cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Duluth at SemEval-2020 Task 12: Offensive Tweet Identification in English with Logistic Regression

This paper describes the Duluth systems that participated in SemEval–2020 Task 12, Multilingual Offensive Language Identification in Social Media (OffensEval–2020). We participated in the three English language tasks. Our systems provide a simple machine learning baseline using logistic regression. We trained our models on the distantly supervised training data made available by the task organizers and used no other resources. As might be expected we did not rank highly in the comparative evaluation: 79th of 85 in task A, 34th of 43 in task B, and 24th of 39 in task C. We carried out a qualitative analysis of our results and found that the class labels in the gold standard data are somewhat noisy. We hypothesize that the extremely high accuracy (>$ 90%) of the top ranked systems may reflect methods that learn the training data very well but may not generalize to the task of identifying offensive language in English. This analysis includes examples of tweets that despite being mildly redacted are still offensive.
Higher Specht Bases for Generalizations of the Coinvariant Ring

The classical coinvariant ring $$R_n$$ is defined as the quotient of a polynomial ring in n variables by the positive-degree $$S_n$$ -invariants. It has a known basis that respects the decomposition of $$R_n$$ into irreducible $$S_n$$ -modules, consisting of the higher Specht polynomials due to Ariki, Terasoma, and Yamada (Hiroshima Math J 27(1):177–188, 1997). We provide an extension of the higher Specht basis to the generalized coinvariant rings $$R_{n,k}$$ introduced in Haglund et al. (Adv Math 329:851–915, 2018). We also give a conjectured higher Specht basis for the Garsia–Procesi modules $$R_\mu $$ , and we provide a proof of the conjecture in the case of two-row partition shapes $$\mu $$ . We then combine these results to give a higher Specht basis for an infinite subfamily of the modules $$R_{n,k,\mu }$$ recently defined by Griffin (Trans Amer Math Soc, to appear, 2020), which are a common generalization of $$R_{n,k}$$ and $$R_{\mu }$$ .
Hierarchical Autoregressive Modeling for Neural Video Compression

Recent work by Marino et al. (2020) showed improved performance in sequential density estimation by combining masked autoregressive flows with hierarchical latent variable models. We draw a connection between such autoregressive generative models and the task of lossy video compression. Specifically, we view recent neural video compression methods (Lu et al., 2019; Yang et al., 2020b; Agustssonet al., 2020) as instances of a generalized stochastic temporal autoregressive trans-form, and propose avenues for enhancement based on this insight. Comprehensive evaluations on large-scale video data show improved rate-distortion performance over both state-of-the-art neural and conventional video compression methods.
American Husbandry: Legal Norms Impacting the Production of (Re)Productivity

During the last quarter of the 17th century, African slaves were “imported” into the Americas in unprecedented numbers. This enlargement of the slave population represented a deep commitment to, and investment in, slavery. Slavery was to become commonplace and thus demanded moral, religious, and legal justification. Systematic colonization utilized European legal systems, which rationalized the existence of slavery by providing normative legitimization. Throughout the duration of slavery, jurisprudence functioned as a sword employed against enslaved Africans, and not as a shield, as it is traditionally envisioned. This contradiction in legal imperative operated not only along racial lines, but also along sexual and gendered lines. Female slaves were impacted differently and disparately. They were exploited, not only because of their race, but also because their sex could be used as a means of both wealth and property accumulation, thereby rendering them particularly vulnerable to external manipulation and cooptation of their sexual and reproductive agency. This article explores the manner in
Economics and Emigration: Trillion-Dollar Bills on the Sidewalk?

What is the greatest single class of distortions in the global economy? One contender for this title is the tightly binding constraints on emigration from poor countries. Vast numbers of people in low-income countries want to emigrate from those countries but cannot. How large are the economic losses caused by barriers to emigration? Research on this question has been distinguished by its rarity and obscurity, but the few estimates we have should make economists' jaws hit their desks. The gains to eliminating migration barriers amount to large fractions of world GDP—one or two orders of magnitude larger than the gains from dropping all remaining restrictions on international flows of goods and capital. When it comes to policies that restrict emigration, there appear to be trillion-dollar bills on the sidewalk.
Federalism and Private International Law: Implementing the Hague Choice of Court Convention in the United States

