cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Trading Strategies and Market Microstructure: Evidence from a Prediction Market

We examine transaction-level data from Intrade's 2012 presidential winner market for the entire two-year period for which trading occurred. The data allow us to compute key statistics, including volume, transactions, aggression, directional exposure, holding duration, margin, and profit for each of 6,300 unique trader accounts. We identify a diverse set of trading strategies that constitute a rich market ecology. These range from arbitrage-based strategies with low and fleeting directional exposure to strategies involving large accumulated positions in one of the two major party candidates. Most traders who make directional bets do so consistently in a single direction, unlike the information traders in some canonical models of market microstructure. We present evidence suggestive of manipulation by a single large trader, and consider the possible motives for such behavior. Broader implications for the interpretation of prices in financial markets and the theory of market microstructure are drawn.
Ruminations on Terrorism: Expiation and Exposition

To paraphrase Richard Falk: Terrorism is political or ideological violence without restraint of law or morality. This article will consider terrorism and reactions to terrorism through a prism of history, philosophy, literature, and law. It is an attempt to show how terrorism is committed by state actors, as well as non-state-actors. I argue that intentional or reckless slaughter of innocents or torturing "enemies" constitutes terrorism and that it ultimately erodes a state9s or a group9s morality and well-being. Most nations and groups define terrorism in a way that "allows" them to commit atrocity, but condemns "others" who commit the same acts. This ultimately promotes terrorism. Some definitions obscure the line between terrorism as a crime and terrorism as a tactic or strategy of armed conflict. It is important that the law not do this, as I argue that terrorism is criminal conduct. In addition, many, perhaps most, definitions of terrorism, even in criminal statutes and treaties, do not comport with basic principles of criminal law, such as principles of legality, due process, and other human rights and constitutional norms. I will also compare terrorism to other core international concepts, such as war crimes and crimes against humanity. Thus, the article will consider terrorism as a crime, noting the conceptual relationship between terrorism and basic domestic and international substantive criminal law. I will present a definition of terrorism as a crime, including its constituent elements. This allows me to study terrorism in the context of basic principles of culpability and innocence. The definition applies to conduct whether performed by state or government actors, by those who attack innocents to get at state government, or who use it against innocent members of factions whom they don9t see as adhering to the actor9s vision of "good order." Much of the article, however, is aimed at providing context by analyzing historical evidences of terrorism, including torture and other atrocities, designed to promote the power of those committing it. Thus, I will present an historical and comparative excursus, considering terrorism or analogous conduct and its punishment from antiquity, through the Middle Ages, to the present day, to show why such conduct ought to be punished.
Challenging the Roots of the Subprime Mortgage Crisis: The OCC's Operating Subsidiaries Regulations and Watters v. Wachovia Bank

In 2007, the Supreme Court in Watters v. Wachovia Bank finally sided with the OCC's preemption of state consumer protection laws which had policed operating subsidiaries of national banks. In drawing this conclusion, the OCC's unchallenged interpretations of the incidental powers of the NBA - the argument that "the national bank has incidental power to conduct business through operating subsidiaries" - played a determinative role, effectively rendering those subsidiaries subject to the exclusive regulation of the OCC. However, this paper argues that the OCC's construction is contrary to law and is unreasonable given the plain language of the NBA, precedential case law and the structure of the NBA. The OCC's arguments only reflect its self-interest to be "an umbrella bank regulator" of the operating subsidiary, a state-chartered corporation. To rethink debates concerning the regulatory jurisdiction over operating subsidiaries has significant implications. Operating subsidiaries which engage in originating subprime mortgages have created serious allegations of abusive lending practices. In particular, the preemption of state laws over operating subsidiaries since 2001 has deteriorated consumer protection in the subprime mortgage market, which is, to a substantial degree, responsible for the subprime mortgage crisis. The immunization of operating subsidiaries of national banks from stringent state consumer protection laws has been used to spread the agenda of deregulation over the entire sub-prime mortgage market for the past several years.
Naked Exclusion: An Experimental Study of Contracts with Externalities

This paper reports the results of an experiment designed to assess the ability of an incumbent seller to profitably foreclose a market with exclusive contracts. We use the strategic environment described by Rasmusen, Ramseyer, and Wiley (1991) and Segal and Whinston (2000) where entry is unprofitable when sufficiently many downstream buyers sign exclusive contracts with the incumbent. When discrimination is impossible, the game resembles a stag-hunt (coordination) game in which the buyers' payoffs are endogenously chosen by the incumbent seller. Exclusion occurs when the buyers fail to coordinate on their preferred equilibrium. Two-way non-binding pre-play communication among the buyers lowers the power of exclusive contracts and induces more generous contract terms from the seller. When discrimination and communication are possible, the exclusion rate rises. Divide-and-conquer strategies are observed more frequently when buyers can communicate with each other. Exclusion rates are significantly higher when the buyers' payoffs are endogenously chosen rather than exogenously given. Finally, secret offers are shown to decrease the incumbent's power to profitably exclude.
Organizational Beliefs and Managerial Vision

