cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Using Yield Management to Shift Demand When the Peak Time is Unknown

Traditional peak-load and stochastic peak-load models assume firms have prior information about when peak demand occurs. However, price dispersion, such as is typically used by firms practicing yield management, can achieve some of the same efficient demand shifting even when the peak time is unknown. Equilibrium price dispersion arises because of stochastic demand and price rigidities, but a previously unexplored benefit of price dispersion is its ability to reduce equilibrium capacity costs through demand shifting. The model also suggests how yield management (now more commonly called revenue management) might actually benefit business travellers, contrary to the popular prejudice.
Defining Patent Quality

Depending on whom you ask, the state of U.S. patent quality is either dismal or decent, in decline or on the upswing, in need of intervention or best left alone. Absent from the ongoing debate about the quality of U.S. patents, however, is much thoughtful discussion about what constitutes a patent’s "quality" in the first place. What features of a patent make it good in quality, what features make it bad in quality, and how are those features related? Surprisingly, scholars and policymakers have shown little interest in these questions. Yet their answers are critical to the direction of the patent agenda because they dictate how to measure patent quality and, consequently, how to evaluate the success or failure of quality reforms. The broad aim of this Article is to draw attention to the definition of patent quality as an important subject of scholarly inquiry. Its more specific aim is to call for a return to first principles and begin the process of developing a meaning of patent quality. It does so by analyzing the concept using a methodology applied in the business literature of quality management. The implications of this work include a fundamentally different approach to patent quality’s meaning that is essentially the inverse of the conventional way of thinking about the concept. That is, instead of defining a good-quality patent as one that at a minimum satisfies the legal standards of patentability, the legal standards of patentability (among other things) should be adjusted and applied to reflect good patent quality. Following this new approach, I propose a formula for assessing patent quality and identify the most important variable in that formula: the quality "dimensions" along which patent quality rises and falls. Identifying these dimensions is the necessary first step in a process that ultimately aims to shift the focus of reform efforts from the limited goal of increasing the number of legally valid patents toward the broader goal of increasing the number of good-quality patents.
ESO Valuation with Job Termination Risk and Jumps in Stock Price

Employee stock options (ESOs) are American-style call options that can be terminated early in the case of employment shock. This paper studies an ESO valuation framework that accounts for job termination risk and jumps in the company stock price. Under general Levy stock price dynamics, we show that a higher job termination risk induces the ESO holder to voluntarily accelerate exercise, which in turn reduces the cost to the company. The holder's optimal exercise boundary and ESO cost are determined by solving an inhomogeneous partial integro-differential variational inequality. We apply the Fourier transform to simplify the variational inequality and develop accurate numerical methods. Furthermore, when the stock price follows a geometric Brownian motion, we provide closed-form formulas for both the vested and unvested perpetual ESOs. Our model is also applied to evaluate the probabilities of understating ESO expenses and contract termination.
Looking beyond the focal industry and existing technologies for radical innovations

The “radicalness” of an innovation is often contingent upon access to distinct technologies which arise from sourcing innovation outside a firms' focal industry (exterior sourcing). We posit that exterior sourcing leads to technology distinctness and that the presence of technology distinctness significantly affects the relationship between exterior sourcing and radicalness. In addition, we assert that high technology distinctness results in a stronger association with radicalness irrespective of the levels of exterior sourcing. Further, at lower levels of exterior sourcing, technology distinctness will have a stronger relationship with radicalness than at higher levels of exterior sourcing. We also argue that high technology distinctness and low exterior sourcing will have the strongest relationship with radicalness. We used patent filings from 1996 through 2009 from the IT industry from within the S&P-500 database to test our assertions. The empirical evidence validated our affirmations. Our findings suggest that to maximize the chance of radical innovations, firms must obtain highly distinct technologies from minimum possible contacts outside their focal industry. We conclude the paper by summarizing the key findings, discussing implications for theory and practice, and suggesting avenues for future research.
Gender, Expectations, and the Price of Giving