Federalism is important in the United States. It is also important that the United States be able to participate effectively in a global economy and that those charged with the conduct of the country’s foreign affairs be able to make, and that the country abide by, international agreements that are designed to facilitate transnational commercial activity. The Hague Choice of Court Convention is one such agreement, the modest fruits of more than a decade of work in an international lawmaking effort that was initiated by the United States. However modest the fruits of the enterprise, the rest of the world is watching to see whether the United States ratifies, and how it implements, the Hague Convention. Effective dispute resolution processes are critical to a well-functioning global economy, and effectiveness for this purpose requires, just as it does for a national or regional economy, generous recognition and enforcement of judgments. Key to such generosity, in turn, are acceptable jurisdiction standards and, experience has demonstrated, reciprocity. Finally, mutual assurance that reciprocity will in fact be forthcoming requires very considerable uniformity and certainty in the governing legal rules. The Hague Convention leaves little room for variation or departure in standards for asserting jurisdiction or recognizing and enforcing judgments. Although there are good reasons to implement the treaty through legislation, the proposal that the uniform state law process be used for that purpose is not well considered. The history of domestic regulation does not provide strong normative support for state law to furnish the rules for jurisdiction and judgment recognition in international cases. Harmonization with abutting or intersecting state law norms, which is a legitimate concern in thinking about international private lawmaking on many subjects, is not generally a concern in connection with the law governing jurisdiction and judgment recognition. The Hague Convention appears to be an exception to that generalization with respect to jurisdiction, because choice of court clauses implicate contract law. Experience in the arbitration field suggests, however, that an attempt to harmonize would be a mistake, and the relevant state contract law is in any event underdeveloped and not uniform. Finally, federal implementation through legislation prescribing federal law that is mostly uniform, but a few provisions of which may borrow designated state law, would impose lower transaction and administrability costs, with no loss of accessibility, than would state implementation.
The tax benefit of income smoothing.

Abstract A worker can reduce tax liability by contributing to a private pension plan when marginal tax rates are high and withdraw pension benefits when marginal tax rates are low. We quantify the tax benefit of income smoothing through the private retirement system and find that it is negligible. This conclusion is important to households, investment advisers, tax policymakers, and scholars engaged in financial retirement planning.
Women as policy makers and donors: Female legislators and foreign aid

Abstract This paper investigates whether the gender composition of national legislatures in donor countries impacts the level, composition, and pattern of foreign aid. We provide evidence that the election of female legislators leads countries to increase aid both in total and as a percentage of GDP. Consistent with existing research examining domestic expenditures, we find that the empowerment of women in national legislatures is associated with a reallocation of aid flows in favor of education and health-related projects. These increased flows occur predominately through bilateral aid and reflect a redistribution of aid toward developing countries.
Spread of (mis)information in social networks

Abstract We provide a model to investigate the tension between information aggregation and spread of misinformation. Individuals meet pairwise and exchange information, which is modeled as both individuals adopting the average of their pre-meeting beliefs. “Forceful” agents influence the beliefs of (some of) the other individuals they meet, but do not change their own opinions. We characterize how the presence of forceful agents interferes with information aggregation. Under the assumption that even forceful agents obtain some information from others, we first show that all beliefs converge to a stochastic consensus. Our main results quantify the extent of misinformation by providing bounds or exact results on the gap between the consensus value and the benchmark without forceful agents (where there is efficient information aggregation). The worst outcomes obtain when there are several forceful agents who update their beliefs only on the basis of information from individuals that have been influenced by them.
Unobserved product differentiation in discrete-choice models: Estimating price elasticities and welfare effects

Commonly used discrete-choice models such as logit, nested logit, and random-coefficients models place very strong restrictions on how unobservable characteristic space changes with the number of products. We argue (and show with Monte Carlo experiments)that these restrictions can lead to biased estimates of price elasticities and the welfare consequences from additional products. In addition, these restrictions can identify parameters that are not intuitively identified given the data at hand. We suggest an alternative model that does not have these properties and present a structural interpretation of the model. Monte Carlo experiments and an empirical example show that this issue can be important in practice.
Emergency cooperation between the USA and Mexico in disaster management: co-dependency and geopolitics

Today, the US relies upon Mexican labour and agricultural produce and exploitation of growing consumption in the Mexican market. Mexico, conversely, depends upon remitted wage earnings and internationalised industry to support marginalised rural and poor urban populations. Treaties have formalised this co-dependency. Disasters, emergencies, and environmental problems, particularly in the border zone are usually shared calamities and the need for binational cooperative emergency management is obvious. What are the prospects for cooperation in light of growing tension between the two countries? This paper evaluates cooperation between the USA and Mexico during disasters and examines the implications of the anti-undocumented-migrant sentiment and US construction of the 700 mi (1167 km) border fence. Particular attention is placed on issues of sovereignty, trade agreements, environmental accords, and approaches to emergency management. We argue that geography and political-economic interactions have developed a dysfunctional, but necessary, relationship. Approaches to management of risks, hazards, and emergencies fit both their respective cultures and their political relationship. The borderlands are particularly problematic due, in part, to the marginalisation of all Latinos (Americans and non-Americans alike) and the lack of understanding of the Mexican (and Mexican-American) culture.
Detection of Deception: The Case of Handwriting Expertise

