cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Legal and statistical aspects of some mysterious clusters

SUMMARY Criminal and civil trials often involve events that appear to cluster together in time or space, and the existence and size of the cluster often is interpreted as implying that the occurrence of the events could not be a coincidence. This paper examines the statistical evidence introduced in several cases to show how such mysterious clusters should be interpreted. The paper considers this form of evidence in the context of legal views on the admissibility of evidence about 'similar events', and it suggests a more formal statistical argument that might be used to justify admissibility in one category of cases. The finely chiselled lips parted. He said, 'Mr Bond, they have a saying in Chicago: "Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it's enemy action."' These words of the arch villain in Ian Fleming's novel Goldfinger capture a principle firmly etched in the Anglo-American law of evidence: where a purely accidental occurrence would not create liability, proof of similar, prior incidents may be admitted to show that the occurrence is not mere happenstance. In this paper, we describe the situations under which courts allow proof of similar prior incidents to disprove a claim of coincidence. Then, we consider some recent American cases that follow the trend towards greater reliance on forensic statistical assessments described in a National Research Council panel report (Fienberg, 1989) by allowing expert testimony on the probability of an accidental string of similar incidents. Finally, we examine some of the statistical aspects of these calculations and their legal relevance. Our intent is to raise legal and statistical questions regarding the role of a particular form of statistical evidence in actual legal cases, to examine the fit between legal theory and the statistical methodology that has been invoked in such cases and thereby to stimulate further legal and statistical thinking about apparent clusters in legal settings.
Community structure in the United States House of Representatives

We investigate the networks of committee and subcommittee assignments in the United States House of Representatives from the 101st–108th Congresses, with the committees connected by “interlocks” or common membership. We examine the community structure in these networks using several methods, revealing strong links between certain committees as well as an intrinsic hierarchical structure in the House as a whole. We identify structural changes, including additional hierarchical levels and higher modularity, resulting from the 1994 election, in which the Republican party earned majority status in the House for the first time in more than 40 years. We also combine our network approach with the analysis of roll call votes using singular value decomposition to uncover correlations between the political and organizational structure of House committees.
A Law Guardian by the Same Name: A Response to Professor Guggenheim's Matrimonial Commission Critique

I commence this article with a discussion of the statutory provisions governing the appointment and responsibilities of attorneys who represent children in New York. Part II briefly outlines the chronological implementation from initial enactment through the Matrimonial Commission Report, a period spanning forty-five years. Parts III and IV explore the specific nature of child custody representation and the relationship between the attorney and the child client during the course of a frequently lengthy proceeding. Last, the Commission's conclusions and recommendations are critiqued in Parts V and VI.
Decentralized Cyberattack Attribution

Attribution of state-sponsored cyberattacks can be difficult, but the significant uptick in attributions in recent years shows that attribution is far from impossible. After several years of only sporadic attributions, Western governments in 2017 began attributing cyberattacks to other governments more frequently and in a more coordinated fashion. But nongovernment actors have more consistently attributed harmful cyber activity to state actors. Although not without risks, these nongovernmental attributions play an important role in the cybersecurity ecosystem. They are often faster and more detailed than governmental attributions, and they fill gaps where governments choose not to attribute. Companies and think tanks have recently proposed centralizing attribution of state-sponsored cyberattacks in a new international entity. Such an institution would require significant start-up time and resources to establish efficacy and credibility. In the meantime, the current system of public-private attributions, decentralized and messy though it is, has some underappreciated virtues—ones that counsel in favor of preserving some multiplicity of attributors even alongside any future attribution entity.
Mental Health, Schooling Attainment and Polygenic Scores: Are There Significant Gene-Environment Associations?

It is well-established that (1) there is a large genetic component to mental health, and (2) higher schooling attainment is associated with better mental health. Given these two observations, we test the hypothesis that schooling may attenuate the genetic predisposition to poor mental health. Specifically, we estimate associations between a polygenic score (PGS) for depressive symptoms, schooling attainment and gene-environment (GxE) interactions with mental health (depressive symptoms and depression), in two distinct United States datasets at different adult ages- 29 years old in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) and 54 years old in the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS).OLS results indicate that the association of the PGS with mental health is similar in Add Health and the WLS, but the association of schooling attainment is much larger in Add Health than in the WLS. There is some suggestive evidence that the association of the PGS with mental health is lower for more-schooled older individuals in the WLS, but there is no evidence of any significant GxE associations in Add Health.Quantile regression estimates also show that in the WLS the GxE associations are statistically significant only in the upper parts of the conditional depressive symptoms score distribution. We assess the robustness of the OLS results to omitted variable bias by using the siblings samples in both datasets to estimate sibling fixed-effect regressions. The sibling fixed-effect results must be qualified, in part due to low statistical power. However, the sibling fixed-effect estimates show that college education is associated with fewer depressive symptoms in both datasets.
Material Weaknesses in Tax-Related Internal Controls and Last Chance Earnings Management