A central question in the study of altruism has been whether there is a systematic gender difference in giving behavior. Many experiments, using a modified version of the dictator game, have revealed an interesting pattern: male subjects are more altruistic when the price of giving is low and female subjects are more altruistic when the price of giving is high. In the modified dictator game, however, a key variable in a personâ€™s decision to give is what that person expects to receive. Systematic differences in those expectations may contribute to systematic differences in altruistic behavior. We show that gender differences in these expectations are, indeed, part of the larger story in exploring gender differences in altruistic giving. When expectations of receiving are endogenous, we replicate the standard finding. When expectations of receiving are uniform rather than endogenous, gender differences in price sensitivity disappear: male and female dictators give equal amounts regardless of the relative price of giving. This suggests that gender differences in expectations about othersâ€™ giving are part of the larger pattern of giving behavior.
Schopenhauer’s Mitleid, Environmental Outrage and Human Rights

Suffering which results from environmental exposures often evokes a sense of moral outrage. In this paper, two complementary sources of grounding for that outrage are explored: Arthur Schopenhauer's close analysis of compassion, grounded in the metaphysical identity of all being, provides explanatory grounding for moral outrage as well as for the long-recognized importance of personal narratives in human rights work. Secondly, the broadly endorsed human rights tradition provides an additional confirmatory, more public, level of validation for moral outrage. Human rights norms confirm what the experience of compassion first intuited. Three practical implications for environmental activism follow: 1) the importance of personal narratives detailing the direct impacts that environmental assaults have caused; 2) the practical value of formal, detailed human rights impact assessments specified to a given situation; and 3) the value of community-led public inquiries, such as the 2006 People's Inquiry in New Zealand (Goven et al. 2007) and the 2011 Permanent People's Tribunal (2011) in India. El sufrimiento que resulta de la exposicion ambiental a menudo evoca un sentimiento de indignacion moral. En este trabajo se analizan dos fuentes complementarias de nociones para la indignacion: un analisis detallado de Arthur Schopenhauer sobre la compasion, basada en la identidad metafisica de todo ser, que ofrece nociones explicativas para la indignacion moral, asi como para la reconocida importancia de las narrativas personales en el trabajo de los derechos humanos. En segundo lugar, la ampliamente respaldada tradicion de los derechos humanos proporciona una confirmacion adicional y mas publica del nivel de validacion de indignacion moral. Las normas de derechos humanos confirman lo que la experiencia de la compasion intuyo primero. A continuacion, se incluyen tres implicaciones practicas para el activismo medioambiental: 1) la importancia de las narrativas personales que detallan los efectos directos causados por las agresiones del medio ambiente; 2) el valor practico de las evaluaciones formales y detalladas de impacto de los derechos humanos, especificadas para una situacion dada, y 3) el valor de las consultas publicas lideradas por la comunidad, tales como la consulta popular del 2006 en Nueva Zelanda (Goven et al. 2007) y el Tribunal Popular Permanente de 2011 en la India (Permanent People's Tribunal 2011). DOWNLOAD THIS PAPER FROM SSRN : http://ssrn.com/abstract=2247852
Prudence and Presidential Ethics: The Decisions on Iraq of the Two Presidents Bush

are counterparts in personal life to these attributes, the prudence of political leaders has a further dimension because of their responsibility for the welfare of the polity, whether a city or an entire nation. The importance ofpolitical prudence in the U. S. presidency is illustrated by a comparative analysis of the decision-making processes regarding Iraq in the administrations of George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush. The sharp contrasts between them suggest that prudence and other political virtues may be substantially independent of ideology, class, and social background. This essay discusses the importance of the virtue of prudence to presidential ethics. It examines the nature of prudence through an analysis of the decision making of Presidents George Herbert Walker Bush and George Walker Bush to go to war with the Republic of Iraq. The wars began only 12 years apart; the presidents shared a father-son connection; they also shared many advisors, party affiliation, and moderate conservatism. Both viewed themselves as charting new courses, one in a post—Cold War environment, and one in a world changed by 9/11. Both presidents had initiated "regime changes" earlier: George H. W. Bush overthrew Manuel Noriega in Panama, and George W. Bush overthrew the Taliban regime in Afghanistan; both faced a military reluctant to embark on war. The similarities of personnel and situations provide a unique opportunity for comparative analysis. This essay studies the two decisions to go to war through the lens of the virtue of political prudence. The analysis will illustrate the central role that prudence should have in the ethics of presidential leadership by demonstrating how
Distance to the Technological Frontier and Economic Development

