission set up after the Exxon Valdez spill, is trying to harvest conclusions about causation - "why did this calamity happen?" - and about necessary fundamental changes in how we manage the extraction and transport of oil for the future. The BP Deepwater blowout spill and the Exxon Valdez experience are instructive both in their similarities and in their differences.
Disclosure of intended use of proceeds and underpricing in initial public offerings

We use the context of a company's initial public offering (IPO) of equity securities as a capital-markets setting to empirically study the economic consequences of endogenous disclosure. In particular, we examine the relation between the extent of dollar detail an IPO issuer provides regarding their intended use of proceeds and first-day underpricing. We document substantial variation in the specificity of this disclosure and find that an increase in such specificity is associated with lower IPO underpricing. Overall, our results suggest that IPOs that provide specific use-of-proceeds disclosures have less ex ante uncertainty, in the sense that these disclosures help investors estimate the dispersion of secondary market values. Our paper contributes to the empirical accounting literature by documenting an association between voluntary disclosure and what is arguably the foremost cost of raising initial equity capital (i.e., IPO underpricing).
Modeling the Antecedents of Preferences for Incomplete Contracts in Bilateral Trade: An Experimental Investigation

ABSTRACT: Contracts constitute an important control mechanism. Their design is influenced by the preferences of the contracting parties, in addition to firm-level economic transaction costs. This study conducts an experiment to explore the antecedents of preferences for a less complete contract in a trade setting. Results from an experiment indicate that the preference for a more complete versus a less complete contract depends on the perceived riskiness of the incomplete contract, which is influenced by the perceived bargaining power and fairness preferences (namely, distributive and procedural fairness preferences) of the contracting parties. In other words, we find evidence that suggests that choosing the completeness of a contract is a form of risk-taking, and that the preference for a more incomplete contract is influenced by perceived power and fairness preferences.
Despairing Over Disparities: Explaining the Difference Between Willingness to Pay and Willingness to Accept

This paper examines the three major explanations for the disparity between willingness-to-pay (WTP) and willingness-to-accept (WTA) observed in contingent value surveys and laboratory experiments: a belief that the results must be biased in some fashion, Hanemann's (1991) substitutes hypothesis, and the loss aversion model proposed by Tversky and Kahneman (1991). Starting from the assumption that individuals make utility maximizing choices, we develop structural equations that yield parametric tests of the hypotheses within a single, non-experimental framework. The approach is flexible enough to incorporate a variety of functional form and distributional assumptions and can be applied to either data from either open-ended bids or dichotomous choice questions. The usefulness of the approach is demonstrated using data from a survey that asked both WTP and WTA questions. The results provide weak support for loss aversion.
Venture Capital and the Macroeconomy

I develop a model of venture capital (VC) intermediation that quantitatively explains central empirical facts about VC activity and can evaluate its macroeconomic relevance. The impact of VC-backed innovations is significantly larger than suggested by observed aggregate venture exit valuations, even after accounting for large exposures to systematic and uninsurable idiosyncratic risks. The risk properties of venture capital play a quantitatively important role in both explaining empirical regularities and shaping the value of ventures’ contributions to economic growth. The model is analytically tractable and yields exact solutions, despite the presence of matching frictions, imperfect risk sharing, and endogenous growth. Received January 16, 2018; editorial decision November 7, 2018 by Editor Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh.
The case of the undying debt

The French government currently honors a very unusual debt contract: an annuity that was issued in 1738 and currently yields €1.20 per year, payable to the descendants of its original recipient. I tell the story of this unique debt, which serves as an anecdotal but symbolic summary of French public finances since the eighteenth century. Created by a powerful nobleman for one of his servants, it survived the turmoil of the French Revolution, became part of the public debt and has been scrupulously honored to this day, even though its value has been eroded away by decades of inflation.
International Accounting in Light of Enron: Evidence from Empirical Research

Recent accounting scandals have led some to argue that US reporting is fundamentally flawed and that other systems might be preferable. However, the arguments are often based on anecdotes and conjecture. In this paper, my goal is to bring insights from empirical research to bear on the issue of the relative effectiveness of US reporting. I argue that research evidence on cross country differences in accounting suggests that US reporting compares well with other countries’ and that evidence on cross listing indicates that US accounting has a level of credibility not enjoyed by most other systems. Further, there is relatively little systematic evidence of deterioration in US accounting over time. Subject to the natural caveats with empirical research, the evidence suggests that US accounting has performed relatively well historically. While there are important lessons to be learned from experience with recent scandals, I argue that the empirical evidence supports the conclusion that changes should be incremental rather than wholesale. Further, the ongoing response to the scandals may actually strengthen the US system relative to other countries. * Thomas W. Hudson, Jr./Deloitte and Touche L.L.P. Distinguished Professor, Kenan-Flagler Bus. School, Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3490, (919) 962-1644, Mark_Lang@unc.edu. This paper was prepared for the N.C. Journal of International Law & Commercial Regulation conference on International Accounting Standards in the Wake of Enron, and benefited from the comments of conference participants and of Jana Raedy, Allison Evans, Laura Knudson and Wendy Wilson.
Social Choice in a Representative Democracy