JN Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, Lady Olivia's renegade uncle, 1Sir Toby Belch, conspires with her maid, Maria, to set a trap for Malvolio, Olivia's officious, ambitious, and humorless steward. They plant an anonymous love letter that appears to be directed to Malvolio, in what seems to be Lady Olivia's handwriting. Malvolio finds it and falls for it: MALVOLIO: By my life, this is my lady's hand. These be her very c's, her u's and her t's and thus makes she her great P's. It is in contempt of question her hand.1 As usual, Shakespeare works at several levels. The deception of Malvolio is a comic parallel to the central plot-which turns on the noble Lady Viola's deception in pretending to be a man-and also an occasion for the stuck-up and puritanical Malvolio to blithely deliver two bawdy puns.2 For present purposes, I am interested in the device that Shakespeare uses for this deception because it illustrates a central point in Professor Jennifer L. Mnookin's excellent article: Handwriting identification is old. As far back as the sixteenth century, it was widely believed both that handwriting was a distinctive mark that could identify the writer, and that such identifications could easily be mistaken, especially if the true writer was a clever forger. In Act V, after Malvolio has thoroughly humiliated himself by bizarre behavior, he explains that he was acting on instructions in the letter and shows it to his mistress: OLIVIA: Alas Malvolio, this is not my writing, Though I confess much like the character, But out of question 'tis Maria's hand.3
The Enforcement Problem in Coercive Bargaining: Interstate Conflict over Rebel Support in Civil Wars

This article explores the strategic problems that arise when a state seeks to use military force to compel changes in another state's policies. Although the costs associated with military action mean that there generally exist compromises that both sides prefer to conflict, bargaining may fail if such deals are not enforceable in the face of temptations to renege on policy concessions. This study develops a model that shows that inefficient conflict can occur when states bargain over policies that one of them can change unilaterally and covertly. I then show that this theory is useful for understanding a common source of international conflict: conflicts that arise when one state supports rebel groups engaged in a civil war with another state. Episodes of rebel support are associated with a substantial increase in the risk of interstate militarized disputes, the lethality of these disputes, and the likelihood of repeated violence. Agreements to limit rebel support are unlikely to reduce interstate violence unless they are coupled with concessions by the target state and/or monitoring mechanisms, both of which are shown theoretically to mitigate the enforcement problem.
Understanding the Time Path of Crime

This paper examines the recent drop in crime and the reasons given therefore, and concludes that to properly evaluate this phenomenon one must sort out the long-term trends in crime over the last 50 years from the short-term fluctuations around those trends. There have been two clear long-run trends in crime over the last half century: one involving sharply rising crime until the late 1970s, followed by a period of slow decline over the next two decades. As one might expect, there have been considerable short-term fluctuations around the two long-run trends, and indeed, the later period has experienced greater variability in crime around the long-term declining trend than had been the case during the initial period of the rising secular trend in crime. Section I of the paper documents these broad patterns -- murder rates rose by roughly 4.4 percent per year from the mid-1950s through the mid-1970s, and have fallen by roughly six-tenths of 1 percent since then -- and discusses how they illuminate the issues of why crime has fallen and where it is likely to be headed in the future. Section II builds upon this discussion to show that increased levels of incarceration and favorable demographic shifts contributed to the slow decline in crime over the last two decades, but cannot explain the sudden drop in crime in the mid-1990s after the abrupt increases in crime of the late 1980s. Section III concludes by noting that the growing cost of incarceration suggests that at some point, the public will call for an end to further increases in the number of prison inmates. Since increasing incarceration, more police, and favorable demographics have been modestly offsetting the influences pushing towards higher crime, when the increases stop and the demographic trends turn unfriendly (as they now have), crime will begin a slow secular rise for the first time in two decades, unless some other force (better policing strategies, effective social programs) controls crime or the unknown long-term criminogenic forces in society (the breakdown in the family, pernicious media influences, declining schools, growing drug use and drug markets?) abate.
External validation of voter turnout models by concealed parameter recovery

We conduct a model validation analysis of several behavioral models of voter turnout, using laboratory data. We call our method of model validation concealed parameter recovery, where estimation of a model is done under a veil of ignorance about some of the experimentally controlled parameters—in this case voting costs. We use quantal response equilibrium as the underlying, common structure for estimation, and estimate models of instrumental voting, altruistic voting, expressive voting, and ethical voting. All the models except the ethical voting model recover the concealed parameters reasonably well. We also report the results of a counterfactual analysis based on the recovered parameters, to compare the policy implications of the different models about the cost of a subsidy to increase turnout.
Toward a Constitutional Regulation of Minors' Access to Harmful Internet Speech