This research explores the effects of distance to the pre-industrial technological frontiers on comparative economic development in the course of human history. It establishes theoretically and empirically that distance to the frontier had a persistent non-monotonic effect on a country's pre-industrial economic development. In particular, advancing a novel measure of the travel time to the technological frontiers, the analysis establishes a robust persistent U-shaped relation between distance to the frontier and pre-industrial economic development across countries. Moreover, it demonstrates that countries, which throughout the last two millennia were relatively more distant from these frontiers, have higher contemporary levels of innovation and entrepreneurial activity, suggesting that distance from the frontier may have fostered the emergence of a culture conducive to innovation, knowledge creation, and entrepreneurship.
The Rise of the Sharing Economy: Estimating the Impact of Airbnb on the Hotel Industry

AbstractPeer-to-peer markets, collectively known as the sharing economy, have emerged as alternative suppliers of goods and services traditionally provided by long-established industries. The authors explore the economic impact of the sharing economy on incumbent firms by studying the case of Airbnb, a prominent platform for short-term accommodations. They analyze Airbnb’s entry into the state of Texas and quantify its impact on the Texas hotel industry over the subsequent decade. In Austin, where Airbnb supply is highest, the causal impact on hotel revenue is in the 8%–10% range; moreover, the impact is nonuniform, with lower-priced hotels and hotels that do not cater to business travelers being the most affected. The impact manifests itself primarily through less aggressive hotel room pricing, benefiting all consumers, not just participants in the sharing economy. The price response is especially pronounced during periods of peak demand, such as during the South by Southwest festival, and is due to a di...
Bit Storage by 360 $^{\circ}$ Domain Walls in Ferromagnetic Nanorings

We propose a theoretical design for a magnetic memory cell, based on thin-film ferromagnetic nanorings, that can efficiently store, record, and read out information. An information bit is represented by the polarity of a stable 360deg domain wall introduced into the ring. Switching between the two magnetization states is done by a current applied to a wire passing through the ring, whereby the 360deg domain wall splits into two charged 180deg walls, which then move to the opposite extreme of the ring to recombine into a 360deg wall of the opposite polarity.
Mock Jurors’ Reactions to Selective Presentation of Evidence from Multiple-Opportunity Searches

Prior to trial, litigants sometimes conduct broad investigations in which there are multiple opportunities to find supportive evidence by chance alone. During trial, litigants may selectively present only the most helpful evidence uncovered by their investigations. Two experiments examined whether mock jurors appreciate that the evidence they hear at trial may be a selective and unrepresentative sample of underlying facts. The data suggest that people do understand the significance of multiple-opportunity searches for legal inference. However, they may not consider the possibility that evidence was strategically selected from a larger sample space of facts unless that sample space is identified.
Delegating Discretion Quasi Experiments on District Court Decision Making

I test how the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines, promulgated by the United States Sentencing Commission, affected district court decision making from 1999 to 2003. Policymakers effectively used legal regulation to constrain judicial discretion by specifying (a) the sentencing ranges applicable to certain factual patterns, (b) the departures from these ranges allowed for prosecutors, or (c) the departures allowed for judges. My results establish significant differences in how judges make decisions depending on whether or not they were constrained by guideline ranges. When the guidelines curtailed judges' discretion, judges followed these guidelines but overwhelmingly sentenced defendants to the minimum sentence possible under the guidelines. Conversely, when guidelines allowed judges to depart from the sentencing ranges and instead to exercise broad discretion, they used this authority, and case sentences, although widely varying, were right censored at a point at or below the guideline minimum. Finally, the low...
Why Context Matters: Defining Service Animals Under Federal Law

This Article analyzes the differing definitions of service animals under federal law as interpreted by three separate agencies. The regulations and case law interpreting the issue under the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Fair Housing Act, and the Air Carrier Access Act illustrate the need for further clarification in order to ensure that individuals with disabilities are granted the full protection of the law.
Response-guided dosing for rheumatoid arthritis

ABSTRACTRheumatoid arthritis (RA) is an auto-immune disease with an unknown cause. Many patients receiving traditional methotrexate treatment continue to exhibit joint damage and are then treated with biologics. Biologic treatment is difficult owing to the uncertainty in dose-response, high cost, side effects, and intravenous administration. Recent clinical trials have therefore attempted response-guided dosing (RGD), where the hope is to adapt biologic doses over the treatment course based on each patient’s observed evolution of the 28-joint disease activity score (DAS28).We provide a stochastic dynamic programming (DP) framework to facilitate RGD. We present a concrete formulation where the DAS28 response is modeled using a stochastic Michaelis-Menten formula. The goal is to balance the DAS28 attained at the end of the course with the weighted total dose administered. We perform numerical experiments using data from the OPTION trial and observe that the optimal dosing policy gives higher doses in worse ...
Targeting child benefits in a transition economy