Can managers have an impact on their firm that goes beyond their direct actions and decisions? This article shows that a manager with strong beliefs about the right course of action will attract, through sorting in the labor market, employees with similar beliefs. This alignment of beliefs gives direction to the firm and has important implications for incentives and coordination. The article then defines vision, in accordance with the management literature, as a strong belief about the right course of action, and shows that it may be optimal to hire managers with such strong beliefs. Vision will be most important when uncertainty is high and actions are difficult to contract on.
Privacy Wrongs in Search of Remedies

The American legal system has generally rejected legal rights for data privacy and relies instead on market self-regulation and the litigation process to establish norms of appropriate behavior in society. Information privacy is protected only through an amalgam of narrowly targeted rules. The aggregation of these specific rights leaves many significant gaps and fewer clear remedies for violations of fair information practices. With an absence of well-established legal rights, privacy wrongs are currently in search of remedies. The American public is beginning to demand that data privacy violators be held accountable. In a recent survey, Internet users overwhelmingly called for sanctions ranging from jail time to blacklisting of organizations that failed to respect privacy policies. Public enforcement actions and private law suits in the United States are just emerging as an important force in the creation of adequate protection for citizens' personal information in American society. This Article first describes privacy rights and wrongs that frame the search for remedies in the United States. In particular, this section focuses on two different types of harm created by the misuse of personal information and the desire to find protective rights: personal or private wrongs and public or societal wrongs. Next this Federal Trade Commission and state Attorneys General have become important enforcers against personal wrongs, but their efforts fall short of accomplishing systematic change and fail to provide individual victims with any real remedy. The third part of this Article examines private claims for privacy wrongs. This section explores some tortured efforts to obtain redress for privacy violations and offers a few theories for unexploited and unexplored claims. Finally, this Article concludes with an instrumentalist view of the search for remedies. The current mismatch between privacy wrongs and remedies creates a destabilizing force that will ultimately push in favor of enhanced legal rights for data privacy.
Why Antitrust Damage Levels Should Be Raised

The conventional wisdom is that current antitrust damage levels are too high, lead to overdeterrence, and should be cut back. Although most agree that threefold damages are fine, at least for cartels, the combination of treble damages to direct purchasers and another treble damages to indirect purchasers typically is denounced as duplicative, a “mess,” or the equivalent of the use of “cluster bombs” on defendants. This article, however, will assert the opposite. This article will argue that, if the current antitrust damage levels are examined carefully, they do not even total treble damages, and overall are not high enough to deter antitrust violations optimally. Perhaps this debate can first start with a point of general agreement. It cannot reasonably be disputed that the current antitrust damages system is a confusing, inefficient patchwork. The current
Economic Shocks and Conflict: Evidence from Commodity Prices †

Abstract Higher national incomes are correlated with political stability. Is this relationship causal? We test three theories linking income to conflict with new data on export price shocks. Price shocks have no effect on new conflict, even large shocks in high-risk nations. Rising prices, however, weakly lead to shorter, less deadly wars. This evidence contradicts the theory that rising state revenues incentivize state capture, but supports the idea that rising revenues improve counter-insurgency capacity and reduce individual incentives to fight in existing conflicts. Conflict onset and continuation follow different processes. Ignoring this time dependence generates mistaken conclusions about income and instability. (JEL D72, D74, O13, O17, O19, Q02, Q34)
The Folklore of Legal Biography

This essay reviews Spencer Weber Waller's recent biography of the legal realist Thurman Arnold (NYU Press 2005). Arnold's academic and popular writings during the 1930s - which not only critiqued what he saw as the foolishness and ill effects of legal formalism and political conservatism, but also recognized the symbolic authority of legal forms and conservative beliefs and the need for any reform movement to respect and appropriate them - force us to reconsider the entire project of legal biography. Arnold's life and work reveal the ways in which the forces of modernity - forces that Arnold celebrated in his work and helped unleash in the New Deal and at Arnold & Porter - call into question the rugged individual that biography requires. Arnold's critical realist project sought to uncover the historically contingent and ideological nature of the classical liberal conception of the subject who authors his own individual life; but at the same time, the culturalist side of Arnold's work explains why this conception remains necessary, given the symbolic nature of a legal system and the deeply felt needs we have in residual concepts.
Is universal banking justified? Evidence from bank underwriting of corporate bonds in Japan ☆

