cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Increasing Supply Chain Robustness through Process Flexibility and Inventory

We study a hybrid strategy that uses both process flexibility and finished goods inventory for supply chain risk mitigation. The interplay between process flexibility and inventory is modeled as a two‐stage robust optimization problem. In the first stage, the firm allocates inventory before disruption happens; in the second stage, after a disruption happens, the firm determines production quantities at each plant to minimize demand loss. Our robust optimization model can be solved efficiently using constraint generation, and under some stylized assumptions, can be solved in closed form. For a canonical family of flexibility designs known as the K‐chains, we provide an analytical expression for the optimal inventory solution, which allows us to study the effectiveness of different degrees of flexibilities. Moreover, we find that firms should allocate more inventory to high variability products when its level of flexibility is low, but as flexibility increases, the inventory allocation pattern “flips” and firms should allocate more inventory to low variability products. These observations are further verified through a numerical case study of an automobile supply chain. Finally, we extend our robust optimization model to the time‐to‐survive metric, a metric that computes the longest time a supply chain can guarantee a predetermined service level under disruption.
Illiquidity and its discontents: Trading delays and foreclosures in the housing market

Abstract The macroeconomic effects of housing illiquidity are analyzed using a novel directed search model of housing with long-term debt and default. Debt overhang emerges when highly leveraged sellers are forced to post high prices that produce long selling delays. These delays increase foreclosures, raise default premia, and curtail credit. Cheaper credit fuels temporarily higher house prices, faster sales, and fewer foreclosures, but the borrowing surge facilitates future debt overhang and default. More stringent foreclosure punishments also expand credit and, therefore, either generate higher foreclosures or more debt overhang. Leverage caps avoid this conundrum but reduce welfare by restricting borrowing.
From Racial Liberalism to Racial Literacy: Brown v. Board of Education and the Interest-Divergence Dilemma

On its fiftieth anniversary, Brown v. Board ofEducation no longer enjoys the unbridled admiration it once earned from academic commentators. Early on, the conventional wisdom was that the courageous social engineers from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Legal Defense and Educational Fund (NAACP LDEF), whose inventive lawyering brought the case to fruition, had caused a social revolution. Legal academics and lawyers still widely acclaim the Brown decision as one of the most important Supreme Court cases in the twentieth century, if not since the founding of our constitutional republic. Brown's exalted status in the constitutional canon is unimpeachable, yet over time its legacy has become complicated and ambiguous.1 The fact is that fifty years later, many of the social, political, and economic problems that the legally trained social engineers thought the Court had addressed through Brown are still deeply embedded in our society. Blacks lag behind whites in multiple measures of educational achievement, and within the black community, boys are falling further behind than girls. In addition, the will to support public education from kindergarten through twelfth grade appears to be eroding despite grow-
Towards a Market for Bank Safety

Imagine shopping for a car in 1960. Safety is important to you. How do you assess a car's performance in surviving a crash? What tools were available then to take an informed decision? The modern consumer of financial services is in a similar position as the car shopper of the 1960s. How does the modern consumer choose a bank that is relatively safe from identity thieves and other malicious individuals? Perhaps she chooses the larger institution, because it has more resources to address fraud. Or perhaps a smaller institution offers more protection, because it is more obscure. There is no way to know for sure, and thus, consumers cannot make an informed decision. This article attempts to actuate a market for bank safety by comparing identity theft victim data with government statistics used to measure the relative size of financial institutions. It envisions a future when this market incentivizes financial services firms to explicitly compete to reduce the likelihood that customers will become victims of identity theft or other frauds. In a world of competition in bank safety, consumers who put a premium on avoiding fraud could reward the most proficient firms with their loyalty. This article concludes that the available data, while weakened by several methodological concerns, do show that certain banks, large and small, have different identity theft footprints. Other discoveries were made as well. First, if present trends continue, there will be a substantial upswing in identity theft complaints to the Federal Trade Commission in 2008. Second, over a three-year period, a small group of companies accounted for almost 50 percent of identity theft incidents. Focusing interventions on this small group of companies could have a profound effect on incidence of identity theft. Finally, non-banking institutions, such as telecommunications companies, have an enormous identity theft footprint; in our highly dependent credit markets, impostors may be using these companies as stepping stones for attacks against banks.
Patents, Presumptions, and Public Notice