Transition economies use their child benefit programs to provide additional economic support for families with children. However, budgetary pressures limit social spending in many countries. Therefore, targeting child benefit programs to the poorest households may be a sensible solution to the problem of supporting families with children when social spending is in decline. Few transition economies have attempted to target child benefits. Hence evidence on the efficacy of means-testing child benefits is scarce. This study considers the implementation of one of the few means-tested child benefit programs in a transition economy and finds relatively little evidence of targeting problems. Moreover, means-testing the child benefit substantially alters the distribution of benefits relative to the distribution of benefits in the more typical universal child benefit program.
Microfinance and Dynamic Incentives

Abstract Dynamic incentives, where incentives to repay are generated by granting access to future loans, are one of the methodologies used by microfinance institutions (MFIs). In this paper, I present a model of dynamic incentives where lenders are uncertain over how much borrowers value future loans. Loan terms are determined endogenously, and loans become more favorable as the probability of default becomes lower. I show that in all equilibria but one all borrowers, including the most patient ones, eventually default. I then consider an extension where borrowers can take loans from several lenders, double-dipping. Qualitatively, properties of equilibria with and without double-dipping are similar. In absolute terms, when borrowers are credit-constrained double-dipping equilibrium loans have to be more favorable to outweigh increased gains from default.
Historical rights and fair shares

My aim of this paper is to clarify, and in a certain very limited way to defend, historical theories of property rights (and their associated theories of social or distributive justice). It is important, I think, to better understand historical rights for several reasons: first, because of the extent to which historical theories capture commonsense, unphilosophical views about property and justice; then, because historical theories have fallen out of philosophical fashion, and are consequently not much scrutinized anymore; and finally, because of (what I see as) the continuing need to better understand the historical components of our society's responsibilities to the descendants of victims of systematic injustice in our own past. The case I will have in mind throughout is that of the property claims of Native American tribes, claims based on their historical standing as the original owners of certain lands and resources. And while I will concentrate here only on the question of rectifying past violations of property rights, this will constitute at least a start to answering more general questions about just rectification, which includes the more serious and less compensable wrongs of violence against persons.
Friends with bankruptcy protection benefits

Abstract We show information spillovers limit the effectiveness of targeted debt relief programs. We study individuals who learn about the likelihood of debt relief from the recent experiences of workplace peers filing for bankruptcy protection. Peers granted bankruptcy can discharge debts, while peers facing dismissal lose all protections. Exploiting the random assignment of judges to bankruptcy cases, we determine that individuals with a “dismissed peer” are significantly less likely to file for bankruptcy or enter foreclosure. We highlight a novel channel relating social networks to household finances and identify additional costs of granting individual debt relief imposed on lenders.
Pure Contagion and Investors’ Shifting Risk Appetite: Analytical Issues and Empirical Evidence

This paper discusses a ‘pure’ form of financial contagion, unrelated to economic fundamentals – investors’ shifting appetite for risk. It provides an analytical framework for identifying changes in investors’ risk appetite and discusses whether it is possible to directly measure them in a way that can enable policy makers to differentiate between financial contagion and domestic fundamentals as the immediate source of a crisis. Daily measures of risk appetite are computed and their usefulness in predicting financial crises is assessed.
Families and the Moral Economy of Incarceration

SUMMARY The experiences of families of prisoners barely register in contemporary debates over criminal sanctions. But the accounts of families of prisoners demonstrate that mass incarceration does far more than punish and deter. By pitting the moral and economic interests of families against one another, it erodes the fundamental norms of social life itself. As family members are pressed hard to withdraw their care and concern from one another, the effect is more than the impoverishment of individuals: As over-incarceration increases the costs of caring relationships, the loss becomes a moral one and, in time, we impoverish our culture as well.
Growth Option Exercise and Capital Structure

We document that firms decrease their leverage when they convert growth options into tangible assets. This is contrary to the predictions of both a standard trade-off model and pecking order theory. We argue that the act of option conversion decreases information asymmetry about the firm, which in turn reduces the relative cost of issuing informationsensitive securities such as equity. Thus, firms engaging in high growth experience a decline in leverage. Empirically, we establish the result using several plausible proxies of growth option conversion such as capital expenditure, employee growth, and a relative decline in research and development expenses. We show that the result also holds for a sub-sample of oil and gas firms for which the number of development drilling rigs provides a direct measure of growth option exercise. Our results are not driven by well-known empirical drivers of capital structure such as firm size, collateral availability, past profitability, or market timing. Overall, our work implies that it is important to consider endogenous changes in the information sensitivity of a firm’s assets to understand its leverage and financing choices.
Environmental Law Outside the Canon