ABSTRACT: We investigate the consequences of tax-related internal control material weaknesses (ICMWs) for financial reporting. We hypothesize that the presence of ineffective controls over the tax function makes earnings management through the income tax accrual (both income increasing and income decreasing) easier to implement relative to firms with effective controls. We also predict that the remediation of tax-related ICMWs has the effect of constraining earnings management through the tax accrual. The results provide support for our predictions. We also find that last chance earnings management via tax-related ICMWs is concentrated in the early years of our sample, during the initial SOX implementation period. Our results suggest that tax-related ICMWs were initially associated with greater tax-expense management but that SOX internal control assessments subsequently improved the quality of financial reporting by reducing opportunities for tax-expense management.
The Coasean Dissolution of Corporate Social Responsibility

Assertions that corporations should be socially responsible1 commonly elicit either of two quite different reactions.2 On the one hand, there is an enthusiastic affirmative response, generally grounded in moral views and often associated with the liberal end of the political spectrum.3 This response, which is usually coupled with the idea that big business is malevolent and dangerous, holds that corporate managers are too often concerned only with profits and that, unless guided by the values of corporate social responsibility (CSR), corporations cause great harm to society. On this view, corporations are generally not sufficiently socially responsible and ought (in a moral sense of
Like Moths to a Flame - International Securities Litigation after Morrison: Correcting the Supreme Court's Transactional Test

Because of the broad jurisdiction American courts have asserted in cases arising under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, they have been called a Shangri-la for “foreign-cubed” class actions with little connection to the United States. Over the past forty years, the standards used by American courts to determine their jurisdiction in international securities disputes have evolved, culminating in the U.S. Supreme Court’s Morrison decision of 2010. The new transactional test promulgated in Morrison replaced all of its predecessor tests, from a test measuring whether the conduct in question took place in the United States to a test measuring whether the effects of the conduct were felt in the United States, to a combined conduct-effects test. This new transactional test is unsatisfactory, however, because depending on how it is interpreted, it is either too narrow to protect American investors as Congress intended in Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act, or too broad to resolve the ambiguities that plagued the conduct-effects test. This Article proposes a new effects test that will resolve ambiguities, protect American investors, and refrain from asserting American judicial jurisdiction overseas contrary to principles of international comity. Though the effects test would not grant private parties a cause of action against violators operating in the United States but who exclusively defraud those overseas, Congress has already granted authority to federal agencies to pursue such bad actors. The effects test is also in accordance with principles of other important jurisdictions, such as the European Union, and could serve as a basis for an international agreement on jurisdiction in international securities cases.
Fiscal Structure and the Post‐Proposition 13 Fiscal Regime in California's Cities

Two and a half decades after the passage of Proposition 13 in 1978, California state and local governments continue to feel the intended and unintended effects of tax and expenditure limitations. While considerable time has passed since voters enacted Proposition 13, the effects of the property tax revolt continue to be dramatic. This article examines the fiscal structure of California's city governments from 1972 to 2002. The analysis reveals that California's cities have become less reliant upon property tax revenues and more reliant upon charges and fees, and have not increased reliance upon sales tax revenues as much as expected.
Advance directives, dementia, and 'the someone else problem'

Advance directives permit competent adult patients to provide guidance regarding their care in the event that they lose the capacity to make medical decisions. One concern about the use of advance directives is the possibility that, in certain cases in which a patient undergoes massive psychological change, the individual who exists after such change is literally a (numerically) distinct individual from the person who completed the directive. If this is true, there is good reason to question the authority of the directive - which is supposed to apply to the individual who completed it, not to someone else. This is ‘the someone else problem’. After briefly introducing advance directives as a basis for medical decision-making, this paper elaborates ‘the someone else problem’ in the context of severe dementia. The paper then reconstructs the reasoning that leads to this putative problem and exposes the important underlying assumption that we are essentially persons. An alternative view of what we are, one that regards personhood as inessential, is then considered, before several arguments are advanced in favor of that alternative view. The paper next explores implications for advance directives: ‘The someone else problem’ is effectively dissolved, while it is noted that a related problem (one beyond the paper's scope) may persist. A few implications beyond advance directives are also identified.
Making Strange Laws