In this article, I scrutinize Congress's recent efforts to regulate access to sexually-themed Internet speech. The first such effort, embodied in the Communications Decency Act, failed to take into account the Supreme Court's carefully-honed obscenity and obscenity-for-minors jurisprudence. The second, embodied in the Child Online Protection Act, attended carefully to Supreme Court precedent, but failed to account for the geographic variability in definitions of obscene speech. Finally, the recently-enacted Children's Internet Protection Act apparently remedies the constitutional deficiencies identified in these two prior legislative efforts, but runs the risk of being implemented in a manner that fails to protect either adults' or minors' right to access protected expression. Although CIPA recently withstood a facial attack on its constitutionality, it is likely that this statute will confront as-applied challenges. I analyze the technology and the First Amendment doctrines at issue in CIPA's implementation, and set forth recommendations as to how libraries can implement CIPA in a manner that protects both adults' and minors' free speech rights.
When Do States Disconnect Their Digital Networks? Regime Responses to the Political Uses of Social Media

Although there have been many studies of the different ways regimes censor the use of social media by their citizens, shutting off social media altogether is something that rarely happens. However, it happens at the most politically sensitive times and has widespread—if not global—consequences for political, economic and cultural life. When do states disconnect their digital networks, and why? To answer this question, the authors build an event history database of incidents in which a regime went beyond mere censorship of particular websites or users. The authors draw from multiple sources, including major news media, specialized news services, and international experts, to construct an event log database of 566 incidents. This rich, original dataset allows for a nuanced analysis of the conditions for state action, and the authors offer some assessment of the effect of such desperate action. Comparative analysis indicates that both democratic and authoritarian regimes disable social media networks for cit...
Envisioning the Constitution

If one of the more persistent problems of constitutional interpretation, particularly of the Bill of Rights, is that we lack a clear view of it, then it would appear that how we see the Constitution is as important as how we read it. What clauses we see as connected in order to form comprehensive values, such as federalism or rights protections, are not so much products of constitutional interpretation as constitutional vision. To obtain a view of the Constitution, we have to do more than derive semantic meaning from diverse articles and clauses. To have a vision of the Constitution is to have a general attitude of attending to particular matters rather than others, of connecting these matters to others in particular ways, and of making decisions based on seeing the matters in a specific light. Vision is the mechanism and metaphor through which attention is focused on particular constitutional matters. By envisioning the Constitution, one illuminates overall structures as well as particular meanings. For example, the meaning of the Equal Protection Clause is generally not determined by an interpretation of the clause's text or an "interpretation" of the Fourteenth Amendment, but rather by the way in which the Supreme Court is willing to look at a problem arising under the Equal Protection Clause that is, what level of scrutiny is applied to the issue. Moreover, changed or competing visions drive substantive changes in the law. The thesis of this Article is that vision, by shaping the grounds for interpretation, is essential to constitutional law and legal theory.
Problems, theories, and governing the crowd:

Research and recommendations on innovation through crowdsourcing are diverse and often contradictory, providing little guidance on when, where, and under what conditions to use various forms of cro...
Truth and Robustness in Cross‐country Growth Regressions*

We re-examine studies of cross-country growth regressions by Levine and Renelt (American Economic Review, Vol. 82, 1992, pp. 942–963) and Sala-iMartin (American Economic Review, Vol. 87, 1997a, pp. 178–183; Economics Department, Columbia, University, 1997b). In a realistic Monte Carlo experiment, their variants of Edward Leamer’s extreme-bounds analysis are compared with a cross-sectional version of the general-to-specific search methodology associated with the LSE approach to econometrics. Levine and Renelt’s method has low size and low power, while Sala-i-Martin’s method has high size and high power. The general-to-specific methodology is shown to have a near nominal size and high power. Sala-i-Martin’s method and the general-to-specific method are then applied to the actual data from Sala-i-Martin’s original study. I. Growth regressions and the problem of robustness
Political Trials in Domestic and International Law