It is time to rethink the domination of environmental law by a canon of major federal environmental statutes enacted in the 1970s. Environmental law is in a malaise. Despite widespread agreement that existing laws are inadequate to address current environmental problems, Congress has not passed a major environmental statute in more than twenty years. If it is to succeed, the environmental law of this new century may need to evolve into something that looks quite different than the extant environmental law canon. The next generation of environmental laws must be viable for creation and implementation even in an antagonistic political climate; amenable to integration with other, non-environmental law; and able to make inroads against the monumental peril of global climate change. Environmental laws embedded in larger non-environmental programs and dispersed throughout government offer an alternative model to the environmental law canon — an alternative model that seems well suited to help environmental law address these daunting challenges. ENVIRONMENTAL LAW OUTSIDE THE CANON
Beyond buying: Motivations behind consumers' online shopping cart use

Abstract The authors investigate consumers' motivations for placing items in an online shopping cart with or without buying, termed virtual cart use. While retailers offer virtual carts as a functional holding space for intended online purchases, this study, based on a national online sample, reveals other powerful utilitarian and hedonic motivations that explain the frequency of consumers' online cart use. Beyond current purchase intentions, the investigated reasons for why consumers place items in their carts include: securing online price promotions, obtaining more information on certain products, organizing shopping items, and entertainment. Based on empirical findings, the authors offer managerial suggestions for enhancing online shopping-to-buying conversion rates.
Estimating Default Probabilities of CMBS Loans with Clustering and Heavy Censoring

This paper provides a comprehensive default estimation of commercial real estate loans with a complete commercial mortgage backed securities (CMBS) loan history database. Standard survival models assume that eventually every observation will experience the event. However, often there is a high proportion of censored observation in the sample. A mixture model is proposed to disentangle the probability of “long-term survivorship” and the timing of default occurrence. Loans within the same geographical area and property type tend to exhibit correlation in default incidence. A multilevel model is proposed to capture this correlation within and between clusters.
Candidates, Credibility, and Re-election Incentives

I study elections between citizen-candidates who cannot make binding policy commitments before taking office, but who are accountable to voters due to the possibility of re-election. In each period a representative voter chooses among heterogeneous candidates with known policy preferences. The elected candidate chooses the policy to implement, and how much rent-seeking to engage in, when in office. As the voter decides both which candidate to elect and, subsequently, whether the candidate is retained, this framework integrates elements of electoral competition and electoral accountability. I show that, in the best stationary equilibrium, when utility functions are concave over policy, non-median candidates are elected over candidates with policy preferences more closely aligned with the voter. In this equilibrium, there are two candidates who are elected at some history, and the policies these candidates implement in office do not converge. This divergence incentivizes candidates to engage in less rent-seeking, increasing voter welfare. Copyright 2013, Oxford University Press.
Information Design, Bayesian Persuasion, and Bayes Correlated Equilibrium †

Abstract A set of players have preferences over a set of outcomes. We consider the problem of an “information designer” who can choose an information structure for the players to serve his ends, but has no ability to change the mechanism (or force the players to make particular action choices). We describe a unifying perspective for information design. We consider a simple example of Bayesian persuasion with both an uninformed and informed receiver. We extend information design to many player and relate it to the literature on incomplete information correlated equilibrium.
Explaining energy disputes at the World Trade Organization