The central argument of this Article is that conflict over the judicial practice to use foreign authority leads to the manufacture of foreign law into a dangerous stranger. Drawing on philosopher and sociologist Georg Simmel’s conceptualization of the stranger as a cultural object that sits on the border of the insider and outsider, I argue that there is a resistance to the use of foreign law in the United States. Foreign laws, like immigrants in the United States, are being constructed as tolerable illegals or threatening legals. I perform an empirical qualitative content analysis of the senate confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominees and their discussions of the practice of judicial citation of foreign law. The hearings of nominees Alito, Kagan, O’Connor, Roberts, and Sotomayor are studied. During these hearings, conservatives label foreign law as biased and dangerous. Most interestingly, however, are the ways in which foreign law emerges from these debates linked to otherness—particularly the otherness of disadvantaged gender and racial minorities. The Article connects the transformation of foreign law into a stranger to other conservative movements that have constructed foreign national immigrants as illegal strangers who should be feared. This work argues that foreign laws and decisions constitute a new American stranger. * Assistant Professor, Whittier Law School. Ph.D., Department of Sociology, University of Chicago (2013); J.D., Northwestern University School of Law (1999); A.B., Princeton University (1996). The author is especially grateful to Betsy Rosenblatt, Leonard Rubinowitz, Mario L. Small, and Saskia Sassen for their feedback on this project. I received valuable feedback when I presented an earlier draft of this Article in a workshop at the Center for International and Comparative Law at Whittier Law School. I am thankful to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law who provided support during the preliminary writing phase of this Article. 1 Lyke: Making Strange Laws Published by Penn Law: Legal Scholarship Repository, 2014 02_LYKE (DO NOT DELETE) 6/30/2014 676 U. Pa. J. Int’l L. [Vol. 35:3
Shiller's CAPE: Market Efficiency and Risk

Robert Shiller shows that Cyclically Adjusted Price to Earnings Ratio (CAPE) is strongly associated with future long‐term stock returns. This is often interpreted as evidence of market inefficiency. We present two findings contrary to such an interpretation. First, if markets are efficient, stock returns should be higher than the risk‐free rate. We find that even when CAPE is in its ninth decile, future 10‐year stock returns, on average, are higher than future returns on 10‐year U.S. Treasurys. Thus, the results are largely consistent with market efficiency. Second, consistent with a risk–return tradeoff, we find that CAPE is negatively associated with future stock market volatility.
Reevaluating the effect of non-teaching wages on teacher attrition

Abstract Most empirical teacher attrition research focuses on estimating the effect of either the alternate occupation opportunities or the teacher work environment on teacher attrition. In this paper, we use non-teaching wages of former teachers to estimate the determinants of teacher attrition, including the wage differential between teaching and non-teaching occupations, as well as the teacher work environment. The results suggest that the wage differential only matters for inexperienced teachers with less than 6 years of teaching experience, while the work environment affects both inexperienced and experienced teachers. The magnitude of the wage differential is small relative to the effect of the teaching work environment on teachers’ exiting decisions. Furthermore, no compensating differentials of sufficient size are found. For inexperienced teachers, a teacher practicum, i.e., student teaching, is found to reduce attrition while certification and education degrees have no effect. Lastly, whether a teacher lives in households with income above $40,000 (excluding their own) significantly increases attrition.
Accounting Scandals: Where were the CFOs?

Amid the epidemic of corporate scandals and plummeting market values, the heads of corporate finance functions have often been conspicuous by their absence.
Institutions in Context

This review of Paul Horwitz’s First Amendment Institutions applauds Horwitz’s call for us to take institutions and their contexts seriously. Horwitz shows why “acontextual” First Amendment thinking and doctrine lead to rigid formalism and missed opportunities. He enhances his argument with four nuanced chapters on specific institutions: universities, presses, churches, and libraries. These chapters bring to life our diverse institutions and their differences. It is less clear whether the descriptive differences that Horwitz highlights warrant the doctrinal differences that he advocates. In other words, even if Horwitz is right to call our attention to institutions, do his observations translate to First Amendment doctrine that can meaningfully distinguish between them? I turn first to pressures internal to Horwitz’s institutional categories by focusing on two of his core examples: universities and churches. I then examine Horwitz’s chapter of associations and suggest broader implications than he acknowledges. I conclude by offering a different way to parse Horwitz’s argument: embracing his institutional distinctiveness within the time-honored public-private distinction that he rejects.
Exact Solutions for Extreme Black Hole Magnetospheres