Due process protections and other constitutional restrictions normally ensure that citizens cannot be tried and punished for political dissent, but these same restrictions interfere with criminal convictions of terrorists and others who pose a non-immediate but real threat to public safety. To counter these threats, governments may use various subterfuges to avoid constitutional protections, often with the complicity of judges, but when they do so, they risk losing the confidence of the public, which may believe that the government targets legitimate political opponents. This paper argues that that the amount of process enjoyed by defendants in criminal trials reflects a balancing of these two factors: their dangerousness, on the one hand, and the risk to legitimate political competition, on the other hand. Political trials are those in which the defendant’s opposition to the existing government or the constitutional order is the main issue. The paper discusses various ways in which governments and judges adjust process protections, so that a public threat can be countered while the risks to political competition are minimized. International trials are also discussed within this framework. 1 Kirkland & Ellis Professor of Law, University of Chicago. Thanks to Daryl Levinson, Richard Posner, Mark Ramseyer, Matthew Stephenson, Lior Strahilevitz, Bill Stuntz, and Adrian Vermeule, for comments on an early draft; to participants at a workshop at the University of Chicago Law School; and to the John M. Olin Foundation for financial support.
Crime and Social Interactions

The high variance of crime rates across time and space is one of the oldest puzzles in the social sciences; this variance appears too high to be explained by changes in the exogenous costs and benefits of crime. We present a model where social interactions create enough covariance across individuals to explain the high cross-city variance of crime rates. This model provides an index of social interactions which suggests that the amount of social interactions is highest in petty crimes, moderate in more serious crimes, and almost negligible in murder and rape.
FOREIGN SUBSIDIZATION AND EXCESS CAPACITY

Abstract The U.S. steel industry has long held that foreign subsidization and excess capacity has led to its long-run demise, yet no one has formally examined this hypothesis. In this paper, we incorporate foreign subsidization considerations into a model based on Staiger and Wolak's (1992) cyclical dumping framework and illustrate testable implications of both cyclical excess capacity and structural excess capacity stemming from foreign subsidization. We then use detailed product- and foreign country-level data on steel exports to the U.S. market to estimate these excess capacity effects. While the full sample results provide evidence of both cyclical and structural excess capacity effects for exports to the U.S. market, these effects are confined to such a narrow range of country–product combinations that it is unlikely that such effects were a significant factor in the fortunes of U.S. steel firms over the past decades.
Performance feedback in competitive product development

Performance feedback is ubiquitous in competitive settings where new products are developed. This article introduces a fundamental tension between incentives and improvement in the provision of feedback. Using a sample of four thousand commercial logo design tournaments, I show that feedback reduces participation but improves the quality of subsequent submissions, with an ambiguous effect on high-quality output. To evaluate this tradeoff, I develop a procedure to estimate agents' effort costs and simulate counterfactuals under alternative feedback policies. The results suggest that feedback on net increases the number of high-quality ideas produced and is thus desirable for a principal seeking innovation.
Two Genes Predict Voter Turnout

Fowler, Baker, and Dawes (2008) recently showed in two independent studies of twins that voter turnout has very high heritability. Here we investigate two specific genes that may contribute to variation in voting behavior. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we show that individuals with a polymorphism of the MAOA gene are significantly more likely to have voted in the 2004 presidential election. We also find evidence that an association between a polymorphism of the 5HTT gene and voter turnout is moderated by religious attendance. These are the first results ever to link specific genes to political behavior.
Neutral money: Historical fact or analytical artifact?

Long-run neutrality of money is an artifact of particular theoretical frameworks. We advance an alternative though not contradictory theoretical framework where monetary processes exert lasting real effects. Our framework holds without rejecting the classical equilibrium condition that nominal values are independent of economic realities because the two frameworks are non-commensurable. The real effects that we explore stem from the distribution of monetary injection among potential entrepreneurial experiments. The selected experiments influence the pattern of activity within society, which leads to changes in the standard given conditions of wants, knowledge, and expectations. These changes unravel into alternative paths of history.
Sorting, Education and Inequality

This paper examines the education literature through the lens of sorting. It argues that how individuals sort across neighborhoods, schools and households (spouses), can have important consequences for the acquisition of human capital and inequality. It discusses the implications of different education finance systems for sorting and analyzes the efficiency and welfare properties of these in static and dynamic frameworks.
Non-ionotropic NMDA receptor signaling gates bidirectional structural plasticity of dendritic spines.

Summary Experience-dependent refinement of neuronal connections is critically important for brain development and learning. Here, we show that ion-flow-independent NMDA receptor (NMDAR) signaling is required for the long-term dendritic spine growth that is a vital component of brain circuit plasticity. We find that inhibition of p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase (p38 MAPK), which is downstream of non-ionotropic NMDAR signaling in long-term depression (LTD) and spine shrinkage, blocks long-term potentiation (LTP)-induced spine growth but not LTP. We hypothesize that non-ionotropic NMDAR signaling drives the cytoskeletal changes that support bidirectional spine structural plasticity. Indeed, we find that key signaling components downstream of non-ionotropic NMDAR function in LTD-induced spine shrinkage are also necessary for LTP-induced spine growth. Furthermore, NMDAR conformational signaling with coincident Ca2+ influx is sufficient to drive CaMKII-dependent long-term spine growth, even when Ca2+ is artificially driven through voltage-gated Ca2+ channels. Our results support a model in which non-ionotropic NMDAR signaling gates the bidirectional spine structural changes vital for brain plasticity.
Comparing the Value Relevance of Two Operating Income Measures