Abstract We examine the extent to which universal banking in Japan creates conflicts of interest. We find that as banks enter the securities business, they discount the price of the corporate bonds they underwrite significantly in an effort to attract investors, thereby generating conflicts of interest that are harmful to issuers. Further, we find that close prior lending relationships between banks and their client issuers is the driving force behind such conflicts and that competition from investment houses limits but does not eliminate these conflicts. Our results contrast sharply with the evidence for the US, which largely shows a certification role for banks.
Trade restrictions as facilitating practices

Abstract The effect of quantitative restrictions in oligopolistic markets is shown to depend on whether imports are substitutes or complements for domestic products. In the former case, they have profound effects even when set at free trade levels because they impede the ability of the foreign firm to compete in the domestic market, thereby acting to facilitate collusion and raise prices and profits. For this reason, tariffs and quotas are fundamentally non-equivalent with substitute goods. When goods are complements, a voluntary export restriction (VER) at the free trade level has no effect, and tariffs and quotas are equivalent.
A comprehensive analysis of the short-term interest-rate dynamics

This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the short-term interest-rate dynamics based on three different data sets and two flexible parametric specifications. The significance of nonlinearity in the short-rate drift declines with increasing maturity for the interest-rate series used in the study. Using a flexible diffusion specification and incorporating GARCH volatility and non-normal innovation reduce the need for a nonlinear drift specification. Finally, the nonlinear drift specification performs better than the linear drift specification only when the short-term interest-rate levels reach historical highs.
Commerce, Death Panels, and Broccoli: Or Why the Activity/Inactivity Distinction in the Health Care Case Was Really About the Right to Bodily Integrity

In National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, five Justices of the United States Supreme Court opined that the Commerce Clause does not authorize Congress to regulate “inactivity.” In giving effect to the intuition that laws compelling activity impose a more serious burden on the individual than do laws forbidding activity, these Justices mistakenly imported a libertarian principle into the Court’s federalism jurisprudence. Indeed, the intuition is not even true in all individual rights cases. Nonetheless, in the aim of understanding the logic behind the position, this Article explains how affirmative mandates that infringe the substantive due process right to bodily integrity can be more intrusive than prohibitions. In so doing, it draws connections between the political charge that the health care law would establish “death panels” and the effective use of the hypothetical fear that upholding the law’s socalled individual mandate would permit the government to require people to eat broccoli.
Labor market search, sticky prices, and interest rate policies

What accounts for the significant real effects of monetary policy shocks? And what accounts for the persistent and hump shaped responses of output and inflation in response to such shocks? These questions are investigated in a model that incorporates labor market search, habit persistence, sticky prices, and policy inertia. While habit persistence and price stickiness are important for the hump shaped output response and the long, drawn out inflation response, respectively, labor market frictions increase the output response and reduce the inflation response relative to an otherwise similar model based on a Walrasian labor market. Significantly, policy inertia itself is found to be the most important factor in accounting for the magnitude of the output effects of policy shocks in the model.
Incentive Stock Options and the Alternative Minimum Tax: the Worst Of Times

Congress enacted the Alternative Minimum Tax (“AMT”) to stop highincome individuals from escaping their tax liabilities through tax code loopholes. In recent years, increasing numbers of moderate-income taxpayers have been subject to astronomical AMT liabilities. The problem has been especially acute for technology sector employees who exercised stock options while the market was high, sold their stock after its value fell, and found themselves owing AMT they could not afford to pay. In this Essay, Professor Lipman explains the Internal Revenue Code’s complicated treatment of Incentive Stock Options (“ISOs”). She argues that the AMT adjustment for ISOs should not be eliminated, but suggests several reforms to simplify tax treatment of ISOs and reduce the number of taxpayers who are subject to AMT.
The audit market effects of disputing a GAAP-deficient PCAOB inspection report