We present new exact solutions of Force-Free Electrodynamics (FFE) in the Near-Horizon region of an Extremal Kerr black hole (NHEK) and offer a complete classifica-tion of the subset that form highest-weight representations of the spacetime’s SL(2, ℝ)×U(1) isometry group. For a natural choice of spacetime embedding of this isometry group, the SL(2, ℝ) highest-weight conditions lead to stationary solutions with non-trivial angular de-pendence, as well as axisymmetry when the U(1)-charge vanishes. In addition, we unveil a hidden SL(2, ℂ) symmetry of the equations of FFE that stems from the action of a complex automorphism group, and enables us to generate an SL(2, ℂ) family of (generically time-dependent) solutions. We then obtain still more general solutions with less symmetry by appealing to a principle of linear superposition that holds for solutions with collinear cur-rents. This allows us to resum the highest-weight primaries and their SL(2, ℝ)-descendants.
Finance and the Sources of Growth at Various Stages of Economic Development

This article studies the effects of financial development on the sources of growth in different groups of countries. Recent theoretical work shows that financial development may affect productivity and capital accumulation in different ways in industrial versus developing countries. This hypothesis is tested with panel data from 74 countries using GMM dynamic panel techniques. Results are consistent with the hypothesis: finance has a strong positive influence on productivity growth primarily in more developed economies. In less developed economies, the effect of finance on output growth occurs primarily through capital accumulation.
Eco‐Labeling and Stages of Development

The paper examines the effectiveness of eco-labeling in providing a market-based solution to the under-consumption of eco-friendly products in developing and developed countries. The authors show that whether labeling is an effective device in solving the problem of asymmetric information between sellers and buyers, or whether false labeling severs the link between willingness to pay and environmental conscious production choices, depends crucially on how monitoring intensities respond endogenously to economic growth, openness to trade, and technology transfers. In particular, by accounting for endogenous policy responses to economic growth, it is shown that an inverted-U relationship exists between consumer spending on eco-unfriendly products and national income. In addition, while international trade unambiguously benefits the environment in the presence of eco-labeling with perfect enforcement, trade openness may nevertheless delay the turning point of the growth and environment relationship, when the cost of enforcement falls disproportionately on developing countries, and when environmental policies are employed to reap terms-of-trade gains.
Advances in implementation, theoretical motivation, and numerical results for the nested iteration with range decomposition algorithm

This paper studies a low-communication algorithm for solving elliptic partial differential equations (PDE's) on high-performance machines, the nested iteration with range decomposition algorithm (NIRD). Previous work has shown that NIRD converges to a high level of accuracy within a small, fixed number of iterations (usually one or two) when applied to simple elliptic problems. This paper makes some improvements to the NIRD algorithm (including the addition of adaptivity during preprocessing, wider choice of partitioning functions, and modified error measurement) that enhance the method's accuracy and scalability, especially on more difficult problems. In addition, an updated convergence proof is presented based on heuristic assumptions that are supported by numerical evidence. Furthermore, a new performance model is developed that shows increased performance benefits for NIRD when problems are more expensive to solve using traditional methods. Finally, extensive testing on a variety of elliptic problems provides additional insight into the behavior of NIRD and additional evidence that NIRD achieves excellent convergence on a wide class of elliptic PDE's and, as such, should be a very competitive method for solving PDE's on large parallel computers.
Product Variety, Across-Market Demand Heterogeneity, and the Value of Online Retail

This paper quantifies the e ect of increased product variety in online markets on consumer welfare and firm profitability. We show the gains may be small if consumer tastes vary geographically and brick-and-mortar stores cater to the local demand. We use an original data set from a large online retailer containing millions of transactions. However, the large choice set leads to many products having zero local market shares. We propose a modification to Berry (1994) and Berry, Levinsohn, Pakes (1995), where both national and local market shares are used to recover geographically varying mean utilities. Our two step approach is easy to implement and fits our data well. Our results indicate that products face substantial heterogeneity in demand across geographic markets, with more niche products facing greater heterogeneity. Failing to account for across-market heterogeneity overstates the consumer welfare gain from increased online product variety. On the supply side we find traditional retail chains can generate a substantial increase in revenue by localizing assortments.
The effects of integrated supply management practices and environmental management practices on relative competitive quality advantage

Superior quality continues to be central to a manufacturing company's success, and firms are constantly striving for quality advantage over their competition. It is therefore crucial for companies to ensure the sound practice of quality management principles. However, companies must also seek additional avenues to enhance the relative competitive quality advantage of their product offerings. In this context, we examine the role of integrated supply management practices (SMP) and environmental management practices (EMP) as drivers of actual and perceived quality. We suggest that these groups of practices, in addition to quality management practices, are crucial in an increasingly transparent, competitive and global business environment. As such, SMP can be leveraged with suppliers providing expertise, capabilities and high quality inputs for the final product, resulting in higher actual quality, but also via the suppliers’ more intangible reputation, generating higher perceived quality. Similarly, EMP can ...
Judicial Formalism and the State Secrets Privilege