INTRODUCTION 780 I. THE FEDERAL CIRCUIT’S ELEVATION OF THE PATENT DISCLOSURE AND DISCOUNTING OF THE PHOSITA 784 A. THE JANUS-LIKE NATURE OF THE PATENT—TECHNICAL, LEGAL, OR BOTH? 785 B. THE FEDERAL CIRCUIT’S TREATMENT OF THE PATENT AS LEGAL FOR PURPOSES OF PUBLIC NOTICE 788 C. CONSEQUENCES OF TREATING THE PATENT AS PURELY LEGAL 803 II. BALANCING THE LEGAL AND THE TECHNOLOGICAL—THE USE OF PRESUMPTIONS 808 A. THE LESSONS (AND MISSED OPPORTUNITY) OF THE SUPREME COURT’S KSR DECISION 809 B. THE THEORIES OF PRESUMPTIONS AND THEIR APPLICABILITY TO PATENT LAW 815 C. THE USE OF REBUTTABLE PRESUMPTIONS CAN HELP BALANCE THE LEGAL AND TECHNICAL NATURE OF THE PATENT DOCUMENT 819 D. POSSIBLE DISADVANTAGES OF THE PRESUMPTION-BASED APPROACH ... 825 CONCLUSION 825
Accounting for Cloud Computing in the National Accounts

Digitalization and the innovative use of digital technologies is changing the way we work, learn, communicate, buy and sell products. One emerging digital technology of growing importance is cloud computing. More and more businesses, governments and households are purchasing hardware and software services from a small number of large cloud computing providers. This change is having an impact on how macroeconomic data are compiled and how they are interpreted by users. Specifically, this is changing the information and communication technology (ICT) investment pattern from one where ICT investment was diversified across many industries to a more concentrated investment pattern. Additionally, this is having an impact on cross-border flows of commercial services since the cloud service provider does not need to be located in the same economic territory as the purchaser of cloud services. This paper will outline some of the methodological and compilation challenges facing statisticians and analysts, provide some tools that can be used to overcome these challenges and highlight some of the implications these changes are having on the way users of national accounts data look at investment and trade in commercial services.
R&D Collaborations and Product Innovation*

This paper studies the relative impact on product innovation of research and development (RD once these are in place, it is better if the partner has a relatively narrow knowledge base. Thus, while R&D collaborations with both suppliers and universities are positively related to product innovation, the narrow knowledge base provided by collaborations with suppliers appears to have a larger positive impact on product innovation than the wider knowledge base provided by collaborations with universities. These arguments and findings are important and novel. The paper is one of the first to theoretically explain and empirically show that various types of collaborations have a differential influence on product innovation. It goes beyond previous literature by providing a theoretical logic for ranking the likely impact of types of collaborations on product innovation. The study also suggests to managers to carefully select the partners for their firms' R&D collaborations. Collaborations with suppliers appear to be the most promising for product innovation, followed by collaborations with universities, whereas collaborations with competitors may be detrimental to product innovation.
Merger Simulation in an Administrative Context

This article addresses the application of the existing technical economic literature on merger simulation in the practical context of merger review and enforcement under the antitrust laws. It highlights the use of simple simula tions as a basis for creating screens and presumptions to aid senior enforce ment officials and judges, who may not have specialized in competition policy, and to provide guidance to merging firms.
Text but Don’t Touch: Making (Non)Sense of Texas Teacher-Student Relationships

Young people, especially those enrolled in primary and secondary schools, are particularly susceptible to being taken advantage of by people they trust. Section 21.12 of the Texas Penal Code criminalizes improper relationships between educators and students in an effort to prevent the mental and physical harm that occurs when school employees use their classrooms as pools from which to choose potential sexual encounters. While few would argue that such a purpose is not well-intentioned, the law as it currently stands falls far short of criminalizing predatory behavior only where a position of authority has been abused. Rather, the Improper Relationship Statute’s current language actually has the potential to punish most certified school employees, regardless of whether the employee actually teaches in a classroom on a regular basis or has any regular interaction with the student that may be involved. Furthermore, the Improper Relationship Statute’s language goes beyond the walls of the teachers’ own classrooms—and even their own schools—by extending the prohibition to all students within the entire school district. Despite numerous amendments since the Improper Relationship Statute’s enactment, no amendments have narrowed the Improper Relationship Statute’s language so as to reach only those offenders who use their position of power to elicit a relationship with a student. As a result, the Improper Relationship Statute not only fails in specifically targeting the originally intended perpetrator—a predatory teacher—it also carries far greater consequences than necessary to accomplish its appropriate purpose. This Comment proposes changes to the language of the Improper Relationship Statute that will lessen the overreaching nature of the current language by adding an abuse-of-authority component. Although this proposal is not without its shortcomings, it puts the focus of the prohibited conduct on the relationship between the accused and the student and not simply the accused’s profession.
Bootstrap tests of multiple inequality restrictions on variance ratios

Abstract We develop a block bootstrap method for testing multiple inequality restrictions on variance ratios. The proposed test has reasonable size and power in the presence of strong persistence in conditional variances, making it well suited to applications in financial econometrics.
Forecasting multivariate time series with linear restrictions using constrained structural state-space models