Abstract As part of its charter, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) has the authority to inspect and review the workpapers of all accounting firms that provide auditing services to publicly traded companies. The PCAOB summarizes their findings in publicly available inspection reports available on its website. Prior research suggests that the accessibility, variation and source creditability of the inspection reports creates a publicly available audit quality signal that is used by various auditor choice stakeholders. This is particularly true for triennially inspected auditors that receive a GAAP-deficient report ( Abbott, Gunny, & Zhang, 2013 ). In a GAAP-deficient inspection report, the PCAOB alleges that the auditor failed to identify departures from generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) in the clients' financial statements. In this paper, we investigate whether and to what extent the auditor's response – which is also encapsulated in the inspection report – impacts the reaction to GAAP-deficient inspection reports. We create a sample of 113 GAAP-deficient inspection reports that correspond to 100 unique auditors. For these 100 auditors and their 805 audit clients, we find auditors that dispute the PCAOB findings are less likely to be dismissed by their clients when the client has an audit committee with accounting-related financial expertise. Collectively, our results indicate that auditor choice stakeholders weigh both the PCAOB- and auditor-assessments of auditor performance.
Accurately identifying vertebral levels in large datasets

The vertebral levels of the spine provide a useful coordinate system when making measurements of plaque, muscle, fat, and bone mineral density. Correctly classifying vertebral levels with high accuracy is challenging due to the similar appearance of each vertebra, the curvature of the spine, and the possibility of anomalies such as fractured vertebrae, implants, lumbarization of the sacrum, and sacralization of L5. The goal of this work is to develop a system that can accurately and robustly identify the L1 level in large heterogeneous datasets. The first approach we study is using a 3D U-Net to segment the L1 vertebra directly using the entire scan volume to provide context. We also tested models for two class segmentation of L1 and T12 and a three class segmentation of L1, T12 and the rib attached to T12. By increasing the number of training examples to 249 scans using pseudo-segmentations from an in-house segmentation tool we were able to achieve 98% accuracy with respect to identifying the L1 vertebra, with an average error of 4.5 mm in the craniocaudal level. We next developed an algorithm which performs iterative instance segmentation and classification of the entire spine with a 3D U-Net. We found the instance based approach was able to yield better segmentations of nearly the entire spine, but had lower classification accuracy for L1.
We are what we Consume: The Influence of Food Consumption on Impulsive Choice:

Abstract Consumers' impulsive choices have traditionally been attributed either to contextual factors, such as product attributes and store environment, or to individual personality traits. In this article, the authors find that type of food consumed can also influence impulsive choice. Specifically, food that enhances the levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin can reduce impulsive choice. To test the hypotheses on the influence of serotonin on postconsumption impulsive choice, the authors collected data on the eve of Thanksgiving. The occasion of Thanksgiving dinner provides a naturalistic setting in which people consume a tryptophan-rich meal (tryptophan is a precursor to serotonin). The authors replicate these findings and obtain converging evidence in a lab setting in which they give some participants a tryptophan-rich beverage and observe their postconsumption impulsive choices.
Model calibration and automated trading agent for Euro futures

We explored the application of a machine learning method, Logitboost, to automatically calibrate a trading model using different versions of the same technical analysis indicators. This approach takes advantage of boosting's feature selection capability to select an optimal combination of technical indicators and design a new set of trading rules. We tested this approach with high-frequency data of the Dow Jones EURO STOXX 50 Index Futures (FESX) and the DAX Futures (FDAX) for March 2009. Our method was implemented with different learning algorithms and outperformed a combination of the same group of technical analysis indicators using the parameters typically recommended by practitioners. We incorporated this method of model calibration in a trading agent that relies on a layered structure consisting of the machine learning algorithm described above, an online learning utility, a trading strategy, and a risk management overlay. The online learning layer combines the output of several experts and suggests...
Quantifying Equilibrium Network Externalities in the ACH Banking Industry

We seek to estimate the causes and magnitudes of network externalities for the automated clearinghouse (ACH) electronic payments system, using a panel data set on individual bank usage of ACH. We construct an equilibrium model of consumer and bank adoption of ACH in the presence of a network. The model identifies network externalities from correlations of changes in usage levels for banks within a network, from changes in usage following changes in market concentration or sizes of competitors and from adoption decisions of banks outside the network with small branches in the network, and can separately identify consumer and bank network effects. We structurally estimate the parameters of the model by matching equilibrium behavior to the data, using simulated maximum likelihood and a data set of localized networks, and use a bootstrap to recover confidence intervals. The parameters are estimated with high precision and fit various moments of the data reasonably well. We find that most of the impediment to ACH adoption is due to large consumer fixed costs of adoption. The deadweight loss from the network externality is moderate: the optimal number of ACH transactions is about 16% higher than the equilibrium level.
The Geography of Fear

Whether the danger invoked is nuclear war or genetically modified foods, far more people in some countries than in others say they are afraid. Using data from six surveys, I show that the levels of reported fear of different dangers correlate strongly across both individuals and countries. I construct indexes of fearfulness for 15-25 countries and map the prevalence of fear in Western Europe. About two thirds of the crossnational variation within Europe can be explained by differences in pessimism--the degree to which respondents exaggerate the likelihood of disasters. Among the countries for which I have data, the most robust correlates of fearfulness relate to countries' religious traditions. Fear tends to be higher in countries where more people believe in Hell and where fewer believe in Heaven.
Protecting the ERISA Whistleblower: The Reach of Section 510 of ERISA