In the last decade, a disturbing pattern of judicial formalism and unwarranted deference to the executive branch with regard to secrecy claims has emerged in U.S. jurisprudence. The application of the state secrets privilege in the U.S. and English litigation surrounding former Guantanamo detainee Binyam Mohamed illustrates the way in which the United States appears to be moving away from the flexible, rule of law-oriented approach that courts in the United Kingdom and Israel take and is instead echoing the formalistic rigidity that the Indian Supreme Court uses in cases involving state invocations of secrecy. This formalism has resulted in the unnecessary and inappropriate failure of U.S. courts to engage in cases that present credible evidence of gross human rights violations at the hands of the U.S. government. To remedy this situation, Congress should re-introduce state secrets reform legislation that could infuse the litigation process with procedural and substantive fairness. At the same time, the courts must step away from judicial formalism, already rejected in other national security contexts, and instead heed the lessons of countries like India, the United Kingdom, and Israel with regard to the ramifications of a judiciary unwilling to engage in decision-making on these issues of fundamental civil and human rights.
Unintended Consequences of Lowering Disclosure Thresholds

ABSTRACT: In recent years, regulators have considered several initiatives to lower the threshold for disclosing risks to investors. We examine two ways in which disclosing more risks can actually lower investors' perceptions of risk. Utilizing an experiment, we find evidence of two unintended consequences on different types of investors. First, we demonstrate that the addition of low-probability risks to a disclosure can dilute (rather than add to) more probable losses, leading certain investors to lower their perceptions of overall risk. Second, since lowering the threshold changes the overall composition of the disclosure by adding low-probability losses, firms could adopt a tactic of minimization that characterizes the entire disclosure as unimportant, presenting the lowest risks most saliently, using compliance with the low threshold as a plausible reason for giving a lengthy disclosure of generally unimportant risks. Our findings suggest that such a tactic can be persuasive. Data Availability: Contac...
THE NEGLECT OF CHILDREN AND CULTURE: RESPONDING TO CHILD MALTREATMENT WITH CULTURAL COMPETENCE AND A REVIEW OF CHILD ABUSE AND CULTURE: WORKING WITH DIVERSE FAMILIES *

This article examines cultural competence in the context of child protective proceedings, underscoring the dangers posed by bias toward particular cultural views, standards, and norms. I look at the racial imbalance within the realm of child maltreatment proceedings and explore the challenge of how children can receive appropriate services, counseling, and representation, given their varying cultural, ethnic, and racial backgrounds. Lastly, I review Child Abuse and Culture: Working with Diverse Families , by Lisa Aronson Fontes.
Multi-Messenger Observations of Neutron Rich Matter

At very high densities, electrons react with protons to form neutron rich matter. This material is central to many fundamental questions in nuclear physics and astrophysics. Moreover, neutron rich matter is being studied with an extraordinary variety of new tools such as the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) and the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO). We describe the Lead Radius Experiment (PREX) that uses parity violating electron scattering to measure the neutron radius in 208Pb. This has important implications for neutron stars and their crusts. We discuss X-ray observations of neutron star radii. These also have important implications for neutron rich matter. Gravitational waves (GW) open a new window on neutron rich matter. They come from sources such as neutron star mergers, rotating neutron star mountains, and collective r-mode oscillations. Using large scale molecular dynamics simulations, we find neutron star crust to be very strong. It can support mountains on rotating neutron stars large enough to generate detectable gravitational waves. We believe that combing astronomical observations using photons, GW, and neutrinos, with laboratory experiments on nuclei, heavy ion collisions, and radioactive beams will fundamentally advance our knowledge of compact objects in the heavens, the dense phases of QCD,more » the origin of the elements, and of neutron rich matter.« less
Touring Imprisonment: A Descriptive Statistical Analysis of Prison Museums

Abstract This paper briefly reviews the scholarly literature about jail and prison museums. Then it presents the rationale and methods for developing a database on these worldwide museums (n = 95). Data on 13 variables were collected. The study reviews the results of the data collected on 10 of the variables that were coded, and discusses the implications of the data. The results indicate that the majority of prison museums are located in advanced industrialized countries, with the United States having the largest number. Most of the prison museums in the United States are in California, Colorado, and Texas. Although one of the museums covered by the database was opened as a correctional facility in 860, the majority of museums worldwide operated as jails and prisons over the past 150 years and were converted into prison museums after the 1960s. The fact that the United States has the greatest number of prisons reinforces both the reality and the perception of this country as one of the most punitive countries in the world.
Rethinking North America: Why NAFTA's Laissez Faire Approach to Integration is Flawed, and What to Do about it