The international trade regime has seen an explosion of challenges to government support for renewable energy in recent years, yet fossil fuel subsidies, which dwarf renewable energy subsidies, have remained unchallenged. Existing explanations for this puzzling discrepancy have focused on four rationales: major fossil fuel exporters have not historically been members of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade/World Trade Organization (WTO); WTO subsidies rules are inadequate to deal with the specifics of the fossil fuel trade; nations have developed separate institutions to govern energy; and all states have fossil fuel subsidies, so a challenge to one country’s subsidies will prompt a reciprocal challenge. This article makes two contributions. First, it uses a survey of existing renewable energy trade disputes to critique the existing explanations. Most importantly, the article shows that the threat of reciprocal litigation exists in the renewable energy sector, and that WTO subsidies rules are rarely used to challenge renewable energy subsidies. Hence, neither the threat of reciprocal litigation nor the relative ease of applying WTO subsidies rules explains the discrepancy in the number of disputes. Second, the article hypothesizes that the economic diversification of energy-producing countries is correlated with and may drive whether energy-producing countries face WTO challenges to their energy support policies. Most major fossil fuel producers lack significant non-fossil fuel exports that could be restricted in order to induce them to reform their fossil fuel policies, the usual mechanism for enforcing a WTO judgment. States may also be more likely to challenge new, rather than long-standing, trade restrictions. This suggests that trade challenges will arise more frequently where innovation leads to competition and a demand for new trade restrictions (as in renewable energy), as opposed to in mature sectors of the economy (i.e., the fossil fuel industry). Economic diversification, in turn, is a good predictor of innovation.
Robust score and portmanteau tests of volatility spillover

Abstract This paper presents a variety of tests of volatility spillover that are robust to heavy tails generated by large errors or GARCH-type feedback. The tests are couched in a general conditional heteroskedasticity framework with idiosyncratic shocks that are only required to have a finite variance if they are independent. We negligibly trim test equations, or components of the equations, and construct heavy tail robust score and portmanteau statistics. Trimming is either simple based on an indicator function, or smoothed. In particular, we develop the tail-trimmed sample correlation coefficient for robust inference, and prove that its Gaussian limit under the null hypothesis of no spillover has the same standardization irrespective of tail thickness. Further, if spillover occurs within a specified horizon, our test statistics obtain power of one asymptotically. We discuss the choice of trimming portion, including a smoothed p -value over a window of extreme observations. A Monte Carlo study shows our tests provide significant improvements over extant GARCH-based tests of spillover, and we apply the tests to financial returns data. Finally, based on ideas in Patton (2011) we construct a heavy tail robust forecast improvement statistic, which allows us to demonstrate that our spillover test can be used as a model specification pre-test to improve volatility forecasting.
Aspects of Economic Dualism in Oman 1830–1930

The history of Oman is largely a story of competition, and often conflict, between two very different entities. This duality was even symbolized by the name of the country, “Sultanate of Muscat and Oman,” until 1970. The sultanate was formed from the fusion of the Batina coastal plain and its port cities, symbolically Muscat, and the interior of the country, Oman. During most periods in the recent history of the country, only the coast has been ruled by the sultan. Even before the institution of the sultanate emerged in the 18th century, however, the coast had usually been under separate, often foreign, rule. In the interior, the ideal head of government from very early times was that of an imam, even though the office often remained vacant. At many times during Omani history, of course, one part of the country or the other imposed its control and Oman was temporarily united, but the differences between the two sections of Omani society eventually split the country into two separate states again. Even within the last decade, one of the major problems in Oman's efforts to develop has been “the traditional antithesis between the sultan residing on the coast and the inwardly oriented tribes.”
Investors’ reaction to the government credibility problem: A real option analysis of emission permit policy risk

In relation to creating a CO2 emission permit market, there are two types of climate change policy risks: (1) It is uncertain whether and when a cap-and-trade system will be implemented; and (2) once a policy is in place, there may be government credibility issues. This paper examines the effect of these policy risks on real option decisions of electric power plant investment. To model both an investment decision and generation flexibility, this study evaluates an exotic compound American option on multiple strips of European spread options through the implementation of least squares Monte Carlo simulation. Government credibility risk leads to more investment in “less green” resources and induces additional cash flow variation, which increases the average time to investment (value of waiting). However, in an extreme case, government credibility can actually hasten investment because the risk may be more favorable to electric power companies. Furthermore, if emission trading is planned to be implemented in the future (e.g., 2020), and the market believes that the probability of successful implementation is low, firms will build a “less green” plant early to benefit from the period before the green rule is applied.
Disease Management and Liability in the Human Genome Era