Congress passed the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) to ensure the protection of private employee benefits. In doing so, Congress created uniform national standards for the administration of private employee benefit plans. Section 510 of ERISA affords some protection to whistleblowers who report ERISA violations. There is uncertainty, however, about whether section 510 protects a whistleblower who complains directly to his or her employer, or whether protection is limited to an individual who makes a report externally. Some circuit courts have held that section 510 protects all ERISA whistleblowers, while others have held that section 510’s protections are more limited. This Note considers the history of ERISA and of whistleblower laws, addresses the circuit split over the reach of section 510’s whistleblower protection provisions, and proposes an interpretation of section 510 that would provide broad protection to ERISA whistleblowers.
Term Structure Dynamics in Theory and Reality

This article is a critical survey of models designed for pricing fixed-income securities and their associated term structures of market yields. Our primary focus is on the interplay between the theoretical specification of dynamic term structure models and their empirical fit to historical changes in the shapes of yield curves. We begin by overviewing the dynamic term structure models that have been fit to treasury or swap yield curves and in which the risk factors follow diffusions, jump-diffusion, or have "switching regimes." Then the goodness-of-fit of these models is assessed relative to their abilities to (i) match linear projections of changes in yields onto the slope of the yield curve; (ii) match the persistence of conditional volatilities, and the shapes of term structures of unconditional volatilities, of yields; and (iii) to reliably price caps, swaptions, and other fixed-income derivatives. For the case of defaultable securities we explore the relative fits to historical yield spreads. Copyright 2003, Oxford University Press.
STRATEGIC IPO UNDERPRICING, INFORMATION MOMENTUM, AND LOCKUP EXPIRATION SELLING

Managers usually do not sell any of their own shares in an initial public offering but instead wait until the end of the lockup period. We develop a model in which managers strategically underprice IPOs to maximize personal wealth from selling shares at lockup expiration. Firstday underpricing generates information momentum by attracting attention to the stock and thereby shifting the demand curve for the stock outwards. This allows managers to sell shares at the lockup expiration at prices higher than they wouldotherwise obtain. We test the model on a sample of IPOs in the 1990s. We findthat higher ownership by managers is positively correlated with first-day underpricing, underpricing is positively correlated with research coverage, andresearch coverage is positively correlatedwith stock returns andinsid er selling at the lockup expiration. These results are consistent with the model. r 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
Fiscal Constraints and the Loss of Home Rule: The Long-Term Impacts of California’s Post-Proposition 13 Fiscal Regime

The passage of Proposition 13 in 1978 was a watershed event that ushered in both a new era and a new fiscal regime for California’s local governments. The authors argue that in the wake of follow-on initiatives, a protracted recessionary period, and the state’s use of newly authorized revenue-transfer powers, this still-evolving regime entered a new phase in the 1990s. This article analyzes the primary impacts of and responses to the changes in California’s post-Proposition 13 fiscal regime in the 1990s in five local jurisdictions. The results reveal that the most significant long-term impacts of this regime have been an altered fiscal structure and an unintended decrease in local home rule. These impacts, in turn, have led to cuts in nonessential services, the expansion of sales tax-generating redevelopment efforts, implementation of new taxes and user service fees, and increased reliance on one-time fiscal measures.
An Empirical Analysis of Analysts' Target Prices: Short‐term Informativeness and Long‐term Dynamics

Using a large database of analysts' target prices issued over the period 1997?1999, we examine short-term market reactions to target price revisions and long-term comovement of target and stock prices. We find a significant market reaction to the information contained in analysts' target prices, both unconditionally and conditional on contemporaneously issued stock recommendation and earnings forecast revisions. Using a cointegration approach, we analyze the long-term behavior of market and target prices. We find that, on average, the one-year-ahead target price is 28 percent higher than the current market price.
Between Monster and Machine: Rethinking the Judicial Function