This paper presents a methodology for modelling and forecasting multivariate time series with linear restrictions using the constrained structural state-space framework. The model has natural applications to forecasting time series of macroeconomic/financial identities and accounts. The explicit modelling of the constraints ensures that model parameters dynamically satisfy the restrictions among items of the series, leading to more accurate and internally consistent forecasts. It is shown that the constrained model offers superior forecasting efficiency. A testable identification condition for state space models is also obtained and applied to establish the identifiability of the constrained model. The proposed methods are illustrated on Germany's quarterly monetary accounts data. Results show significant improvement in the predictive efficiency of forecast estimators for the monetary account with an overall efficiency gain of 25% over unconstrained modelling. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Trade and Income—Exploiting Time Series in Geography

Establishing a robust causal relationship between trade and income has been difficult. Frankel and Romer (1999) use a geographic instrument to identify a positive effect of trade on income. Rodriguez and Rodrik (2000) show that these results are not robust to controlling for omitted variables such as distance to the equator or institutions. This paper solves the omitted variable problem by generating a time varying geographic instrument. Improvements in aircraft technology have caused the quantity of world trade carried by air to increase over time. Country pairs with relatively short air routes compared to sea routes benefit more from this change in technology. This heterogeneity can be used to generate a geography based instrument for trade that varies over time. The time series variation allows for controls for country fixed effects, eliminating the bias from time invariant variables such as distance from the equator or historically determined institutions. Trade has a significant effect on income with an elasticity of roughly one half. Differences in predicted trade growth can explain roughly 17 percent of the variation in cross country income growth between 1960 and 1995.
How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (Cases): Gender Stereotypes and Sexual Harassment Since the Passage of Title VII

This Article, which is part of a symposium on the 40th Anniversary of Title VII appearing in the Hofstra Labor and Employment Law Journal, evaluates the progress of women in the workforce by critically analyzing the musical "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying." Written in the early 1960s and made into a 1967 movie, How to Succeed follows the adventures of J. Pierrepont Finch, a window washer who, with the aid of a sarcastic self-help book, schemes his way up the corporate ladder. It also includes the sexual exploits of the exclusively male executive corps among the female secretarial pool. As "How to Succeed" was written and first performed contemporaneously with the passage of Title VII, the musical offers an opportunity to examine, from both a law and literature and law and popular culture perspective, how the view of women in the workforce has either progressed or remained stagnant during the past forty years. Although progress has been made toward gender equality, many issues highlighted in the musical are still problems today: sexual harassment; sex segregation of the workforce and pink collar ghettos; and the glass ceiling. This Article discusses these issues seriatim.
International Adoption: The Human Rights Position

International adoption is under siege, with the number of children placed dropping each of the last several years, and many countries imposing severe new restrictions. Key forces mounting the attack claim the child human rights mantle, arguing that such adoption denies heritage rights, and often involves abusive practices. Many nations assert rights to hold onto the children born within their borders, and others support these demands citing subsidiarity principles. But children’s most basic human rights, at the heart of the true meaning of subsidiarity, are to grow up in the families that will often be found only in international adoption. These rights should trump any conflicting state sovereignty claims.
A state space approach to bootstrapping conditional forecasts in ARMA models

A bootstrap approach to evaluating conditional forecast errors in ARMA models is presented. The key to this method is the derivation of a reverse-time state space model for generating conditional data sets that capture the salient stochastic properties of the observed data series. We demonstrate the utility of the method using several simulation experiments for the MA(q) and ARMA(p, q) models. Using the state space form, we are able to investigate conditional forecast errors in these models quite easily whereas the existing literature has only addressed conditional forecast error assessment in the pure AR(p) form. Our experiments use short data sets and non-Gaussian, as well as Gaussian, disturbances. The bootstrap is found to provide useful information on error distributions in all cases and serves as a broadly applicable alternative to the asymptotic Gaussian theory.
The Impact of Generating Initial Hypothesis Sets of Different Sizes on the Quality of the Initial Set, and the Resulting Time Efficiency and Final Judgment Accuracy