Prior research has shown that pro-forma (recurring operating) earnings reported by managers and analysts are more value relevant than GAAP net income. Since GAAP net income contains many non-operating items that reduce its value relevance compared to operating earnings, comparing the value relevance of GAAP net income with operating earnings unduly favors operating earnings. We show that operating earnings reported by managers and analysts are more value relevant than a measure of operating earnings derived from firms' financial statements, as reported by Standard and Poor's. Our evidence is important because it indicates that operating earnings reported by managers and analysts contain value relevant information beyond that provided by operating earnings obtained by sophisticated users from firms' financial statements.
Some Methodological Deficiencies in Empirical Research Articles in Accounting

SYNOPSIS: This paper uses a sample of the regression and behavioral papers published in The Accounting Review and the Journal of Accounting Research from September 2012 through May 2013. We argue first that the current research results reported in empirical regression papers fail adequately to justify the time period adopted for the study. Second, we maintain that the statistical analyses used in these papers as well as in the behavioral papers have produced flawed results. We further maintain that their tests of statistical significance are not appropriate and, more importantly, that these studies do not—and cannot—properly address the economic significance of the work. In other words, significance tests are not tests of the economic meaningfulness of the results. We suggest ways to avoid some but not all of these problems. We also argue that replication studies, which have been essentially abandoned by accounting researchers, can contribute to our search for truth, but few will be forthcoming unless the...
Cordoning competence: A reply to Cohen

In Rationality and Reflective Equilibrium, 99 Synthese 137-172 (May 1994), the author argued that it is possible for our underlying reasoning ability to diverge from the normative principles of reasoning. Jonathan Cohen, in his reply to that article, A Reply to Stein, id. at 173-176, argued that this is conceptually impossible, thereby defending the view that humans are rational. In this brief reply to Cohen, the author gives two further examples to support his argument that empirical evidence (e.g., from psychology, neuroscience, and evolutionary theory) can count against human rationality.
The Emergence of New Markets for Environmental Services: The Role of U.S. Shellfish Industry Associations

Does membership in industry associations affect whether firms extend beyond their traditional markets? I use a data set from a survey of U.S. shellfishermen and empirically examine the relationship between membership in associations and participation in new markets. Traditionally, shellfishermen have been growing and harvesting shellfish for human consumption. However, some shellfishermen also engage in alternative revenue-generating environmental projects such as coastal restoration, clean-up, and research. Drawing on the organizational literature on associations and economic sociology literature, I test hypotheses about whether associations contribute to generating value and promoting cooperation among their members thus fulfilling requirements for a new market to emerge. I find that shellfishermen who are members of industry associations are more likely to participate in alternative revenue-generating activities and derive revenues from environmental projects. I argue that industry associations play an...
Citizens United and Taxable Entities: Will Taxable Entities Be the New Stealth Dark Money Campaign Organizations?

The electoral process in the United States is going through a major transition as money increasingly pours into non-candidate independent groups (“IGs”). The Center for Responsive Politics estimates that over $300 million flowed into IGs involved in elections in the 2012 election cycle.1 Before 2000, IGs could engage in significant electoral advocacy without having to disclose the IG’s donors or its expenditures.2 In 2000, Congress sought to address the lack of disclosure by requiring political organizations to disclose their contributions and expenditures.3 IGs quickly sought an alternative organizational form for engaging in political advocacy. For the most part, the organizational form of choice
Nonprofit executive incentive pay

We utilize information only recently disclosed on Form 990 to examine the use, and consequences of, incentive pay at nonprofit organizations. Bonuses are common in nonprofits, as we observe that approximately 45% of the 44,000 organization-year observations in our sample reported paying CEO bonuses. We find that the bonuses are positively associated with profitability, competition from other nonprofits, firm size, available cash, and use of compensation consultants and committees, while negatively related to board oversight, donations, and grants. Our results also suggest that donors look unfavorably at the payment of bonuses; that is, bonuses are associated with lower future donations. Nonetheless, we find evidence consistent with the payment of bonuses incentivizing nonprofit executives, as despite reduced fundraising, future profitability and program services are positively associated with current bonus compensation.
Sexting and Teenagers: OMG R U Going 2 Jail???