The creation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) launched a new era of North American relations, an era in which the Canadian, Mexican and U.S. economies have become more closely integrated due to the rise in cross-border trade and investment in North America. Increased economic integration has also generated economic and social problems, with issues arising out of the migration of undocumented workers, negative environmental effects, increases in economic inequality and social unrest, and national security concerns. These concerns are not being addressed in a systematic, proactive manner, however, because NAFTA is a severely limited partnership. The governments of Canada, Mexico and the United States have resisted the opportunity to create mechanisms – in particular, effective trilateral institutions – to address trilateral issues in a proactive, concerted effort involving NAFTA’s governments. This article analyzes NAFTA’s “headless” approach to integration, resulting in the ad hoc, temporary and bilateral settlement of cross-border issues as they arise, to the detriment of sustainable growth of the North American economy. With little likelihood in the near future that the NAFTA governments will alter this approach, the article explores alternative mechanisms for improving North American relations, including the formation of trilateral networks of governmental and quasi-governmental officials, and the promotion of civil society initiatives involving NGOs, universities, and other non-governmental actors.
The Latent Efficiency of Fraudulent Transfer Law

A creditor holding a claim against a debtor typically holds the right, subject to the debtor's default, to obtain a judgment against the debtor, liquidate the debtor's assets, and apply the proceeds against his claim. If the debtor's assets are insufficient to satisfy the creditor's claim, the creditor is usually, but not always, out of luck. Under limited circumstances, a creditor can reach property the debtor transferred to a third party and apply the value of such property to satisfy his claim. The creditor can undo the transfer and obtain the property or its value from the transferee as though the debtor had never transferred it. The circumstances under which the creditors can undo or "avoid" a transfer of the debtor's property, deprive the transferee of the value of the property, and apply such value to satisfy their claims are the subject of fraudulent transfer law.Part II of this article sets out the fraudulent transfer rules and explains in basic terms how they work. It then examines and criticizes the prevailing normative explanations for fraudulent transfer law. Part III explains the respective abilities of creditors and transferees to avoid loss and the economic purpose of the rule that permits to creditors to undo some transfers of the debtor's property at the expense of transferees. Part IV of this article reveals how the definitions of actually and constructively fraudulent transfers can be understood as identifying those transfers in which the transferee is likely to be able to avoid the loss more cheaply. Part V considers some implications of this economic perspective on fraudulent transfer law.
Constructing Common Cultures: The Ontological and Normative Dimensions of Law in the European Union and Mercosur

Existing research suggests that the European Union (EU) has avoided the formal construction of a supranational culture. Theories in economic sociology predict that market building should entail the concomitant articulation of basic cultural material, above all of ontological and normative notions about the world. In this article we confirm that the EU has formally engaged in cultural construction. Through its system of secondary laws, the EU has in fact produced complex webs of ontological notions about the essence of objects, activities and agents, and of normative notions about the desirability of various situations. Analysis of the content of EU directives and regulations in the areas of working conditions, flora and fauna, and honey supports this claim. Analysis of national reactions and cultural contexts highlights the salience and distinctiveness of the emerging supranational culture. Evidence that Mercosur too has engaged in the production of ontological and normative notions suggests that, in line with the expectations of economic sociology, the EU is not unique, though the two markets can construct different notions when addressing identical subject matters. The implications of the findings for European enlargement and the comparative study of common markets are discussed.
The Lingering Effects of the Recruitment Experience on the Long‐Term Employment Relationship

Two studies (one cross-sectional and one longitudinal) examine the effects that job negotiation interactional justice perceptions created in the recruitment process have on an employee’s turnover intentions. The findings indicate a long-term impact of the interactional justice perceptions experienced in the recruitment negotiation on employees’ intent to leave their organization. Specifically, job negotiation interactional justice perceptions have a lingering effect on an individual’s turnover intentions beyond the effects of distributive justice and supportive human resource practices.
Becoming Strategic: Endogenous Consumer Time Preferences and Multiperiod Pricing