Citizens of a representative democracy are twice removed from legislation. First, they do not deliberate and vote directly on legislation. Rather they elect assemblies that enact such legislation in their stead. Second, and less commonly remarked, citizens do not vote directly for assemblies. Rather they vote for individual candidates, with the candidates receiving the most votes elected. We examine the efficiency properties of these voting systems.
Giving Arbitration Some Credit: The Enforceability of Arbitration Clauses Under the Credit Repair Organizations Act

In today’s economy, the effects of a bad credit report are devastating to consumers. Individuals with poor credit history are often crippled in their ability to purchase even the smallest item, and consequently turn for help to credit repair organizations advertising services that cure bad credit. Frequently, however, these organizations merely accept high fees from customers already in dire financial straits, without improving their financial standing. To combat these predatory practices, Congress passed the Credit Repair Organizations Act (CROA), which imposes several requirements on credit repair organizations. One such provision mandates that credit repair organizations give a form to each consumer that clearly explains their specific rights before any contract is signed. This required disclosure form notifies consumers that they have “the right to sue” a credit repair organization that violates any provision of the CROA. References to this right, however, appear nowhere else in the statute. Many credit repair organizations include mandatory arbitration clauses in their contracts with consumers. As a result, consumers who have received a form notifying them of a “right to sue” may be told, by both companies and courts, that they may not seek redress in a court of law. Circuit courts have split on the enforceability of these arbitration agreements. In the context of both consumer protection law and recent arbitration jurisprudence, this Note examines the purported collision between the CROA and the longstanding Supreme Court policy in favor of enforcing arbitration agreements pursuant to the Federal Arbitration Act. After examining the passage of the CROA and the history of arbitration as a mechanism for dispute resolution, this Note analyzes the divergent approaches taken by the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Third, Ninth, and Eleventh Circuits in addressing this conflict. Ultimately, this Note
The Status of Nonstatus

Millions of unauthorized immigrants in the United States have no legal immigration status and live in constant fear of deportation. There are millions more who do have some sort of status, like lawful permanent residency, asylum, or a nonimmigrant visa. In between is the netherworld of nonstatus. Here live noncitizens who possess government documentation but few rights. They have no pathway to lawful permanent residence or citizenship and cannot receive most public benefits. If nonstatus is denied or revoked by a prosecutor or bureaucrat, there is no right to a hearing or an appeal. If the Executive Branch discriminates in how it allocates nonstatus, there may not be a legal right to challenge it.The Obama Administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and Deferred Action for Parental Accountability (DAPA) programs are the most recent and largest categories of nonstatus, but there are many others: parole, administrative closure, supervision, Deferred Enforced Departure (DED), and stays of removal, to name just a few. What these categories have in common is that they are discretionary, unreviewable, weakly described by positive law, and officially temporary, although individuals often live for years or even lifetimes in the purgatory of nonstatus. They occupy a paradoxical middle ground between legality and illegality, loosely tethered to this country by humanitarian concern or prosecutorial discretion. Those with nonstatus have fewer rights and remedies than those with immigration status. At the same time, they must register, disclose biographic data, be fingerprinted, and regularly update their address. Yet nonstatus is not just a government surveillance program: it is the only way for many individuals to claim some measure of dignity and legitimacy from a society that places a strong stigma on unauthorized immigrants.This Article will provide the first description of immigration nonstatus and its impact on the individuals who have it. It will describe the growth of nonstatus over time and the acceleration of that growth following late-1990s immigration reforms that restricted the means to acquire immigration status. The Article will contend that nonstatus is growing in part because it offers a means to authorize the presence of undocumented immigrants without offering them rights and benefits that have become controversial for immigrants with full status.
Venture capital limited partnership agreements: Understanding compensation arrangements

