cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Unlawful Status as a "Constitutional Irrelevancy"?: The Equal Protection Rights of Illegal Immigrants

In 1982, the Supreme Court decided Plyler v. Doe, the first and only case in which it has addressed the level of scrutiny applicable to state classifications of illegal immigrants under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In a complex and internally incoherent opinion, the Court declared that unlawful status is not a "constitutional irrelevancy," and thus proceeded to hold that classifications based on illegal immigrant status deserve only rational basis review even though classifications of legal immigrants are accorded strict judicial scrutiny. Subsequent courts have since cited to Plyler to uphold discriminatory legislation stripping illegal immigrants of basic economic and social benefits. With the recent rise in anti-illegal immigrant sentiment, as evidenced by the passing of several state and local laws targeting the undocumented community, there is a serious risk that illegal immigrants in America will soon be converted into an outlaw caste, outside of the protection of the laws and neglected as nonpersons by those who nevertheless benefit from the contributions that they make to American society. The Equal Protection Clause extends its protections to all "persons" within the United States' jurisdiction including those who are unlawfully present in this country, and should be interpreted in a manner that allows it to fulfill its universalist textual promise. In this paper I argue that the Supreme Court should re-examine its holding in Plyler and find that unlawful status is constitutionally irrelevant in the equal protection context. Put differently, I argue that the Supreme Court should apply the same legal standard to illegal immigrant classifications that it accords legal immigrant classifications: strict scrutiny review.
Money, Time Preference and External Balance

In monetary economies, international differences in rates of time preference do not in general lead to long run trade imbalances -- in sharp contrast with Butter's 119811 results on non-monetary overlapping generation economies. This claim is documented within the context of a simple two country framework in which new immortal families enter each economy over time, with the two countries differing only in their subjective discount rates. Even if consumers are more "impatient" at home than abroad, trade is balanced in the long run in the presence of valued fiat currencies in constant supply, and the current account is indeterminate.
Impact of Social Learning on Privacy-Preserving Data Collection

We study a game-theoretic model where a data collector purchases data from users through a payment mechanism. Each user has her personal signal which represents her knowledge about the underlying state the data collector desires to learn. Through social interactions, each user can also learn noisy versions of her friends’ personal signals, which are called ‘group signals’. We develop a Bayesian game theoretic framework to study the impact of social learning on users’ data reporting strategies and devise the payment mechanism for the data collector accordingly. We show that the Bayesian-Nash equilibrium can be in the form of either a symmetric randomized response (SR) strategy or an informative non-disclosive (ND) strategy. Specifically, a generalized majority voting rule is applied by each user to her noisy group signals to determine which strategy to follow. Our findings reveal that both the data collector and the users can benefit from social learning which drives down the privacy costs and helps to improve the state estimation for a given total payment budget. Further, we derive bounds on the minimum total payment required to achieve a given level of state estimation accuracy.
Transparency and Policymaking at the Supreme Court

Transparency is undoubtedly an important principle in a democratic government. It is not, however, necessarily a one-size-fits-all proposition. This holds true for issues of transparency at the Supreme Court. Whereas the Court’s traditional adjudicative responsibilities fit comfortably within norms of transparent decision making like publishing written opinions in merits cases, some of its other, more policy-oriented roles do not. This short paper considers two areas in which the Court’s activities more closely resemble policy judgments than traditional adjudication — certiorari and recusal — and uses them as examples of how the nature of the Court’s activity can impact the value of transparency in that activity. It does not seek to prove that transparency is per se less valuable in certiorari and recusal decisions, but rather to highlight the highly discretionary nature of those decisions and to propose that granting such a high degree of latitude to the Court also triggers some of the protections, like the deliberative process privilege, that are more commonly associated with policymaking by administrative agencies. The result is a call for a more context-based dialogue about transparency at the Court in hopes of promoting both our democratic values and the legitimacy of one of our most important institutions.
Legislative Alternatives to the Google Book Settlement

In the aftermath of Judge Chin's rejection of the proposed Google Book settlement, it is time to consider legislative alternatives. This article explores a number of component parts of a legislative package that might accomplish many of the good things that the proposed settlement promised without the downsides that would have attended judicial approval of it. It gives particular attention to the idea of an extended collective licensing regime as a way to make out-of-print but in-copyright books more widely available to the public. But it also considers several other measures, such as one aimed at allowing orphan works to be made available and some new privileges that would allow digitization for preservation purposes and nonconsumptive research uses of a digital library of books from the collections of major research libraries.
Dynamic changepoints revisited: An evolving process model of new product sales