Pricing over multiple periods under forward-looking, strategic consumer purchasing behavior has received significant recent research attention; however, whether consumers actually benefit from this behavior and would voluntarily choose to be strategic has not been previously considered. We explore this question by developing a model of endogenous time preferences, consistent with microeconomic theories of boundedly rational intertemporal decision making, in which consumers choose to become strategic by exerting costly effort. We show three key implications of this choice. First, considering the consumer choice to be strategic can have a significant impact on firm and consumer decisions—in particular, qualitatively impacting the firm’s optimal pricing policy. Second, it is possible to increase firm profit, consumer surplus, and social welfare simultaneously by increasing the cost of strategic behavior, suggesting that firms can, essentially, force consumers to be myopic and make all parties better off; this helps explain how firms that do the most to make strategic behavior difficult are able to attract more demand and be successful in the marketplace. And third, efforts to mitigate strategic consumer waiting by committing to future prices instead of pricing dynamically may decrease the cost of strategic behavior and backfire, encouraging more consumers to be strategic; hence, in contrast to most previous research, price commitment may yield lower profit than dynamic pricing if consumers can choose to be strategic.
North versus South: The Impact of Social Norms in the Market Pricing of Private Property Rights in Vietnam

Summary Despite a centralized political system, country-wide legal reforms, and similar high housing demand pressures, property rights have evolved differently in Vietnam’s two leading cities, Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), during the transition period. Using ethnographic fieldwork and a hedonic price model, the study shows that the two land and housing markets price tenure ambiguity differently. The different price structures indicate the importance of norms, as socially constructed by local political interests and culture, in the efficacy of land title regularization programs.
Short-term and long-term interest rates in a monetary model of a small open economy

Abstract This paper analyzes the effects of both anticipated and unanticipated monetary and fiscal disturbances on the dynamic behavior of a monetary model of a small open economy. It focuses on the adjustment of the short-term and long-term interest rates and the divergence of their transitional paths, particularly in anticipation of these disturbances. The analysis demonstrates how anticipation of a future policy change can generate perverse short-run behavior. The essential reason for the divergence between the short and long rates is that the latter is dominated by long-term expectations, while the former is primarily determined by current influences.
The bioeconomic causes of war

Wars are fought not only for material goals but for intangible ends such as honor and prestige. In biological terms the ultimate functional motives for fighting are food and sex, the essential elements of reproductive success. Like many other animals, humans seek food and sex directly, but also indirectly via dominance and prestige. In modern times the direct food and sex motives for warfare have waned. But, although largely disconnected from reproductive success, intangible goals such as prestige, dominance, and respect-amplified by the 'affiliative instinct'-remain with us as continuing causes of war. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Inflation Determination with Taylor Rules: Is New Keynesian Analysis Critically Flawed?

Abstract Cochrane (2007) has strongly questioned the basic economic logic of current monetary policy analysis, arguing that New Keynesian (NK) models imply rational expectations paths with explosive inflation that do not imply explosions in real variables relevant for transversality conditions. Consequently, the usual logic does not rule out solutions with explosive inflation. That result does not, however, justify negative conclusions about NK analysis, for a different criterion is logically satisfactory. It is that, to be plausible, a RE solution must satisfy the property of least-squares learnability. Adoption of this criterion serves to justify in principle the bulk of current mainstream analysis.
Retiree Health Insurance and the Labor Force Behavior of Older Men in the 1990s

We estimate the impact of employer-provided retiree health insurance (EPRHI) on the labor force transitions of men aged 51 to 62. Data from the Health and Retirement Survey provide detailed and acc...
Measuring the Intensity of Competition in Export Markets

Abstract This paper develops an approach to measuring the intensity of competition in international markets using readily available data on destination-specific values and quantities of exports at the seven-digit industry level. The intensity of competition a group of exporters faces in a particular export market is measured by the residual demand elasticity the group faces. This elasticity is identified by exchange rate shocks which rotate the supply relation of the source-country export group relative to competitors located in other countries. We apply this method to German exports of beer and US exports of linerboard paper. The resulting estimates of market power appear to be plausible and consistent with other indicators of competition (e.g. market shares, the number of competitors), providing support for the applicability of our framework in measuring competition in international markets.
Late Appropriations and Government Shutdowns: Frequency, Causes, Consequences, and Remedies

This article reviews the history of government shutdowns and evaluates their effects. It first discusses the frequency of late appropriation bills, especially since the passage of the Congressional Budget Act in 1974. Then it examines the commonly suspected causes and the resulting consequences (the most extreme being government shutdowns). Remedies are suggested to alleviate financial, managerial and political costs of government shutdowns.
Informational Content of Option Volume Prior to Takeovers