Sexting is a relatively recent practice engaged in by the young, and sometimes not-so-young, and foolish. "Sexting" is "the practice of sending or posting sexually suggestive text messages and images, including nude or semi-nude photographs, via cellular telephones or over the Internet." While sexting can and does occur between and among people of any age, the real concerns are with teenagers who are sexting.According to a 2008 study by The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, 20% of teens between the ages of thirteen and nineteen have sent or posted nude or semi-nude digital photos of themselves. Of the 22% of teen girls that reported doing so, 11% of these girls were between the ages of thirteen and sixteen. When asked whether they have seen nude or semi-nude photos that were not intended to be shared with them, 25% of teen girls and 33% of teen boys answered this question affirmatively.Recently, law enforcement officers in several states have arrested teenagers who have sent sexually explicit photographs of themselves, as well as the recipients of those photographs. These teenagers have been either charged or threatened with charges of child pornography, and appellate courts have upheld convictions against teenagers on these charges. Consequently, some of those teens have been required to register as sex offenders, a status that will stay with them for decades. This result leads to serious questions about the intent of child pornography statutes, the breadth of prosecutorial discretion, and the potential erroneous use of the criminal justice system to address what some believe would be better handled through educational programs and better parenting.
Are We Approaching an Economic Singularity? Information Technology and the Future of Economic Growth

What are the prospects for long-run economic growth? One prominent line of economic thinking is the trend toward stagnation. Stagnationism has a long history in economics, beginning prominently with Malthus and occasionally surfacing in different guises. Prominent themes here are the following: Will economic growth slow and perhaps even reverse under the weight of resource depletion? Will overpopulation and diminishing returns lower living standards? Will unchecked CO2 emissions lead to catastrophic changes in climate and human systems? Have we depleted the store of potential great inventions? Will the aging society lead to diminished innovativeness?
The Coastal Zone Management Act and the Takings Clause in the 1990's: Making the Case for Federal Land Use to Preserve Coastal Areas

This article focuses on federal land use to preserve coastal land use, focusing on the Coastal Zone Management Act (CZMA) and the 1990s Taking Clause. CZMA has faced many challenges, including funding deficiencies and a lacking of court deficiencies, but is very important due to it’s novice nature and the fact that it has brought to light very important issues inside of preservation efforts.
Tax distortions to the choice of organizational form

Income from corporate and noncorporate firms is treated very differently under the tax law. In theory, given existing tax law, the noncorporate sector should consist of very profitable firms owned by low-tax-bracket investors and firms with tax losses owned by high-tax-bracket investors. But the degree to which firms change their form of organization in response to taxes, and the resulting excess burden, depends as well on nontax factors. Given the role of taxes, we estimate what size the nontax advantage to incorporating must take in each industry so that the forecasted choices for organizational form, aggregated over investors in different tax brackets, are consistent with the aggregate evidence. While the estimated nontax costs are large in some industries, noncorporate activity tends to be concentrated where the costs are small, leading to little excess burden from the tax distortion to organizational form.
In Defense of Southland: Re-Examining the Legislative History of the Federal Arbitration Act

This article challenges the conventional wisdom that the Supreme Court's decision in Southland Corp. v. Keating, holding that the Federal Arbitration Act ("FAA") applies in state court and preempts state law, was an illegitimate exercise of judicial lawmaking. Justices' O'Connor and Thomas, and numerous commentators, have strongly criticized Chief Justice Burger's majority opinion in Southland as disregarding Congress's unambiguous intent that the FAA apply only in federal court. But a reexamination of the legislative history of the FAA suggests that, while the "primary purpose" of the FAA was to make arbitration agreements enforceable in federal court, a secondary purpose was to make arbitration agreements enforceable in state court as well. Submissions to Congress by the principal drafter of the Act provide strong evidence that the FAA was intended to apply in state court. A contemporaneous commentary, overlooked by Southland critics, likewise supports that conclusion. Conversely, the vast majority of statements in the legislative history relied on by commentators to criticize the Southland holding state simply that the FAA applies in federal court, not that it applies only in federal court. Although Chief Justice Burger's analysis in Southland leaves much to be desired, this analysis supports his conclusion: that "although the legislative history is not without ambiguities, there are strong indications that Congress had in mind something more than making arbitration agreements enforceable only in the federal courts."
Budgetary Decision Making by Executive and Legislative Budget Analysts: The Impact of Political Cues and Analytical Information