Abstract This paper posits a new framework to model the trial of and repeat purchasing of a new product. While much research has examined underlying shifts in consumer purchasing patterns, the typical assumption has been that the underlying purchasing process remains the same although the purchasing rate may change over time. Motivated by Fader, Hardie, and Huang's development of a dynamic changepoint model [Fader, P. S., Hardie, B. G. S., & Huang, C. -Y. (2004). A Dynamic Changepoint Model for New Product Sales Forecasting. Marketing Science, 23 (1), 50–65], we consider an evolving process as consumers gain more experience with a new product. Our framework assumes that consumers progress through two purchasing states, becoming more regular in their inter-purchase times as they gain experience with the product through repeat purchases. More specifically, they move from an initial state of exponential purchasing to a “steady state” that is characterized by a more regular Erlang-2 timing distribution. The proposed model is very flexible and nests a number of existing models, enabling it to explain a wide range of observed behavioral patterns. We apply our evolving process model to the same datasets used by Fader, Hardie, and Huang [Fader, P. S., Hardie, B. G. S., & Huang, C. -Y. (2004). A Dynamic Changepoint Model for New Product Sales Forecasting. Marketing Science, 23 (1), 50–65] and compare our results to a number of competing models. We find empirical evidence to support the use of a two-state model, since it yields relevant insights as well as improved empirical performance. We discuss the implications as they relate to forecasting new product sales.
Liberty, property, environmentalism

The environment has often been thought to consist of resources that are unowned, and hence subject to the well-known tragedy of the commons. But in recent years, property ideas have been increasingly recruited for environmental protection, in a manner that appears to vindicate the view that property rights evolve along with the needs for resource management. Nevertheless, property regimes have some pitfalls for environmental resources: the relevant parties may not be able to come to agreement; property regimes may be weak or ineffective; they may be aimed at purposes inconsistent with environmental protection; property rights definitions may not work well for environmental resources; modern property regimes may promote monoculture rather than diverse environments. This essay describes these problems and asks to what degree they apply to a new effort to use property rights approaches, namely cap-and-trade programs to control greenhouse gases. It concludes that property rights, while imperfect and something of a retreat from a regime of complete liberty, may offer gains for environmental protection. But success will depend on close attention to the accountability and effectiveness of the governmental institutions necessary to support environmental property regimes.
Sounds of Silence: The Supreme Court and Affirmative Action

The Supreme Court's decisions on race-based affirmative action has steered the constitutional conversation away from race and its role in American society and placed institutions at the center of the debate. Throughout the cases, the reasoning of the Court turns on how particular issues affect, distract, or fit into existing institutional arrangements and institutional practices. Race consciousness, when allowed, is permitted because of institutional reasons - that is, that result is dictated by the Justices' ideas and beliefs about various institutions in our society. How race-conscious policies and laws can be structured and implemented is also guided by the Court's institutional concerns and understandings. As a result the contours of constitutional doctrine on affirmative action are not determined by the demands of racial justice, but by the ability of racial preferences to fit into current institutional regimes. The Court's emphasis on institutions in its reasoning and rhetoric instead of more explicit focus on racial considerations is problematic. Not only does the Court's reliance on institutional concerns obscure the central issues of race involved and of America's racial past inherent in the affirmative action controversy, but it also rests on unquestioned and unexamined premises. The Court presumes the institutions and institutional practices it defers to are neutral, natural, and necessary, failing to recognize how those structures are themselves the product of a contingent social context. The social environment in which institutions arise impinges upon and shapes those regimes and operations. Yet the Court bases its decisions on idealized versions of American institutions, decontextualized from the real world of American experience. Consequently, the Court does not notice how the general attitudes of prejudice and racism in society infect and infiltrate the very institutions to which the Court defers. If racism has contaminated the structure and operation of institutions, then there is considerably less reason to accord them deference, at least in their current condition. Emphasis on institutions in place of issues of race also causes the Court's reasoning to become entangled and incoherent, shifting from one case to the next as the Court becomes lost due to its effort to avoid the central issues of race involved in affirmative action. A close examination reveals that in each case the Court actually reasons from different premises, reorders its priorities, and betrays deep inconsistencies with the earlier affirmative action precedents. While consistently themed around the subject of institutions, the opinions continually reinterpret, reshape, and reconfigure the institutional moorings upon which earlier decisions were based. To rebut the institutional arguments put forth by the Court, an alternative discourse centered explicitly on race is offered. This alternative discourse is not intended to be complete or uncontroversial. Rather it serves as a useful foil to dissect the Court's arguments and expose the premises that go unquestioned.
Swords in the Hands of Babes: Rethinking Custody Interviews after Troxel