The way in which the judicial function is conceptualized has overarching implications for law and legal theory. Yet judges and legal scholars have been unable to construct a coherent and believable characterization of the judicial process or generate an adequate aspirational model for judging. This essay maintains that such questions cannot be meaningfully tackled without an appreciation of the jurisprudential threats that judges themselves perceive as circumscribing their work. It begins by examining two vivid and recurrent metaphorical images?-the monster, and the machine?-which have been used repeatedly in judicial opinions to express what judging should not be. These two pejorative images together represent precisely what is most disturbing and problematic about the work of judging, and correspond to the twin dangers of runaway discretion and complete preclusion of discretion. Taking these jurisprudential threats as starting points, I consider the inherent tension between rules-based and discretionary models of judging. After critiquing two alternative formulations of the work of judging that have gained currency--the metaphor of balancing, and the chain-novelist approach suggested by Dworkin-?I consider how the judicial function might be more meaningfully reconceptualized.
Eastern and Southern Africa Monetary Integration: A Structural Vector Autoregression Analysis

This paper uses VAR techniques to investigate the potential for forming monetary unions in Eastern and Southern Africa. All countries in the sample are members of various regional economic organizations. Some of the organizations have a monetary union as an immediate objective whereas others consider it as a possibility in the more distant future. Our objective is to sort out which countries are suitable candidates for a monetary union based on the synchronicity of demand and supply disturbances. Although economic shocks are not highly correlated across the entire region, we tentatively identify three sub-regional clusters of countries that may benefit from a currency union. We find some tentative evidence that some, though not all, sub-regions may benefit from a link to the Euro.
Douglass North’s Theory of Politics

Douglass C. North, co-winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 1993, became a major leader in historical and comparative political science and in the study of institutions more generally. His work proved particularly relevant for those interested in questions of state building, state variation, development, and long-term secular change.
The Disenfranchisement of Felons

After discussing the interests that ground theright to democratic political participation,arguments for the disenfranchisement of thosewho commit serious criminal offenses areexamined. The arguments are divided into twogroups. The first group consists of argumentsthat are relatively independent of thejustifying aims of punishment. It is concededthat two of these arguments establish thatsome, though by no means all, serious offendersshould lose the vote for a period of time thatdoes not necessarily overlap with the durationof the other sanctions visited upon them. Thesearguments also imply that the state isjustified in attempting to exclude theoffenders in question from all forms ofpolitical participation, a position thatarguably runs afoul of moral limits onpunishment. The second group of arguments makesexplicit reference to the justifying aims ofpunishment. None supports the blanketdisenfranchisement of felons, though some mayjustify it in relation to some seriousoffenders for certain periods of time. All ofthe arguments supporting the disenfranchisementof serious offenders are most persuasive on theassumption that they live in reasonably justsocieties that are genuinely democratic. Ifthat assumption is false or questionable, thenit is argued that the force of such argumentsmay be weakened considerably.
A Rose.com by Any Other Name

We document a striking positive stock price reaction to the announcement of corporate name changes to Internet-related dotcom names. This "dotcom" effect produces cumulative abnormal returns on the order of 74 percent for the 10 days surrounding the announcement day. The effect does not appear to be transitory; there is no evidence of a postannouncement negative drift. The announcement day effect is also similar across all firms, regardless of the firm's level of involvement with the Internet. A mere association with the Internet seems enough to provide a firm with a large and permanent value increase. The popular financial press has long argued that corporate name changes result in permanent value creation for firms. Analysts claim that investors prefer certain types of names, and that the value of a company's name should be reflected in the stock price. However, the academic literature has found little evidence that the announcement of a name change results in a positive stock price reaction for the firm. Karpoff and Rankine (1994) find that companies changing their names earn a statistically insignificant excess return of 0.4 percent over a 2-day window around the announcement date. They also find that corporate name changes do not correspond to changes in the covariances of the firm's stock returns with other firms' returns in the same industry nor do they correspond to changes in earnings. Bosch and Hirschey (1989) report that firms announcing name changes earn a statistically insignificant excess return of 1.62 percent in a 21-day period around the announcement date. They find a positive preannouncement effect followed by a negative postannouncement drift, which largely cancels the announcement effect. We investigate the valuation effects of one particular form of corporate name change-those of companies who add ".com" to their names. A number of popular press articles have reported extremely large returns earned
Multi‐Track Constitutionalism Beyond Carl Schmitt

Two great models of constitution making are in competition today, the populist-democratic one revived in the Andean republics of Latin America, and the post (organ) sovereign paradigm developed from Spain in the 1970s via Central Europe in 89 and after, and perfected in South Africa in the 1990s. The former, with an elective affinity for dictatorship so obviously precarious for constitutional democracy, falls well within Carl Schmitt’s institutionally somewhat indeterminate scheme of constituent power. The latter decisively breaks with his theory, and leads to a new and different theory of constituent authority, based on the pluralistic, multi-stage generation of democratic legitimacy capable of taking questions of power into full account.
Capital jury deliberation: effects on death sentencing, comprehension, and discrimination.