This study examines the impact of generating initial hypothesis sets of different sizes on the quality of the hypotheses generated (i.e., the ability to consider both the direction and accounts that are over- or understated). We also examine the time efficiency, information search effectiveness, and the final judgment accuracy, conditional on the quality of the initial hypothesis set. Sixty auditors performed an analytical procedures task where they were asked to generate and test either a specific number of initial hypotheses (one, three, or six), or any number of hypotheses desired in order to uncover an error seeded in the financial statements. The results indicate that the three hypotheses group initially generated hypotheses of the highest quality and maintained the hypothesis quality after efficiently searching information and generating additional causes. The one hypothesis group improved the quality of their hypotheses only after generating and testing several causes. However, auditors who generated six hypotheses or any number desired (as in audit practice) considered hypotheses of lower quality in the initial set, and did not improve the hypotheses quality after going through the information search stage. These results suggest that the size of the initial hypothesis set can lead to differences in the gains that accrue from the hypothesis generation and information search stages of diagnostic decisions.
Before the Grand Rethinking: Five Things to Do Today with Payments Law and Ten Principles to Guide New Payments Products and New Payments Law

U.S. consumers today have a broad range of choices about how to make payments. In addition to checks, credit cards and traditional debit cards, consumers may be offered prepaid cards, contactless cards, mobile payment devices, online payment sites, online credit payments, and other new ways to pay. Federal payments law was developed before many of these methods existed, so it is no surprise that it has gaps in coverage. The variations in the law underlying the different payments methods place consumers in very different legal positions when something goes wrong. The gaps in the law mean that the particular payment method used, and how the payment is processed, can affect the consumer's ability to get his or her money back if the goods are not delivered as ordered, the payment information is stolen and misused, the payment was unauthorized, or the payment is processed for the wrong amount. This article, first published at 83 Chicago-Kent Law Review, No. 2, 769 (2008), describes the current state of confusion and gaps in the payments law; outlines a set of five immediate changes to current law that would address major problems and ambiguities in payment law; and offers ten principles to evaluate existing and future payments methods, regulations and laws. First, the article describes the current state of the law as applied to some of the new payments methods in terms of the questions consumers might ask: Is my money safe? Will it disappear in fees before I have a chance to spend it? Will I get my money back if someone else makes a mistake? Can I stop or reverse payment if I do not get the goods? This section describes the different answers to these questions depending on which payment product is used. Second, the article describes how many of these problems could be eliminated and greater consumer protection in the non-cash payment marketplace could be accomplished with a handful of changes to the Electronic Fund Transfer Act, the Fair Credit Billing Act, and the Expedited Funds Availability Act, plus more vigorous regulatory use of the power to prohibit unfair practices. These changes could provide a baseline set of consumer protections, built from the strongest elements of current federal consumer protections in payments law. Finally, the article recommends ten principles for evaluating new payments products and new payments law.
EMERGENCY DECLARATIONS AND TRIBES: MECHANISMS UNDER TRIBAL AND FEDERAL LAW.

INTRODUCTION 33 I. TRIBAL DECLARATIONS 35 II. STAFFORD ACT DECLARATION REQUESTS 39 A. Tribal Request for a Stafford Act Declaration 39 B. State Request for a Stafford Act Declaration 41 III. FEDERAL PUBLIC HEALTH EMERGENCY DECLARATIONS 42 CONCLUSION 44
THE PRODUCTIVITY OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY INVESTMENTS : NEW EVIDENCE FROM IT LABOR DATA

This paper uses newly collected panel data that allow for significant improvements in the measurement and modeling of information technology (IT) productivity to address some longstanding empirical limitations in the IT business value literature. First, we show that using generalized method of moments–based estimators to account for the endogeneity of IT spending produces coefficient estimates that are only about 10% lower than unadjusted estimates, suggesting that the effects of endogeneity on IT productivity estimates may be relatively small. Second, analysis of the expanded panel suggests that (a) IT returns are substantially lower in midsize firms than in Fortune 500 firms; (b) they materialize more slowly in large firms—in midsize firms, unlike in larger firms, the short-run contribution of IT to output is similar to the long-run output contribution; and (c) the measured marginal product of IT spending is higher from 2000 to 2006 than in any previous period, suggesting that firms, and especially larg...
Some Ethical Issues Surrounding Mediation

A progressively larger portion of social ordering occurs through mediation. Lawyers are often involved in mediation. From one perspective, mediation is simply facilitated negotiation. Thus the issues that pervade the ethics of negotiation reappear in the context of mediation without much change. Mediation, however, promises much more than facilitated negotiation. “Transformative mediation”, now widely practiced, aims not primarily at maximizing outcomes, but at the moral transformation of the parties. This form of mediation poses much more fundamental questions about legal ethics and the lawyer’s role. These questions implicate the general morality of legal and political discourse and the interrelationships of the moral, legal, and political spheres. Northwestern University School of Law Public Law and Legal Theory Research Paper Series Research Paper No. 02-5
The Ethanol Decade: An Expansion of U.S. Corn Production, 2000-09