As King Solomon understood, custody disputes ordinarily allow no easy answers. Increasingly, legal actors have begun to rely on the child's custodial preference as a proxy for her best interests. In an effort to ascertain this preference without subjecting the child to the trauma of courtroom testimony, many states authorize courts to interview children in camera. Good intentions notwithstanding, these custody interviews pose considerable risk to children, to their parents, and to the State's best-interests quest. These risks increase dramatically when in-camera interviews serve as tools for searching out preferences that have not been publicly volunteered; when children's preferences are given very weighty or dispositive effect; and when the state denies parents an opportunity to challenge the accuracy and reasonableness of their children's statements. The U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Troxel v. Granville increases the urgency of a reassessment of these custody practices. Troxel's reaffirmation of the significance and breadth of parental rights strengthens parents' claim that procedural due process entitles them to access their children's in-camera statements. While such parental access reduces information risks, it exacerbates process risks for children, and counsels careful attention to the context and consequence of preference interviews. This Article briefly surveys preference practices, considers their costs and benefits, and urges a retreat from preference-driven interviews and preference-determinative custody decisions. The Article also considers parental demands for access to children's in-camera statements, and concludes that although such parental access increases risks for children, procedural due process favors it. Finally, the Article suggests that the law's increasing willingness to delegate the custody decision to children stems partly from failure of the open-ended best-interests custody model, and advocates substitution of a modified version of the ALI's more determinant approximation standard. This modified ALI model would allow a reformulation of in-camera interviews as opportunities for children to engage in free narrative, more fully empowering their speech while freeing them from the burdens of painful choice.
Do the Merits Matter Less After the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act

Author(s): Choi, Stephen | Abstract: The paper provides evidence on the impact of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (PSLRA) by examining a sample of initial public offerings from 1990 to 1999 facing a mix of Section 11 and Rule10b-5 antifraud claims. Others have provided evidence that the PSLRA increased the significance of merit-related factors in determining the incidence and outcomes of securities fraud class actions. The increase in the importance of merit-related factors, however, is consistent with two possible hypotheses. First, the PSLRA may have reduced solely the incidence of nuisance litigation. Second, the PSLRA may have reduced the incidence of both nuisance litigation as well as a subset of the pre-PSLRA meritorious claims where the additional costs imposed by the PSLRA made such claims unprofitable from the perspective of plaintiffs' attorneys. This paper tests between these hypotheses and provides evidence that meritorious claims lacking obvious "hard evidence" indicia of fraud (an accounting restatement or SEC action) (a) are less likely to be filed post-PSLRA and (b) face a greater likelihood of receiving a dismissal or low-value settlement in the post-PSLRA period. In determining the welfare implications of blocking frivolous suits, policymakers should therefore consider the negative impact of the PSLRA in also discouraging a significant fraction of meritorious litigation.
Sentencing in Tax Cases After Booker: Striking the Right Balance Between Uniformity and Discretion

It has been nearly ten years since the Supreme Court’s seminal decision in United States v. Booker, in which the Court invalidated the mandatory application of the United States Sentencing Guidelines. In the cases that followed, the Court addressed subsidiary issues regarding the application of the Guidelines and the scope of appellate review. However, despite — or perhaps because of — these opinions, there is little consensus regarding the status and extent of appellate review, as well as the discretion afforded sentencing courts. More troubling, what consensus there is seems to permit judges to impose any sentence they wish, as long as the appropriate sentencing procedures are followed. As a result, we are in danger of returning to “the shameful lack of parity, which the Guidelines sought to remedy.”The Sentencing Reform Act and the Sentencing Guidelines were designed to reduce disparity in sentencing and to reign in what one commentator described as a “lawless system.” However, the Guidelines as ultimately conceived drastically limited the sentencing judge’s ability to impose a sentence that was appropriate for the conduct and culpability of the defendant, creating a different kind of sentencing disparity. The current, post-Booker system provides more guidance than the pre-Guidelines system, but permits sentencing judges to disregard the Guidelines and develop their own sentencing policy. As a result, rather than having a system that allows for sentences to be tailored to individual defendants, the current system allows sentences to be imposed based on the penal philosophy of individual judges. This will inevitably lead to unwarranted sentencing disparity. This article traces the recent history of criminal sentencing and, relying on the influential works of John Rawls and H.L.A. Hart on theories of punishment, argues for a better system that allows for both guidance to sentencing judges and appropriately individualized sentencing. My recommendation, although equally applicable to any federal sentence, will be examined through the lens of tax sentencing.This paper was presented at Villanova Law Review’s Norman J. Shachoy Symposium on U.S. Tax Administration, Sept. 27, 2013.
Globalization, legal transnationalization and crimes against humanity: The Lipietz case