The completion of a rough draft of the Human Genome presents both tremendous potential for improvements in health care delivery and challenges to providing appropriate incentives that will bring forth new treatments while protecting individuals and groups from genetic discrimination. As "genetics" becomes an integral part of health care delivery, there are no existing coherent legal doctrines for balancing the risks and benefits of this technological and scientific achievement. Developing a coherent legal approach to these risks and benefits requires a reexamination of the purposes of the liability doctrines that govern the management of disease processes. At the moment, a genetic approach to human disease primarily involves attempts at prevention - which means genetic screening of individuals, fetuses in utero, and embryos. This screening process requires the cooperation of population groups identified by genotype, or ethnic or social group. The nature of this cooperation, or the "voluntariness" of the consent to donate tissue and other samples of DNA is now the subject of at least one lawsuit in which the plaintiffs claim that the physician/scientist should have disclosed his intention to patent the gene and screening test for a rare genetic disorder. In order to develop a framework to resolve this case and other liability claims in the Human Genome Era, this article analyzes and proposes a coherent theory of liability for mishaps. This theory is based on: 1) the difference between informed consent liability doctrines in research and clinical settings; 2) the relationship between the regulatory scheme for research and liability claims; and 3) the implications of the Nuremberg Code for determining the parameters of informed consent in research settings.
Misalignments in Tort Law

In negligence law, the risks taken into account by courts when setting the standard of care are the same risks considered when imposing liability and awarding damage. I call this the “alignment principle.” One objective of the Article is to expose the exceptions to the alignment principle, which I call “misalignments.” In cases of misalignment, the risks that are accounted for in setting the standard of care are different from the risks for which liability is imposed and damages are awarded. A second aim of the Article is to suggest modifications to the law, when misalignments cannot be justified. The most important aim of this Article is, however, to offer a theory as to how to evaluate and contend with misalignments. Five cases of misalignment are identified and discussed in the Article. The first case illustrates how courts set the standard of care regardless of the victim’s level of income, but award different amounts of damages to high- and low-income victims. The second case represents instances in which causation is inherently hard to prove. In such cases, courts set the standard of care according to the expected harm, but traditionally allow no compensation when the plaintiff suffers harm but cannot prove that it was caused by the defendant’s negligence. In the third case, courts set the standard of care according to both risks increased and decreased by the injurer, but ignore the decreased risks when awarding damages. In the fourth case, courts set the standard of care by taking into account both ordinary and unusual risks, but often refuse to impose liability for harms that materialized from the ordinary risks. Finally, in the fifth case, courts set the standard of care by considering the risks the injurer created toward others, but not the risks he created for himself, even though the negligent injurer bears harms materialized from both risks to others and to self. In all five cases, the goals of tort law would be better served were the misalignments removed and all risks equally accounted for both in setting the standard of care and awarding damages.
Electronic procurement: a structured literature review and directions for future research

The practice of Electronic Procurement (EP) has gained popularity over the last ten years, and so has the research on this emerging area. While first reports in the 1990s focused on general descriptions and best practices, more recent studies have dealt with specific and refined applications of this approach. Since some of the early EP technologies are maturing, while new ones are appearing constantly, a structured literature review is warranted. As such, this paper reviews 157 refereed journal articles dealing with EP, and examines them along eight key dimensions. Based on the insights gained, directions for future research are suggested.
The Eye of the Storm: Software Patents and the Abstract Idea Doctrine in CLS Bank v. Alice

The Federal Circuit is sharply split on the criteria for determining whether a computer-implemented invention is patent-eligible or is an ineligible abstract idea. The reversals of Federal Circuit’s prior attempts to articulate a bright-line test for patentability and the tension between the Supreme Court's doctrine and the realities of the examination process have led to a storm over the validity of the vast number of software patents issued to date. This Note reviews the current controversy posed by CLS Bank v. Alice and describes the judicial philosophies behind the split. The Note further provides an overview of the abstract idea doctrine and questions raised by the Supreme Court's Prometheus ruling. The Note concludes with a review of the steps implemented by the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act of 2011 that will address the problem of overly broad computer method patents.
The Elusive Gains from International Financial Integration

Standard theoretical arguments tell us that countries with relatively little capital benefit from financial integration as foreign capital flows in and speeds up the process of convergence. We show in a calibrated neoclassical model that conventionally measured welfare gains from this type of convergence appear relatively limited for the typical emerging market country. The welfare gain from switching from financial autarky to perfect capital mobility is roughly equivalent to a 1% permanent increase in domestic consumption for the typical non-OECD country. This is negligible relative to the welfare gain from a take-off in domestic productivity of the magnitude observed in some of these countries.
Topics In Finance Part VI Capital Budgeting