This study focused on whether and how deliberations affected the comprehension of capital penalty phase jury instructions and patterns of racially discriminatory death sentencing. Jury-eligible subjects were randomly assigned to view one of four versions of a simulated capital penalty trial in which the race of defendant (Black or White) and the race of victim (Black or White) were varied orthogonally. The participants provided their initial “straw” sentencing verdicts individually and then deliberated in simulated 4–7 person “juries.” Results indicated that deliberation created a punitive rather than lenient shift in the jurors’ death sentencing behavior, failed to improve characteristically poor instructional comprehension, did not reduce the tendency for jurors to misuse penalty phase evidence (especially, mitigation), and exacerbated the tendency among White mock jurors to sentence Black defendants to death more often than White defendants.
Optimal Dynamic Trading Strategies

This article presents a straightforward technique for computing solutions to discrete, multi-period consumption/investment problems. It solves for the optimal stochastic consumption plans, as well as the optimal dynamic trading strategies that maximize utility for an individual. The technique permits general utility functions that may or may not be time-separable. It also allows general changes in the investment opportunity set and allows the user to impose upper and lower bounds on trading behaviour. Divergent borrowing and lending rates can be handled, as can stochastic labour income risks. Computed solutions verify the predictions of well-known intertemporal works by Merton, Breeden and others. J.E.L.:G13).
The generalized orthogonal Procrustes problem in the high noise regime

We consider the problem of estimating a cloud of points from numerous noisy observations of that cloud after unknown rotations, and possibly reflections. This is an instance of the general problem of estimation under group action, originally inspired by applications in 3-D imaging and computer vision. We focus on a regime where the noise level is larger than the magnitude of the signal, so much so that the rotations cannot be estimated reliably. We propose a simple and efficient procedure based on invariant polynomials (effectively: the Gram matrices) to recover the signal, and we assess it against fundamental limits of the problem that we derive. We show our approach adapts to the noise level and is statistically optimal (up to constants) for both the low and high noise regimes. In studying the variance of our estimator, we encounter the question of the sensivity of a type of thin Cholesky factorization, for which we provide an improved bound which may be of independent interest.
Do the SEC's enforcement preferences affect corporate misconduct? ☆

Abstract Recent frauds have questioned the efficacy of the SEC's enforcement program. We hypothesize that differences in firms' information sets about SEC enforcement and constraints facing the SEC affect firms' proclivity to adopt aggressive accounting practices. We find that firms located closer to the SEC and in areas with greater past SEC enforcement activity, both proxies for firms' information about SEC enforcement, are less likely to restate their financial statements. Consistent with the resource-constrained SEC view, the SEC is more likely to investigate firms located closer to its offices. Our results suggest that regulation is most effective when it is local.
Understanding the relation between accruals and volatility: A real options-based investment approach

Abstract Accruals are fundamental to financial reporting and are the underlying innovation of accounting. Despite this, accounting research has provided little understanding of how economic forces affect a firm׳s level of accruals and limited guidance for forming expectations of accruals based on ex ante firm characteristics. We consider accruals as a form of investment and examine whether theoretical predictions from a real options-based investment framework provide insight into the relation between accruals and the ex ante expected volatility faced by the firm. Specifically, the theory predicts that higher volatility dampens investment because firms prefer to ‘wait and see’ instead of investing immediately. Consistent with this theory, we document a robust negative relation between year-ahead net working capital accruals and expected volatility. We also predict and find that the negative association between year-ahead net working capital accruals and expected volatility is less pronounced for distressed firms and more pronounced for firms with a longer operating cycle, and that current asset accruals are more sensitive to volatility than current liability accruals. Finally, we find that the residuals from an investment-based expected accrual model outperform those from the widely-used performance-adjusted modified Jones model in identifying companies that just meet or beat analysts’ earnings forecasts. Collectively, our findings suggest that the investment perspective of accruals, and in particular the real options-based investment framework, provide useful insights for forming expectations of accruals.
Improving U.S. Stock Return Forecasts: A “Fair-Value” CAPE Approach

The accuracy of U.S. stock return forecasts based on the cyclically-adjusted P/E (CAPE) ratio has deteriorated since 1985. A primary reason has been that traditional CAPE regressions assume the CAPE ratio reverts mechanically to its long-run average, regardless of the macroeconomic environment. In this article, the authors propose an enhancement to standard CAPE-based forecasts that conditions mean reversion in the CAPE ratio on real (not nominal) bond yields, expected inflation rates, and financial volatility in a VAR model. The forecasted results are promising for both real and nominal returns, with out-of-sample forecast errors approximately 50% lower than traditional approaches. The differences are economically meaningful and statistically significant over the forecast period examined. At present, low real bond yields imply low real earnings yields and an above-average “fair-value” CAPE ratio. Nevertheless, with Shiller’s CAPE ratio now well above its fair value, the model proposed by the author predicts nominal U.S. stock returns centered near 5% over the next decade.
A review of Bayesian asymptotics in general insurance applications