Decided in June, 2006, the Lipietz case marks the unofficial entry into the French legal system of a tort action for complicity in crimes against humanity. It both departs from prior, established French law and reflects numerous mechanisms by which national law is transnationalizing. The case illustrates visible, invisible, substantive and methodological changes that globalization is producing as law's transnationalization changes national law. It also suggests some of the difficulties national legal systems face as their transnationalization produces legal change at a rate that outpaces the national capacity for efficient adaptation. The challenges illustrated by Lipietz, characteristic of globalization, include identifying the presence and effects of legal transnationalization, as well as developing needed adaptations without undermining fundamental national legal values.
The problem of credible commitment in reconstruction

Reconstruction involves military occupation with the aim of rebuilding and reforming both formal and informal institutions along liberal democratic lines. We contend that successful reconstructions require mechanisms that make reforms credible over the long run. In the absence of a signal of sustained credible commitment, institutional reforms will not be trusted by the populace resulting in the failure of the broader reconstruction. The incentive and epistemic aspects of the credible commitment problem are analyzed. We also consider potential solutions to the problem of credible commitment. Absent such solutions, attempts to ‘export’ institutions via military occupation will fail or produce dysfunctional outcomes. An analysis of the numerous aspects of the credibility problem in the current reconstruction of Iraq is provided to illuminate the central arguments.
Financial Frictions on Capital Allocation: A Transmission Mechanism of TFP Fluctuations ∗

This paper provides a theory of financial frictions as a transmission mechanism for news shocks to drive aggregate TFP fluctuations. We show that in an economy calibrated to U.S. data, variations in financial frictions on capital allocation in response to news about future technology can generate aggregate TFP fluctuations and, thus, trigger business cycles before the actual technological change is realized. Using the COMPUSTAT dataset, we find that the relative capital productivity of financially constrained to unconstrained firms is highly countercyclical. Moreover, our VAR analysis shows that news shocks can account for a substantial fraction of the relative capital productivity fluctuations over business cycle frequencies.
Do Senior Citizens Prefer Dividends? Local Clienteles vs. Firm Characteristics

Abstract We examine the payout policy of U.S. firms over the period 1980–2008. Prior research indicates that firm characteristics, managerial preferences, and investor clienteles are all important factors in setting payout policy. Counter to the oft-reported positive relation between senior citizens and the use of dividends, we find no such significant relation. Our results indicate that either senior citizens are indifferent between dividends and repurchases, or that if seniors do demand dividends, they have no influence over firm payout policy. The evolution of firm characteristics, including the average firm size, age, and volatility of earnings over time, best explains payout policy.
To your happiness? Extra hours of labor supply and worker well-being

Abstract Does extra work buy happiness and well-being? Unique survey data are analyzed to consider whether measures of self-reported subjective happiness, psychological health and economic satisfaction bear a net positive or negative relationship with working extra hours. Overtime work hours generally are associated with increased work stress, fatigue and work–family interference. When overtime work is required, this appears to offset the otherwise greater happiness and mental healthiness produced by its additional income. Mandatory overtime work is associated with additional work–family interference and unhappiness for some workers but the opposite for some others. Policies most fruitful for improving individual economic and social welfare should focus on minimizing the incidences where overtime is both mandatory and harmful.
The Impact of City Contracting Set-Asides on Black Self-Employment and Employment

In the 1980s, many US cities initiated programs reserving a proportion of government contracts for minority-owned businesses. The staggered introduction of these set-aside programs is used to estimate their impacts on the self-employment and employment rates of African American men. Black business ownership rates increased significantly after program initiation, with the black-white gap falling 3 percentage points. The evidence that the racial gap in employment also fell is less clear as it depends on assumptions about the continuation of preexisting trends. The black gains were concentrated in industries heavily affected by set-asides, and they mostly benefited the better educated.
Self-Defeating Proposals: Ackerman on Emergency Powers