We explore the extent to which attributes of individual analysts and institutional factors lead to budgetary decisions based on political cues and/or analytical information among executive and legislative budget analysts. We surveyed executive and legislative budget analysts in 13 western states to ascertain the factors that influence their budgetary decisions. The findings build on evidence from previous studies that confirms the complexity of factors affecting budget analysts' decisions, and they provide empirical support to analysts' use of a combination of information labeled “budget rationality” by Thurmaier and Willoughby. Also, we provide more conclusive evidence that both executive and legislative analysts follow similar decision-making patterns.
Managing Annual Accounting Reports to Avoid State Taxes: An Analysis of Property-Casualty Insurers

We hypothesize that, in their annual accounting reports, propertycasualty insurers allocate premiums from multistate policies to reduce total state taxes. To test this prediction, we exploit the industry's unique state tax disclosures. We examine firm‐level data, collected from the publicly available, statutory reports filed with each state government. Reported premiums at the insurer‐state level, scaled by incurred losses, are regressed on state tax measures. Consistent with tax‐motivated income shifting, we find the premiumloss ratio is decreasing in state tax rates. The negative relation is greatest for insurers specializing in multistate lines of business.
A Legal Analysis Of Romantic Gifts

While many law review articles are devoted to the legal analysis of gifts, this article addresses romantic gifts in particular, to which many legal exceptions apply. In addition to offering a review of the legal economics behind gift-giving, this article is the first to survey the five legal theories of revocability for romantic gifts, as well as an unprecedented new theory recently employed in federal court. Although the general presumption is that gifts are irrevocable, courts have used five main theories to return romantic gifts to their donors—conditional gift, pledge, consideration, unjust enrichment, and fraud—as well as a new approach which has been used recently in federal court: criminal fraud. Criminal fraud is a surprising and unprecedented development because it not only requires the disgorgement of the gifts as the other theories do but also punishes the donee beyond the cost of the gift. Thus, it is the only theory of revocability that will change the ex ante incentives of the donee. In the course of discussion, this article will note three economic paradoxes that arise in the context of romantic gifts: (1) non-cash gifts appear on first glance to be extremely inefficient because they involve guessing the desires of donees but are nonetheless ubiquitous; (2) extremely inefficient gifts tend to be better signaling mechanisms than efficient gifts in romantic relationships; and (3) although one who pursues a relationship blatantly for financial benefits faces more social condemnation than one who tastefully hides his or her motivations, he or she is actually facilitating a more efficient relationship. This leads to a discussion of when romantic gifts should be revocable, which theories of court interference are the most appropriate, and how courts should craft doctrine in the future. Because of the potential for over-deterrence, courts should only impose punishments that exceed the value of the gift when there is a clear enough information asymmetry between the donor and the donee that it would be impossible for the donor to give his informed consent to the relationship or the gift.
FACTOR MARKET BARRIERS ARE TRADE BARRIERS: GAINS FROM TRADE IN 1992

Abstract This paper argues that some factor market barriers act as trade barriers. Consequently removal of such barriers can create gains from trade, even in countries which already have free trade in goods. The basic argument is simple. For some types of goods, international vertical integration is essential to efficient international trade. That is to say, for such goods it is cheaper to conduct trade on an intra-firm basis, rather than an inter-firm basis (for instance in the U.S., roughly half of all imports are intra-firm). In such industries, those factor market barriers which raise the cost of foreign control of local assets have the effect of raising the cost of trade. Consequently, removing such barriers can lead to gains from trade.
The Electronic Health Revolution: How Health Information Technology Is Changing Medicine - And the Obstacles in Its Way

Hospitals have long been on the cutting edge of technological innovations, both in the operating room and the administrator’s office. It is the area in between — where patients are monitored and instructed, and where care is managed — that the medical profession has been a laggard. As a result, medical care within the United States is frighteningly less organized, integrated, and streamlined than is ideal for an industry that, at one time or another, will service nearly every person in the country.Fortunately, the medical profession is improving through the utilization of health information technology. Many changes stem from the implementation and improvement of electronic health records (EHRs), resulting in improved integration between care providers, such as primary care physicians (PCPs), hospital staff, specialists, and pharmacists. This paper will survey the changing medical landscape resulting from the EHR revolution. The biggest advantages of EHR technology go beyond the ease of electronic recordkeeping and into the integration and interoperability that EHR systems allow. When properly utilized, applications of EHR systems can reduce administrative costs and burdens, improve care quality, reduce mistakes, and provide a boon for public health research.And yet, there are pitfalls and roadblocks that must be addressed. The dual issues of privacy and information security, resistance to changing procedures and technologies and high startup costs, and unexpected hiccups in early adoption stand in the way of an easy transition. Each of these issues will be examined, and recommendations will be made for a more robust and successfully integrated health system. EHRs and the greater health information technology changes occurring around us can revolutionize healthcare delivery if the systems can be implemented as envisioned — but whether that will happen remains to be seen.