This series on the theory of financial management offers insight into the roles of stockholder wealth maximization, the risk-return tradeoff, and agency conflicts as they apply to major topics in finance. The current article investigates capital budgeting. Much literature addresses this topic, with a number of articles challenging mainstream theories, some investigating agency problems, and a few empirically testing the relationships taught in most managerial finance classrooms.
A Primer on Real Effective Exchange Rates: Determinants, Overvaluation, Trade Flows and Competitive Devaluation

Several alternative measures of “effective” exchange rates are discussed in the context of their theoretical underpinnings and construction. Focusing on contemporary indices and recently-developed econometric methods, the empirical characteristics of these differing series are examined for the U.S., the euro area, and several East Asian countries. The issues that confront the applied economist or policymaker in using the measures of real effective exchange rates available are illustrated in several case studies from current interest: (i) evaluating exchange rate misalignment; (ii) testing the Balassa-Samuelson effect; (iii) estimating the price responsiveness of trade flows; and (iv) assessing the potential impact of competitive devaluations.
One for Some or One for All? Taylor Rules and Interregional Heterogeneity

We document a novel empirical phenomenon: the U.S. Federal Reserve appears to set interest rates partly in response to regional economic disparities. This result is robust even after controlling for factors such as the central bank's forecasts and a battery of explanatory variables. We argue that this likely does not reflect an explicit concern about regional differences by policymakers but instead can be explained by a model with nonlinear regional Phillips curves. Consistent with the predictions of this model, we find that the Federal Reserve responds disproportionately to fluctuations in low unemployment states. Alternative explanations cannot account for this finding.
Does Focus Improve Operational Performance? Lessons from the Management of Clinical Trials

For over three decades, the benefits of focus have been touted under the guiding principle that dedicated attention to a small set of linked tasks improves operating performance. Numerous studies have suggested that the performance of a division, plant, or business unit is improved to the extent that it remains focused on a narrow range of activities. Others have found similar benefits associated with focus at the level of the entire firm. A question that has received less attention, however, is whether focus at the divisional level is complementary with, or a substitute for, focus at the firm level. We explore this question by considering the performance of investigative sites in biopharmaceutical clinical trials. First, we establish that firms focusing on a particular task—at either a divisional or firm level—experience higher output and productivity with respect to that task than unfocused firms. After controlling for selection, scale, and learning effects, we find that sites that focus on conducting clinical trials significantly outperform those that mix trial activity with the provision of traditional patient care. Second, we find evidence that focus at the divisional level and firm level are substitutes. That is, organizations characterized by divisional focus alone achieve statistically similar performance to sites that are characterized by both divisional and firm focus. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
The dividend ratio model and small sample bias: A Monte Carlo study

Abstract Small sample properties of parameter estimates and test statistics in the vector autoregressive dividend ratio model [Campbell and Shiller (1988a,b)] are derived by stochastic simulation. The data generating processes are cointegrated vector autoregressive models, estimated subject to restrictions implied by the dividend ratio model, or altered to show a unit root.
An Integrated Green Urban Electrical Grid

Relying on only renewable resources for generating electricity once seemed like a dream. Yet, an island in Denmark is now achieving that dream by generating all the electricity it needs with renewable resources. Other communities throughout the world now want to achieve this same milestone. To critics, these goals are not attainable due to the intermittent nature of the primary renewable resources, wind and solar power, which many of these communities plan to rely on. But, several studies have confirmed that it can be done, and plans are already underway to switch communities to one hundred percent renewable energy in just a few years. This dream of relying only on renewables can also be realized in the near future in communities in the United States by integrating energy efficiency, demand response, distributed generation and energy storage into an integrated green urban grid. This article presents a vision for a new integrated green urban grid that could reliably supply a community with all of its net energy needs.
The Chapter 11 Efficiency Fallacy

This Article challenges the persistent claim that Chapter 11’s increasing utilization of market mechanisms will help facilitate economically efficient resolutions of corporate financial distress. Using two recent case studies, I show that, in fact, these mechanisms are used by stakeholders with existing market power to take control of the restructuring process and extract rents at the expense of other constituents: creditors, equity holders, and—in the case of companies that receive governmental bailouts—taxpayers. These distortionary effects are obscured by a dominant, neoclassical legal paradigm that ignores institutional and political dynamics. I advance a new explanatory model that draws upon modern social science to capture these otherwise-unexplored forces. This new model offers a template for law reform efforts aimed at improving market equality and allocating resources in commercial restructurings more rationally, contributing to an overall increase in social welfare.