We do not learn much about emergencies and law by reading Bruce Ackerman’s new book on the subject,1 or so I will suggest. The book is not without value, but its value is not what its author intended. The book stumbles into a methodological pitfall, one that claims many victims, by offering a self-defeating proposal: the diagnosis that Ackerman offers itself rules out the prescription that he suggests. Proposals defeat themselves when the motives, beliefs, or political opportunities ascribed to relevant actors by the theorist’s diagnosis are incompatible with the solution that the theorist offers. The value of the book, then, is that it provides a methodological cautionary tale. Part I offers a brief precis of the book and examines its diagnosis of the pathologies of emergency politics. Although my main interest is in the logical connection between Ackerman’s premises and conclusions, not in the truth of his premises, I will offer some reasons to think that those premises are wrong or at best overblown, where they are sufficiently specific to be evaluated at all. Part II begins with some general remarks on self-defeating proposals, and then explains that Ackerman’s proposals are self-defeating. The motives, beliefs and emotional states, and political constraints that Ackerman describes in the diagnosis also rule out his proposals for a framework statute governing emergencies.
The impact of CEO turnover on firm performance around interim successions

Prior research reports that financial performance of firms that hire interim CEO successors is worse following interim CEO appointments than those that hire permanent successors. We find that this underperformance occurs only following voluntary turnover interim appointments, which represent a small fraction of all voluntary turnovers and roughly a quarter of all interim appointments. We do not observe poor performance when boards hire interim successors following instances of forced departure. Further analysis shows that poor performance during voluntary turnover interim successions are limited to using operating performance measures; market performance is not significantly worse following interim successions. Our results indicate that many interim appointments should not be viewed as value decreasing endeavors and future research on post-succession financial performance should consider the circumstances surrounding the turnover of the predecessor.
The impact of cash holdings and external financing on investment-cash flow sensitivity

Purpose – This paper aims to propose several factors which can explain the negative relationship between financial constraints and investment-cash flow sensitivity. Design/methodology/approach – The author uses traditional fixed effects model and minimum distance panel estimation by Erickson and Whited (2000) to estimate investment-cash flow sensitivity in the cash flow-augmented investment equation. In addition, principal component analysis is used to construct a financial constraints measure. Findings – First, it was found that substitutability between cash holdings and free cash flow can partially explain why financially constrained firms do not depend on cash flow as heavily as we expect. Second, it was confirmed that the level of net external financing can also partially explain the investment-cash flow sensitivity puzzle. Furthermore, it was argued that the influence of cash holdings and external financing on investment-cash flow sensitivity is caused by the low level of internal cash flow for finan...
Horizontal Mergers With Free-Entry: Why Cost Efficiencies May Be a Weak Defense and Asset Sales a Poor Remedy

Abstract I analyze the effects of a merger between two firms in a spatially differentiated oligopoly. I make the crucial assumption that the industry is at a free-entry equilibrium both before and after the merger. I show that cost efficiencies (in the form of lower marginal cost) decrease the likelihood of entry, and thus benefit consumers less than if entry conditions were exogenously given. Likewise, by selling assets (stores) to potential rivals, merging firms effectively ‘buy them off’, that is, dissuade them from opening new stores, an effect that may be detrimental to consumers.
Interracial Contact in High School Extracurricular Activities

Using data from yearbooks for 193 high schools, this study examines the degree of interracial contact in 8,849 high school teams and other organizations. More than one-third of these groups were all-white, while only about 3% were exclusively nonwhite. Owing in large part to their overall numerical preponderance, white students rarely found themselves outnumbered in groups by as much as three to one; by contrast, nonwhites often were in this position. Tabulations show that the degree of interracial exposure was typically less than what would occur if all organizations in each school had been racially balanced and was much less than the exposure that would have occurred if all organizations reflected the racial composition of the schools containing them. Whereas the nonwhite percentage of the students enrolled in the sample high schools was 24.9%, the membership of clubs and teams was 20.7%, reflecting a lower rate of participation by nonwhites. Furthermore, because the racial compositions of clubs and teams were not uniform, the average white member was in an organization that was only 15.3% nonwhite. Although clearly less than its theoretical maximum, this rate of contact nonetheless appears to be much higher than what would occur if friendships were the only vehicle for interracial contact outside the classroom. Finally, the extent of segregation associated with these organizations was the same or less in the South than in the rest of the country.
Justice Kennedy’s Use of Sources of the Original Meaning of the Constitution

III. DESCRIPTION OF THE CASES 80 A. The Federalist Papers 80 B. Records of the Federal Constitutional Convention 94 C. Records of the State Ratifying Conventions 96 D. Acts of the First Congress 96 E. Dictionaries from the Founding Era 98
Intractable Delay and the Need To Amend the Petition Provisions of the FDCA