The recent 9-billion-gallon increase in corn-based ethanol production, which resulted from a combination of rising gasoline prices and a suite of Federal bioenergy policies, provides evidence of how farmers altered their land-use decisions in response to increased demand for corn. As some forecasts had suggested, corn acreage increased mostly on farms that previously specialized in soybeans. Other farms, however, offset this shift by expanding soybean production. Farm-level data reveal that the simultaneous net expansion of corn and soybean acreage resulted from a reduction in cotton acreage, a shift from uncultivated hay to cropland, and the expansion of double cropping (consecutively producing two crops of either like or unlike commodities on the same land within the same year).
Shame creeps through guilt and feels like retribution

The stories of William Trevor often contain, near the end, a single sentence that captures – in one crystalline moment – a core insight toward which the story has been building all along. Near the end of his recent novel Death in Summer, the following sentence occurs: “Her compassion faltered: shame creeps through guilt and feels like retribution.”2 I believe that my ability to understand the profundity of this sentence, and thus the story in which it occurs, was aided enormously by my reading of the essays of Herbert Morris. And thus, in my essay, I will reflect on the themes present in this sentence and thereby follow, in my own limited way, a path familiar to all those who have read Morris: drawing philosophical inspiration from literature, trying to be open to the moral and spiritual insights latent in dark and mysterious stories and sayings,3 reflecting on the inter1 This paper was presented on April 2, 1999, in Berkeley, California, at the annual meetings of the American Philosophical Association, Pacific Division, at a special session “The Work of Herbert Morris.” I was pleased and honored to be a part of this session, since my own thinking has been greatly influenced and enriched by Morris’s work and my life has been enriched by my personal interactions with him. I thus dedicate this paper to him with esteem and affection. I have received useful comments on an earlier draft, for which I am very grateful, from Herbert Morris, Peter de Marneffe, Elaine Yoshikawa, Jerome Neu, Sharon Lamb, Betsy Grey, Dan Strouse, Rebecca Tsosie, and Margaret Holmgren. 2 Trevor William, Death in Summer (New York: Viking, 1998), p. 211. In Trevor’s earlier Felicia’s Journey – a novel ultimately of understanding and even forgiveness of the most apparently unworthy of people – a similar function is performed (at least for me) by this sentence: “Lost within a man who murdered, there was a soul like any other soul, purity itself it surely once had been.” 3 Morris’s ability to use stories as a basis for deep philosophical reflection is impressive – e.g., his use of Friedrich Durrenmatt’s Traps at the beginning
Contextualizing ADR in Managed Care: A Proposal Aimed at Easing Tensions and Resolving Conflict

This Article analyzes what some believe to be the silver bullet curing many of the ills of the health care industry, alternative dispute resolution. After reviewing the various forms of alternative dispute resolution that have been incorporated into the health care system, the Article examines reasons why alternative dispute resolution ultimately will not resolve the tension between patients and the health care industry in today's medical marketplace. Rather, it suggests that the health care industry should adopt a conflict management approach, focusing on education and on optimizing procedural justice rather than on alternative forms of resolving discrete issues. Should the health care industry adopt this proposal, the Article suggests, patients will respond positively and many of the tensions currently present in the system will be resolved.
Mining information across multiple domains: A case study of application to patent laws and regulations in biotechnology

Abstract In this paper, we present a framework that can process a user query for retrieval of information from documents of different properties across multiple domains, with specific application to patent laws and regulations. The framework has three basic components. The first component is ontology mapping and generation. What happens is that the keywords entered by users are mapped into a subset of relevant keywords. This step is performed by looking up those words in an ontology database. The second component is the joint and cross search in various document domains; in our case, they are patents and scientific publications. The last component is to modify the search results by applying user feedback statistics. The results of feedback will be saved as metadata for future uses. A case example is given to demonstrate how results from multiple domain searches can be combined using ontology and cross referencing. We use an example of well-known biotechnology patents on erythropoietin (EPO) and give detailed analysis on each document domain with this keyword. Relationships between each domain are demonstrated. A user feedback mechanism is also discussed in this paper. The ability to take user feedback into the framework is important. There is no doubt that domain knowledge from expert or experienced users could be a very good compliment to the proposed system. Both direct and indirect user feedbacks are discussed.
Breaking Bad: Mechanisms of Social Influence and the Path to Criminality in Juvenile Jails

I conduct a series of tests of peer influence in juvenile incarceration facilities motivated by three mechanisms: criminal skill transfer, the formation of new criminal networks, and the social contagion of crime-oriented noncognitive factors. Identifying peer influence off natural variation in small cohorts within the same facility, I find evidence consistent with social contagion: exposure to peers who come from unstable homes and have high levels of aggression leads to an increase in crime after release, as well as an increase in crime-oriented attitudes and behaviors. This effect persists despite controlling for the criminal experience and gang affiliation of the cohort, and is found in settings where youths are unlikely to interact after release.
Post Loss/Profit Announcement Drift