Over the last two decades, Bayesian methods have been widely used in general insurance applications, ranging from credibility theory to loss-reserves estimation, but this literature rarely addresses questions about the method’s asymptotic properties. In this paper, we review the Bayesian’s notion of posterior consistency in both parametric and nonparametric models and its implication on the sensitivity of the posterior to the actuary’s choice of prior. We review some of the techniques for proving posterior consistency and, for illustration, we apply these results to investigate the asymptotic properties of several recently proposed Bayesian methods in general insurance.
A Model of Fiat Money and Barter

Abstract We present an infinite horizon model with capital in which fiat money and barter are two competing means of payment. Fiat money has value because barter is limited by the extent of a double coincidence of wants. The pattern of exchange generally involves both money and barter. We find that the Chicago rule is sufficient for Pareto efficiency, while nominal interest smoothing is necessary. For a specific utility function we provide a complete characterization of the patterns of exchange and calculate the range of inflation rates over which a stationary monetary equilibrium exists.Journal of Economic LiteratureClassification Numbers: D51, E42, E52.
Shadow wages, allocative inefficiency, and labor supply in smallholder agriculture

This article introduces a method for estimating structural labor supply models in the presence of unobservable wages and deviations of households' marginal revenue product of self-employed labor from their shadow wage. This method is therefore robust to a wide range of assumptions about labor allocation decisions in the presence of uncertainty, market frictions, locational preferences, etc. We illustrate the method using data from rice producers in Cote d'Ivoire. These data, like previous studies, reveal significant systematic differences between shadow wages and the marginal revenue product of family farm labor. We demonstrate how one can exploit systematic deviations, in the present case related to household characteristics such as the land/labor endowment ratio, to control for both unobservable wages and prospective allocative inefficiency in labor allocation in structural household labor supply estimation.
Marketing's Credibility: A Longitudinal Investigation of Marketing Communication Productivity and Shareholder Value

Abstract Practitioners and scholars have questioned marketing communication's credibility because it has not been linked to firm shareholder value. Using secondary longitudinal data, the authors show that the impact of marketing communication productivity (MCP) on shareholder value is positive and nonlinear. In particular, the influence of MCP on the forward-looking performances of Tobin's q and stock return is curvilinear with an inverted U shape. The authors also investigate the moderating role of research-and-development investment and competitive intensity. The findings have implications for marketing managers regarding how to model and benchmark MCP and the dangers of blindly improving the productivity of advertising and sales promotion expenditures.
“Fine Distinctions” in the Contemporary Law of Insider Trading

The law of insider trading is evolving in a way that reflects a fundamental conflict between a vision of the prohibition as a moralistic response to greed on the part of the privileged––especially when they occupy roles as fiduciaries––and a vision of the prohibition as akin to more conventional securities fraud. This Article traces this conflict back to Cady, Roberts, and then examines some contemporary issues that reflect this tension, especially the emergence of a theory of “reckless tipping.”
Systemic risk measurement in banking using self-organizing maps

This paper utilizes neural network mapping technology to assess the dynamic nature of systemic risk over time in the banking industry. We combine the nonparametric method of trait recognition with self-organizing maps to generate annual pictures of the 16 largest U.S. banks’ financial condition from 2003 to 2012. Results show that systemic risk was gradually rising prior to the 2008–2009 financial crisis and peaked in 2009. Thereafter, big banks were recovering but considerable systemic risk lingered. Implications to bank regulatory policy and credit risk management are discussed.
Echoes from the Past: What We Can Learn About Unity, Belonging and Respecting Differences from the Flag Salute Cases

The flag salute cases can be understood as another context where respect and tolerance were shown. Minority groups want to be more than just left alone or barely tolerated; they want to feel approval, safety, and belonging.
Does the Investment Interest Limitation Explain the Existence of Dividends

Abstract Miller and Scholes have shown that under certain conditions the Federal Income Tax taxes dividend income at a rate no higher than the rate on capital gains. Tabulations of actual 1977 tax returns show that the special circumstances under which this can occur apply to recipients of two and one half percent of dividend income and that no dominant role may therefore be ascribed to their hypothesis in the determination of corporate dividend policy.