Private party oversight has proven to be ineffective at countering inaction by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Inaction when regulation is warranted can put the public at continued and increasing risk of harm, but the failure of private enforcement to compel action reverberates beyond this harm to the interests of individuals. It also diminishes the transparency of agency decision making, lessens the opportunity for public participation, and reduces the interaction between the institutions that oversee agencies. Moreover, the benefits afforded to the administrative process by judicial review are weakened. This Article analyzes two examples of FDA inertia and compares private enforcement under the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FDCA) to more successful private party activity under several environmental statutes. These comparisons highlight several weak spots in the FDCA that contribute to the difficulties faced by private party oversight in attempting to compel FDA action. The Article then proposes solutions suggested by these problems. Congress should amend the Act to include more specific petition provisions with statutory deadlines and to strengthen the general citizen petition provision of the FDCA. Interested parties should also be able to petition the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) for the review of the denial of rulemakings. These steps will restore the vitality of a critical part of the administrative enforcement scheme—private party oversight—and thereby benefit both the public health and the regulatory state.
Hedge Funds: The Living and the Dead

In this paper, I examine survivorship bias in hedge fund returns by comparing two large databases. I find that the survivorship bias exceeds 2% per year. Results of survivorship bias by investment styles indicate that the biases are different across styles. I reconcile the conflicting results about survivorship bias in previous studies by showing that the two major hedge fund databases contain different amounts of dissolved funds. Empirical results show that poor performance is the main reason for a fund's disappearance. Furthermore, I find that there are significant differences in fund returns, inception date, net assets value, incentive fee, management fee, and investment styles for the 465 common funds covered by both databases. Mismatching between reported returns and the percentage changes in NAVs can partially explain the differences in returns.
A Comparative Study of Risk Measures for Guaranteed Minimum Maturity Benefits by a PDE Method

The stochastic modeling and determination of reserves and risk capitals for variable annuity guarantee products are relatively new developments in the insurance industry. The current market practice is largely based on Monte Carlo simulations, which have great engineering flexibility, but the demand for heavy computational power can be prohibitive in many cases. In this article we distinguish and compare two types of risk models to determine the commonly used risk measures for reserving and capital calculations. Using an example of the guaranteed minimum maturity benefit, we investigate alternative numerical methods that require less computational resources and yet achieve high accuracy and efficiency.
Integration of Online and Offline Channels in Retail: The Impact of Sharing Reliable Inventory Availability Information

Using a proprietary data set, we analyze the impact of the implementation of a “buy-online, pick-up-in-store” BOPS project. The implementation of this project is associated with a reduction in online sales and an increase in store sales and traffic. These results can be explained by two simultaneous phenomena: 1 additional store sales from customers who use the BOPS functionality and buy additional products in the stores cross-selling effect and 2 the shift of some customers from the online to the brick-and-mortar channel and the conversion of noncustomers into store customers channel-shift effect. We explain these channel-shift patterns as an increase in “research online, purchase offline” behavior enabled by BOPS implementation, and we validate this explanation with evidence from the change of cart abandonment and conversion rates of the brick-and-mortar and online channels. We interpret these results in light of recent operations management literature that analyzes the impact of sharing inventory availability information. Our analysis illustrates the limitations of drawing conclusions about complex interventions using single-channel data. This paper was accepted by Alok Gupta, special issue on business analytics.
Assurance on XBRL instance document: A conceptual framework of assertions

Abstract XBRL stands for extensible business reporting language. It is an XML based computer language for reporting business information. In December 2008, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (US SEC) voted to require public filers to provide a supplemental exhibit of their financial statements (including footnotes) in XBRL, with the approximately top 500 public companies required to comply with this new requirement starting June 15, 2009, and the phase-in of this requirement for the other filers to be completed on June 15, 2011. The file created using the XRBL language is called an XBRL instance document. Under this requirement, the filers are not required to obtain a third party assurance on the XBRL instance document. The main reason for not requiring a third party independent assurance of XBRL instance documents is to encourage filers to comply with the SEC requirement without incurring much added costs. In addition, to encourage the filers to comply with this requirement, the SEC is not holding filers legally liable of any errors in the filed XBRL instance documents so long as they look similar to the standard reports when viewed using the SEC viewer. Even though the SEC is not currently requiring a third party assurance of the XBRL instance documents of the SEC filings, it is in the best interest of the public that these documents be assured. Although there have been efforts by both the practitioners and academics to investigate issues involved in providing assurance on XBRL documents, these efforts have been focused on the specifics of the assurance process and the difficulties involved in it, and not on developing a framework of assertions. Even the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants recent publication SOP 09-1 provides only an illustrative list of management assertions for handling the XBRL-tagging engagements under the SSAEs as agreed-upon procedures without considering a framework. Without a conceptual framework, the assurance process for XBRL instance document would be ad hoc and inconsistent. This paper develops a set of assertions for providing assurance on XBRL instance documents similar to the management assertions for financial audits. Further, we discuss how such a framework would assist auditors in planning and evaluating such an engagement by collecting appropriate items of evidence pertaining to specific assertions to form an opinion whether the instance document is a true representation of the standard format (i.e., ASCII or HTML) document. We also discuss how the use of new technology would make the assurance process more effective and efficient.
Balancing Risks: Mosquitoes, Malaria, Morality, and DDT