Which market attracts informed investors prior to extreme informational events? We examine the information embedded in the stock and option markets prior to takeover announcements. Normally, buyer‐seller initiated stock volume imbalances are predictors of next‐day stock returns and option volume is uninformative. However, prior to takeover announcements, call‐volume imbalances are strongly related to next‐day stock returns. Cross‐sectional analysis shows that takeover targets with the largest preannouncement call‐imbalance increases experience the highest announcement‐day returns. These findings suggest that, with pending extreme informational events, the options market plays an important role in price discovery.
Actual and potential competition in international telecommunications

Abstract By allowing carriers to route telephone calls over low-cost private lines, international simple resale (ISR) makes it possible for carriers to provide international telephone service without owning an international circuit. When approved, ISR reduces entry barriers and can increase competition. Using data from US markets from 1995 to 2004, we estimate the effects of ISR on entry and retail prices. Results show that ISR has a limited (and imprecisely estimated) impact on entry and actual competition. However, controlling for actual competition, ISR authorization causes an average reduction in prices of 32.7%. Markets with relatively high carrier surplus experience an additional reduction in the price by 0.4 percentage points, and prices are 3.4 percentage points lower in markets with relatively high private line capacity. Our findings suggest that ISR promotes potential competition and lower prices in markets where the threat of hit-and-run entry is more credible.
Public transit bus procurement: The role of energy prices, regulation and federal subsidies

Abstract The U.S. public transit system represents a multi-billion dollar industry that provides essential transit services to millions of urban residents. We study the market for new transit buses that features a set of non-profit transit agencies purchasing buses primarily from a few domestic bus makers. In contrast with private passenger vehicles, the fuel economy of public buses has not improved during the last thirty years and is irresponsive to fuel price changes. To understand these findings, we build a model of bus fleet management decisions of public transit agencies that yields testable hypotheses. Our empirical analysis of bus fleet turnover and capital investment highlights the role of energy prices, environmental regulations, and the “Buy America” mandate associated with receiving federal funding to purchase public transit buses.
A nonlinear Gauss-Seidel algorithm for inference about GLMM

A nonlinear Gauss-Seidel type algorithm is proposed for computing the maximum posterior estimates of the random effects in a generalized linear mixed model. We show that the algorithm converges in virtually all typical situations of generalized linear mixed models. A numerical example shows the superiority of the proposed algorithm over the standard Newton-Raphson procedure when the number of random effects is large.
Streamlining and Privatization Prices in the Telecommunications Industry

We study the link between state-owned restructuring before privatization and privatization sales prices for the telecommunications industry. We use new data to cover 84 telecommunications privatizations, which account for nearly 80% of the sector in terms of value. We focus on streamlining policies and regulatory issues prior to privatization and find that, while most labour streamlining measures have no bearing on privatization prices, the presence of a regulatory agency prior to privatization does impact on prices, especially if such an agency was set up well before the sale took place.
A model of corporate self-policing and self-reporting

Abstract What are the effects of corporate self-reporting schemes on deterrence of corporate crime? This paper presents a model to analyze this question for the case in which a firm's manager, who has stock-based compensation, commits a corporate crime and the firm conducts self-policing and self-reporting. Corporate self-reporting schemes may enhance deterrence if the level of corporate leniency is within a certain range. But the level of corporate leniency has a non-monotonic relationship with deterrence in that range: as the level of corporate sanctions decreases, receding from the upper limit of the range, the probability of crime occurring first decreases and then increases. The paper also considers the case in which both individual and corporate self-reporting programs are introduced. The social desirability of individual self-reporting schemes depends on whether firms can commit to a certain level of self-policing efforts.
Non-separable pollution control: Implications for a CO2 emissions cap and trade system

Abstract The federal government now confronts considerable political pressure to add CO2 to the existing set of criteria air pollutants. As with current criteria pollutants, proposals call for control of CO2, assuming that the control of each of the three criteria pollutants is separable from the others. However, control of CO2, SO2, and NOX emissions is most appropriately viewed as joint rather than separable based on engineering relationships. Empirically, we also find considerable jointness. Using a 10-year panel for 77 U.S. electric utilities, which comprise the largest sector in terms of energy-related CO2 emissions, we estimate a multiple-input, multiple-output directional distance function combining good inputs (production capital, pollution control capital, labor, and energy) and a bad input (sulfur burned) to produce good outputs (residential and industrial/commercial electricity production) and bad outputs (SO2, NOX, and CO2). We find that while utilities do not directly control CO2 emissions, considerable jointness exists across SO2, NOX, and CO2 emissions. Failure to account for this jointness increases the cost of pollution control, making it less acceptable to the public and policymakers. We also compute the technical efficiency of our set of utilities and find that considerable cost savings can be achieved by adopting the best technology for production of electricity and reduction of pollutants.