We document a market failure to fully respond to loss/profit quarterly announcements. The annualized post portfolio formation return spread between two portfolios formed on extreme losses and extreme profits is approximately 21 percent. This loss/profit anomaly is incremental to previously documented accounting-related anomalies, and is robust to alternative risk adjustments, distress risk, firm size, short sales constraints, transaction costs, and sample periods. In an effort to explain this finding, we show that this mispricing is related to differences between conditional and unconditional probabilities of losses/profits, as if stock prices do not fully reflect conditional probabilities in a timely fashion.
Exploiting externalities to estimate the long-term effects of early childhood deworming

This paper investigates whether a large-scale deworming intervention aimed at primary school pupils in western Kenya had long-term effects on young children in the region. The paper exploits positive externalities from the program to estimate the impact on younger children who did not receive treatment directly. Ten years after the intervention, large cognitive effects are found -- comparable to between 0.5 and 0.8 years of schooling -- for children who were less than one year old when their communities received mass deworming treatment. Because mass deworming was administered through schools, effects are estimated among children who were likely to have older siblings in schools receiving the treatment directly; in this subpopulation, effects are nearly twice as large.
On Expressivism and Retributivism in ‘The Mighty and the Almighty’

Professor Nicholas Wolterstorff’s slim volume is filled with learned insight and genially accessible provocation. This modest comment focuses on a very narrow slice of the book—the justification of state punishment of criminal offenders. It offers a few questions about Wolterstorff’s discussion of St. Paul’s view of punishment, and in particular the expressivist theory that Wolterstorff prefers (and interprets Paul to espouse) and the retributivist view that he rejects. Wolterstorff’s discussion of Paul’s ideas about punishment occurs in Chapter Eight, where he has in mind one of the two dualities of authority that make up his core thesis: the issue of state authority mediating divine authority. In discussing that issue, Wolterstorff explores the Epistle of Paul to the Romans, and specifically Romans 12 and 13, in which Paul offers advice to members of the Church about how they should behave toward and within the various institutions that constitute civil society (the family, businesses, the institutions of the Roman Empire, and so on). In Romans 12, Paul instructs Church members never to “avenge” themselves but instead to “leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’” Here are the first seven verses of Romans 13 (KJV):
Gaze-Contingent Ocular Parallax Rendering for Virtual Reality

Immersive computer graphics systems strive to generate perceptually realistic user experiences. Current-generation virtual reality (VR) displays are successful in accurately rendering many perceptually important effects, including perspective, disparity, motion parallax, and other depth cues. In this article, we introduce ocular parallax rendering, a technology that accurately renders small amounts of gaze-contingent parallax capable of improving depth perception and realism in VR. Ocular parallax describes the small amounts of depth-dependent image shifts on the retina that are created as the eye rotates. The effect occurs because the centers of rotation and projection of the eye are not the same. We study the perceptual implications of ocular parallax rendering by designing and conducting a series of user experiments. Specifically, we estimate perceptual detection and discrimination thresholds for this effect and demonstrate that it is clearly visible in most VR applications. Additionally, we show that ocular parallax rendering provides an effective ordinal depth cue and it improves the impression of realistic depth in VR.
Aggregate Shocks or Aggregate Information? Costly Information and Business Cycle Comovement

Synchronized expansions and contractions across sectors define business cycles. Yet synchronization is puzzling because productivity across sectors exhibits weak correlation. While previous explanations emphasized production complementarity, our analysis explores complementarity in information acquisition. Because information about future productivity has a high fixed cost of production and a low marginal cost of replication, sectors can share the cost of acquiring aggregate information, rather than each paying the full production cost to forecast their sector-specific productivity. Sectors with common, aggregate information make highly correlated production choices. By filtering out sector-specific shocks and transmitting aggregate ones, information markets amplify business-cycle comovement.
Structural Reform in Criminal Defense: Relocating Ineffective Assistance of Counsel Claims

This Article suggests a structural reform that could solve two different problems in criminal defense representation. The first problem is that the right to effective trial counsel lacks a meaningful remedy. Defendants are generally not permitted to raise ineffective assistance of counsel claims until collateral review. Given that collateral review typically occurs years after trial, most convicted defendants have completed their sentences by that time and therefore have little incentive to pursue ineffectiveness claims. Moreover, there is no right to counsel on collateral review, and it is unrealistic to expect defendants to navigate the complicated terrain of an ineffectiveness claim without professional assistance. Left unchecked, attorney ineffectiveness grows at the trial level and contributes to the other problem in criminal defense representationthe waste of funds that states invest in appellate defense representation. All criminal defendants are constitutionally entitled to appellate counsel. However, judicial constraints on the claims that appellate attorneys may raise, coupled with trial counsel who fail to preserve issues for appellate review, routinely force appellate attorneys to file frivolous claims.In this Article, I propose to solve both problems with a single structural reform. In limited circumstances, appellate attorneys should be able to open trial records in order to develop ineffective assistance of trial counsel claims. Defendants would then have a more realistic opportunity to challenge trial attorney performance, and appellate defenders would perform a more constructive role, making more efficient use of scarce appellate resources.
Diffusive cosmic-ray acceleration at the Galactic Centre