H arm and the threat of harm are central concerns not only in human experience but also for nearly all life forms. Sheer survival requires a portfolio of successful risk management strategies. Humans continually struggle, individually and collectively, to minimize risk from the natural environment as well as risk from other members of their own species. As social organizations increased in complexity, new methods of controlling interpersonal violence as well as techniques for protection against other groups were developed. Thus, regulating risk has always been and continues to be an extremely important component of law, social sanctions, religion, and morality. Debates over regulating risk are perennial. Such contentiousness would persist even in an ideal moral community. Regardless of one’s vision of moral lives in a moral community, deep rifts over the critical issues of risk, risk trade-offs, and safety will continue to divide honorable, reasonable, and well-intended moral agents. Judgments of safety rely upon both factual (especially causal) claims and normative judgments about which level of risk should be accepted. Even in a moral community, both descriptive and normative issues are likely to remain in dispute. With John Rawls, one should expect that a pluralism of competing comprehensive frameworks is not merely a fact of life in modern liberal democracies, but a pluralism of reasonable views that will persist in any just liberal society. If there were to emerge some kind of theoretical or practical consensus of values and principles,
Employment-Oriented Central Bank Policy in an Integrated World Economy: A Reform Proposal for South Africa

The South African Reserve Bank and Ministry of Finance have adopted inflation targeting and the gradual relaxation of exchange controls (along with control of public spending and financial liberalization) as the foundation of their economic policy in an attempt to win the confidence of foreign investors and to attract more foreign investment. However, this policy has not succeded in generating employment growth or investment. Instead, it has contributed to high real interest rates and relative stagnation.In order to improve central bank and capital management policies and have them contribute more to solving the fundamental problems of unemployment and poverty facing the South African economy, three reforms should be undertaken:1) The Reserve Bank should scrap its inflation targeting approach and adopt a more even handed approach which would target employment growth subject to an inflation constraint.2) Rather than loosening the exchange controls system, the Reserve Bank and Ministry of Finance should enforcethe existing controls more strictly, and explore other ways, such as transaction taxes and speed-bumps, to further insulate South African macroeconomic policy from global pressures.3) The South African government should implement other policies and institutions, such as special lending windows, underwriting facilities, asset based reserve requirements and subsidized credit, to further insulate the South African financial markets from the international capital markets and channel credit to employment generating and socially productive activities. This will correct a serious market failure in which international financial markets fail to take into account the social rates of return available on productive investments in South Africa.
Incidental and Task-Related Affect: A Re-Inquiry and Extension of the Influence of Affect on Choice

We examine the interplay between incidental affect and task-related affect in the context of consumer choice. Specifically, we examine the differential impact of two discrete negative affective states—anger and sadness—vis-a-vis a neutral affective state. We replicate Luce's ([1998][1]) finding that people are more likely to rely on a status quo option when they have to make emotionally difficult trade-offs. However, incidental affect moderates this effect such that angry individuals are more influenced by task-related affect, while sadness is less influenced by it. These findings support our thesis that consumers experiencing different negative emotions display differential reliance on avoidance choice strategies such as choosing the status quo. [1]: #ref-13
Comparing Philosophies and Practices of Family Law Between the United States and Other Nations: The Flintstones vs. The Jetsons

Legal pundits, practitioners, judges, psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers and virtually anyone who has dealt with families in distress due to divorce or related issues have agreed for years that the family law legal system is broken.1 Parties remain angry years after the initial hurt, relationships crack under stress, and most difficult of all, children are unable to maintain meaningful and positive associations with their family members.2 While everyone involved in litigious family law proceedings, most especially the parents, likely believe, or at least convince themselves, that they are acting in the children’s best interests, the reality is that this system creates unnecessary turmoil in everyone, particularly the children, separate and apart from the difficulties inherent in the initial breakup itself.3 In recent years, there has been a trend in a number of states towards using non-litigious methods for resolving family matters, including negotiation, mediation, and, more recently, collaboration.4 The ideals of collaborative law, better known and
A Cure Rather than a Disease: Government Ownership and Minority Shareholder Protection