This Article uses a hand-collected dataset of venture capital partnership agreements to study venture capitalist (VC) compensation. Several new findings emerge. First, VC compensation consists of three elements, not two (management fee and carried interest), as commonly believed. The third element is the value-of-distribution rules that specify when during the fund’s life VCs receive distributions. These rules often generate an interest-free loan to VCs from limited partners. A shift from the most popular distribution rule to the second-most popular rule can affect VC compensation as much as or more than common variations in management fee (from 2 percent to 2.5 percent of committed capital) or carried interest (from 20 percent to 25 percent of fund profit). Second, VC compensation is often more complex and manipulable than it could have been. However, more complex management-fee provisions predict lower total compensation; thus, complexity is not used to camouflage high pay. Third, common proxies for VC quality predict higher levels of the more transparent forms of VC compensation (carried interest and management fee) but do not predict the levels of opaque compensation (interest-free loan, as determined by distribution rules). Fourth, long-term VC performance predicts fund size (which in turn predicts VC pay, controlling for fund size), but recent performance does not predict changes in fund size. Finally, VC compensation is less performance-based than commonly believed: for vintage years between 1986 and 1997 (most recent years for fully liquidated funds), about half of total VC compensation comes from the nonrisky management fee. On average, a 1 percent increase in fund returns predicts a 0.47 percent increase in total VC compensation; this pay-performance elasticity is similar to that of public company CEOs during the same years.
The Rapid Rise of Delayed Notice Searches, and the Fourth Amendment "Rule Requiring Notice"

This article documents the rapid rise of covert searching, through delayed notice search warrants, and argues that covert searching in its current form presumptively violates the Fourth Amendment’s “rule requiring notice.” Congress authorized these “sneak and peek” warrants in the USA Patriot Act, in 2001, and soon after added a reporting requirement to monitor this invasive search technique. Since 2001, the use of delayed notice search warrants has risen dramatically, from around 25 in 2002 to 5,601 in 2012, suggesting that “sneak and peek” searches are becoming alarmingly common. In fact, it is not at all clear whether true “sneak and peek” searches are on the rise. The data are confounded with other types of searches and thus are failing to capture what Congress intended. This article proposes an amendment to the reporting requirement to fix this problem and allow adequate monitoring of “sneak and peek” searches. To date, most courts have concluded that delayed notice search warrants raise no Fourth Amendment concerns. This article argues to the contrary. As a matter of Fourth Amendment first principles, covert searches infringe on the privacy and sanctity of the home. Moreover, history shows that delayed notice warrants are a modern procedural innovation, and did not exist at common law in the years leading up to the drafting of the Fourth Amendment in 1791. Instead, covert searches presumptively violate the Fourth Amendment “rule requiring notice” — a principle deeply rooted in the history of search and seizure law, and meant to protect against many of the dangers created by covert, delayed notice searching.
Scheduling with Communication Delays via LP Hierarchies and Clustering

We consider the classic problem of scheduling jobs with precedence constraints on identical machines to minimize makespan, in the presence of communication delays. In this setting, denoted by $\mathrm{P}\ \vert\ \text{prec}, c\ \vert\ C_{\max}$ , if two dependent jobs are scheduled on different machines, then at least $c$ units of time must pass between their executions. Despite its relevance to many applications, this model remains one of the most poorly understood in scheduling theory. Even for a special case where an unlimited number of machines is available, the best known approximation ratio is $2/3\cdot(c+1)$ , whereas Graham's greedy list scheduling algorithm already gives a ( $c+1$ ) -approximation in that setting. An outstanding open problem in the top-10 list by Schuurman and Woeginger and its recent update by Bansal asks whether there exists a constant-factor approximation algorithm. In this work we give a polynomial-time $O(\log c\cdot\log m)$ -approximation algorithm for this problem, where $m$ is the number of machines and $c$ is the communication delay. Our approach is based on a Sherali-Adams lift of a linear programming relaxation and a randomized clustering of the semimetric space induced by this lift. The full version of this paper is available on arXiv.
The Red Supergiant Binary Fraction as a Function of Metallicity in M31 and M33

Recent work measuring the binary fraction of evolved red supergiants (RSGs) in the Magellanic Clouds points to a value between 15-30%, with the majority of the companions being un-evolved B-type stars as dictated by stellar evolution. Here I extend this research to the Local Group galaxies M31 and M33, and investigate the RSG binary fraction as a function of metallicity. Recent near-IR photometric surveys of M31 and M33 have lead to the identification of a complete sample of RSGs down to a limiting $\log L/L_{\odot} \geq 4.2$. To determine the binary fraction of these M31 and M33 RSGs, I used a combination of newly obtained spectroscopy to identify single RSGs and RSG+OB binaries as well as archival UV, visible and near-IR photometry to probabilistically classify RSGs as either single or binary based on their colors. I then adjusted the observed RSG+OB binary fraction to account for observational biases. The resulting RSG binary fraction in M33 shows a strong dependence on galactocentric distance with the inner regions having a much higher binary fraction ($41.2^{+12.0}_{-7.3}$%) than the outer regions ($15.9^{+12.4}_{-1.9}$%). Such a trend is not seen in M31; instead, the binary fraction in lightly reddened regions remains constant at $33.5^{+8.6}_{-5.0}$%. I conclude the changing RSG binary fraction in M33 is due to a metallicity dependence with higher metallicity environments having higher RSG binary fractions. This dependence most likely stems not from changes in the physical properties of RSGs due to metallicity, but changes in the parent distribution of OB binaries.