The diffuse TeV emission detected from the inner ∼2° of the Galaxy appears to be strongly correlated with the distribution of molecular gas along the Galactic ridge. Although it is not yet entirely clear whether the origin of the TeV photons is due to hadronic or leptonic interactions, the tight correlation of the intensity distribution with the molecular gas strongly points to a pionic-decay process involving relativistic protons. However, the spectrum of the TeV radiation – a power law with index α≈−2.3– cannot be accommodated easily with the much steeper distribution of cosmic rays seen at the Earth. In earlier work, we examined the possible sources of these relativistic protons and concluded that neither the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A*[identified with the High-Energy Stereoscopic System (HESS) source J1745−290] nor several pulsar wind nebulae dispersed along the Galactic plane could produce a TeV emission profile morphologically similar to that seen by the HESS. We concluded from this earlier study that only relativistic protons accelerated throughout the intercloud medium could account for the observed diffuse TeV emission from this region. In this Letter, we develop a model for diffusive proton acceleration driven by a turbulent Alfvenic magnetic field present throughout the gaseous medium. Though circumstantial, this appears to be the first evidence that at least some cosmic rays are accelerated diffusively within the inner ∼300 pc of the Galaxy.
Inference When There is a Nuisance Parameter under the Alternative and Some Parameters are Possibly Weakly Identified

We present a new robust bootstrap method for a test when there is a nuisance parameter under the alternative, and some parameters are possibly weakly or non-identified. We focus on a Bierens (1990)-type conditional moment test of omitted nonlinearity for convenience, and because of difficulties that have been ignored to date. Existing methods include the supremum p-value which promotes a conservative test that is generally not consistent, and test statistic transforms like the supremum and average for which bootstrap methods are not valid under weak identification. We propose a new wild bootstrap method for p-value computation by targeting specific identification cases. We then combine bootstrapped p-values across polar identification cases to form an asymptotically valid p-value approximation that is robust to any identification case. The wild bootstrap does not require knowledge of the covariance structure of the bootstrapped processes, whereas Andrews and Cheng's (2012, 2013, 2014) simulation approach generally does. Our method allows for robust bootstrap critical value computation as well. Our bootstrap method (like conventional ones) does not lead to a consistent p-value approximation for test statistic functions like the supremum and average. We therefore smooth over the robust bootstrapped p-value as the basis for several tests which achieve the correct asymptotic level, and are consistent, for any degree of identification. A simulation study reveals possibly large empirical size distortions in non-robust tests when weak or non-identification arises. One of our smoothed p-value tests, however, dominates all other tests by delivering accurate empirical size and comparatively high power.
The Returns to Office in a “Rubber Stamp” Parliament

Are there returns to office in an authoritarian parliament? A new dataset shows that over 500 deputies to China’s National People’s Congress are CEOs of various companies. Entropy balancing is used to construct a weighted portfolio of Chinese companies that matches companies with NPC representation on relevant financial characteristics prior to the 11th Congress (2008–2012). The weighted fixed effect analysis suggests that a seat in the NPC is worth an additional 1.5 percentage points in returns and a 3 to 4 percentage point boost in operating profit margin in a given year. Additional evidence reveals that these rents stem primarily from the “reputation boost” of the position, and not necessarily formal policy influence. These findings confirm the assumptions of several prominent theories of authoritarian politics but suggest the need to further probe the nature of these institutions.
Flexible but Parsimonious Demand Designs: The Case of Gasoline

We consider expectations of the form E[logy|x] = Σj=1d αj log xj as a good starting point for a more general analysis. We show why this naturally leads to the following flexible functional form: E[y|x] = f(Σj=1dhj(xj)), where f(ċ) and the hj(ċ)'s are estimated by cubic splines. The main objective of this paper is to provide a straightforward method to estimate E[y|x]. We demonstrate the usefulness of this approach by estimating gasoline demand from the 1994 RTECS data set, and in doing so, uncover interesting relationships of income and age to expected gasoline use.
Appropriability and Property