The governments which undertake privatization of their state owned enterprises often maintain some ownership in the newly privatized firms. This paper examines the effect of the presence of the government as a minority shareholder on the protection of the minority shareholders in privatized firms. Consistent with the government's incentive to foster security market development and to enlist the support of the median-class voters for the privatization process we find that the government effectively monitors the controlling shareholders in the newly privatized firms and curbs their ability to expropriate the minority shareholders. Furthermore, the evidence suggests that minority government ownership acts as a substitute for the lack of alternative mechanisms for minority shareholder protection. (JEL: F30, G30, G32, G38)
Salary or Benefits

Employer-provided benefits are a large and growing share of compensation costs. In this paper, I consider three factors that can affect the value created by employer-sponsored benefits. First, firms have a comparative advantage (e.g., due to scale economies or tax treatment) in purchasing relative to employees. This advantage can vary across firms based on size and other differences in cost structure. Second, employees differ in their valuations of benefits and it is costly for workers to match with firms that offer the benefits they value. Finally, some benefits can reduce the marginal cost to an employee of extra working time. I develop a simple model that integrates these factors. I then generate empirical implications of the model and use data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to test these implications. I examine access to employer-provided meals, child care, dental insurance, and health insurance. I also study how benefits are grouped together and differences between benefits packages at for-profit, not-for-profit, and government employers. The empirical analysis provides evidence consistent with all three factors in the model contributing to firms’ decisions about which benefits to offer.
Keep it Simple : An Explanation of the Rule of No Recovery for Pure Economic Loss

This article, prepared for the Dan B. Dobbs Conference on Economic Torts held at the University of Arizona in March 2006, joins commentary on themes raised in the draft Restatement (Third) of Torts: Liability for Economic Loss, by returning to an old question: Why does tort doctrine, not only in the United States but around the world, generally refuse to compensate a plaintiff for "pure economic loss" - an injury that can be seen only as missing money, unaccompanied by personal injury or property damage - attributable to a defendant's careless conduct? The answer offered here is the precept of trying to "keep it simple." More than other fields, which often invite repeat-player expertise, tort law strives to make its doctrines and processes intelligible to persons of limited experience and sophistication. "Simple" enough injuries in this framework include breached promises and visible or tangible traumatic impacts. Losses related to financial expectancy can be too hard to comprehend.
Precedent and Judicial Power After the Founding

A recent decision by a panel of the Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit enlivened the controversy over court rules that prevent citation to unpublished opinions when it held that the Circuit's noncitation rule violates Article III of the United States Constitution. This Article affirms the view that judicial power includes a doctrine of precedent, without relying solely upon an originalist interpretation of Article HI. This approach identifies a consistent "core idea" of precedent that courts must consider how a similar case was decided in the past, even where there are varying ideas about the binding nature of that precedent. A long-standing tradition has viewed precedent as a necessary starting point for judicial decision. When a court departs from this core idea, it violates the essential function of the judiciary to treat like cases alike or explain the difference. Like a phoenix rising from the ashes of modern legal theory, respect for precedent is poised for a comeback. The evidence is Anastasoff v. United States 1 --an opinion from the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals that created shockwaves when it invalidated that court's rule against citation of unpublished opinions. Anastasoff announced that the United States Constitution imposes some obligation on federal courts to respect precedent, an obligation that is inconsistent with the current practice of many federal and state courts to consider -unpublished opinions to hold no precedential value. This is not a minor issue. In 1999, nearly eighty percent of all federal appellate cases fell into this "not for official publication" category. 2 Because in most fed* Associate Professor, Emory University School of Law.J.D., Harvard Law School; BA., M.A., Emory University. The author was a law clerk for the lion. Richard S. Arnold, Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, from 1989-1991. Thanks to Thomas C. Arthur, David J. Bederman, Harold J. Berman, Anita Bernstein, 0. Price Marshall Jr., and Robert Schapiro for their helpful critiques of earlier drafts, and to Susan I. Jackson, a student at Emory Law School, for sharing her research. 1 Anastasoff v. United States, 223 F.3d 898 (8th Cir. 2000), vacated as moot by No. 99— 3917E3,1, 2000 U.S. App. LEXIS 33247 (8th Cir. Dec. 18, 2000) (en bane). 2 United Stales Courts, Judicial Business of the U.S. Conn's: 1999 Annual Report of the Director, Supplemental Tahle S-3, at 49, available al li11p://uww.uscourts.gov/judlms1999/ supps.litinl (last visited Jan. 7, 2001) [hereinafter judiciai Ba.sine.ss}.