Introduction 1418 I. On Appropriability and Property Rights 1421 A. Appropriability and Private Property—The Basics .........1421 B. Appropriability in Property Analysis 1424 II. The Meaning and Role of Appropriability 1429 A. Two Kinds of Appropriability 1429 B. Appropriability as a Boundary Rule 1432 C. Interim Conclusion 1435 III. Appropriability, Numerosity, and the Spatial Dimension of Property 1436 A. The Coasean Shift in Property 1436 B. Appropriability and Numerosity 1438 C. Appropriability and “Thingness” 1443 IV. Appropriability and Servitudes 1447 A. The Law of Servitudes 1447 B. Property and Contract: Two Levels of Property Rules...1449 C. The Case of Real Property 1451 V. Appropriability and Takings 1456 A. Current Supreme Court Law 1457 B. The Role of Appropriability in Takings 1460 C. A Comment on Harms and Benefits 1464
Building organizational integrity

Abstract Ethical lapses by employees can put organizations at substantial risk. Although improved compliance procedures can help limit this risk, successful efforts must extend beyond compliance to build a culture of organizational integrity. Recent changes in regulatory requirements and more stringent sentencing guidelines demand an integrated approach to ethical awareness, one that encompasses the four organizational practices of controls, clearly defined principles and purpose, core values, and culture. Inevitably, the most difficult of these is building a culture of high ethical standards that are reflected in day-to-day practice. To overcome the barriers to building organizational integrity, leaders must question key organizational practices while constructing a culture based on ethical behaviors.
The Misuse of Tax Incentives to Align Management-Shareholder Interests

Follow this and additional works at: http://lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu/lsfp Part of the Commercial Law Commons, Contracts Commons, Corporation and Enterprise Law Commons, Economics Commons, Ethics and Professional Responsibility Commons, Government Contracts Commons, Labor and Employment Law Commons, Law and Economics Commons, Law and Society Commons, Legal Education Commons, Legal History, Theory and Process Commons, Legal Writing and Research Commons, Legislation Commons, Litigation Commons, Organizations Commons, Partnerships Commons, Politics Commons, Science and Technology Commons, Secured Transactions Commons, Taxation Commons, and the Taxation-State and Local Commons
Strategies for customer service level protection under multi-echelon supply chain disruption risk

Abstract We model a multi-echelon system where disruptions can occur at any stage and evaluate multiple strategies for protecting customer service if a disruption should occur. The strategies considered take advantage of the network itself and include satisfying demand from an alternate location in the network, procuring material or transportation from an alternate source or route, and holding strategic inventory reserves throughout the network. Unmet demand is modeled using a mix of backordering and lost sales. We conduct numerical analysis and provide recommendations on selecting strategic mitigation methods to diminish the impact of disruptions on customer service. We demonstrate that the greatest service level improvements can be made by providing both proactive inventory placement to cover short disruptions or the start of long disruptions, and reactive back-up methods to help the supply chain recover after long or permanent disruptions.
Judicial Diversity After Shelby County v. Holder

In 2014, voters in ten of the fifteen states previously covered by the Voting Rights Act ("VRA") preclearance formula-including six of the nine states covered in their entirety-will go to the polls to elect or retain state supreme court justices. Yet despite the endemic underrepresentation of minorities on state benches and the judiciary's traditional role in fighting discrimination, scholars have seemingly paid little attention to how Shelby County v. Holder's suspension of the coverage formula in section 4(b) has left racial minorities vulnerable to retrogressive changes to judicial-election laws. The first election year following Shelby County thus provides a compelling opportunity to assess the VRA's ongoing role in the fight to diversify state benches.
The ILO Convention on Freedom of Association and Its Future in the United States

This paper addresses the status of the international law convention on freedom of association in the United States. Although the United States supported the adoption of the Convention on Freedom of Association (#87) in the International Labour Organization in 1948, the U.S. government has not ratified that Convention. Instead, the Convention has sat on the shelf in the United States Senate since 1949, the longest unratified convention on the treaty calendar of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The paper analyzes the disadvantages for the United States in failing to become a party to this important treaty. The paper notes that in 2007, the United States did move forward to support freedom of association as an international right by incorporating a commitment toward freedom of association in four free trade agreements involving Peru, Colombia, Panama, and South Korea. So far, only the Peru treaty has been approved by the U.S. Congress. As a result, U.S. conduct within the trading system is inconsistent than U.S. conduct in the labor regime. Oddly, U.S. government seems willing to make international commitments on freedom of association as part of a trade treaty, but not as part of a labor treaty. This is a counterintuitive result for those who see international organizations as being specialized and international law as being compartmentalized. The paper reflects on how this situation came about and makes suggestions for how the next Administration and the Congress might proceed to strengthen commitments to international law labor within the United States.