cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Planted hitting set recovery in hypergraphs

In various application areas, networked data is collected by measuring interactions involving some specific set of core nodes. This results in a network dataset containing the core nodes along with a potentially much larger set of fringe nodes that all have at least one interaction with a core node. In many settings, this type of data arises for structures that are richer than graphs, because they involve the interactions of larger sets; for example, the core nodes might be a set of individuals under surveillance, where we observe the attendees of meetings involving at least one of the core individuals. We model such scenarios using hypergraphs, and we study the problem of core recovery: if we observe the hypergraph but not the labels of core and fringe nodes, can we recover the "planted" set of core nodes in the hypergraph? We provide a theoretical framework for analyzing the recovery of such a set of core nodes and use our theory to develop a practical and scalable algorithm for core recovery. The crux of our analysis and algorithm is that the core nodes are a hitting set of the hypergraph, meaning that every hyperedge has at least one node in the set of core nodes. We demonstrate the efficacy of our algorithm on a number of real-world datasets, outperforming competitive baselines derived from network centrality and core-periphery measures.
What's a President to Do? Interpreting the Constitution in the Wake of Bush Administration Abuses

President George W. Bush and his executive branch lawyers have earned widespread criticism for extreme positions and practices regarding the scope of presidential authority. The war on terror that followed the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks provided the context for their most controversial claims of unilateral authority: to override legal prohibitions on the use of torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment; to hold "enemy combatants" indefinitely without access to counsel or any opportunity to challenge their detention; and to engage in domestic electronic surveillance without a court order. Our nation's welfare and integrity depend upon continued evaluation, response, and, when warranted, condemnation of these practices. Many commentators (including me) have proposed reforms and principles to guide future administrations and to encourage Congress and the courts to impose appropriate external checks. This Article, however, urges due care in the formulation of such critiques and reforms, especially regarding the Bush administration's efforts to advance its constitutional views. Critics should be precise with their objections and recommendations in order to avoid undermining legitimate authorities for future Presidents or otherwise disrupting the proper balance of governmental powers. The Bush administration's abuses - especially its claims of authority to refuse to comply with federal statutes - reinforce the need for articulated standards and effective safeguards to ensure lawful conduct. However, those abuses do not obviate the existence or desirability of legitimate presidential authority. Among the powers President Bush has placed at risk is the longstanding and necessary authority of Presidents, with the help of their executive branch lawyers, to interpret the Constitution in ways that go beyond judicial precedent and congressional determinations.
Peer Effects, Teacher Incentives, and the Impact of Tracking: Evidence from a Randomized Evaluation in Kenya

To the extent that students benefit from high-achieving peers, tracking will help strong students and hurt weak ones. However, all students may benefit if tracking allows teachers to better tailor their instruction level. Lower-achieving pupils are particularly likely to benefit from tracking when teachers have incentives to teach to the top of the distribution. We propose a simple model nesting these effects and test its implications in a randomized tracking experiment conducted with 121 primary schools in Kenya. While the direct effect of highachieving peers is positive, tracking benefited lower-achieving pupils indirectly by allowing teachers to teach to their level. (JEL I21, J45, O15)
U.S. State Budget Directors: Characteristics, Experience, and Attitudes

Much literature exists on state government budgeting, but until now, none existed on state budget directors. This article reports on a survey of these individuals. Their ages, genders, race, education, and work experience are reported. Their work week is discussed in terms of number of hours worked and interactions with their staff, the governor, and the legislature. Attitudes about the job and about their personal lives as related to their jobs are discussed. Their plans for when they leave office are considered. The characteristics and attitudes of the directors are compared with data about their respective states in search of possible linkages.
Chaos in the Courtroom: Controlling Disruptive Defendants and Contumacious Counsel in War Crimes Trials

During the eight month-long Dujail trial (October 2005-August 2006), Saddam Hussein, his seven co-defendants, and their dozen lawyers regularly disparaged the judges, interrupted witness testimony with outbursts, turned cross examination into political diatribes, and staged frequent walk-outs and boycotts. Drawn from the author's September 2006 lecture to the staff of the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, this article examines some of history's previous messy trials and the strategies judges have employed with varying degrees of success to respond to disruptive conduct by trial participants. It then describes the various tactics employed by the judges in the Dujail trial and analyzes why they were not more successful. The article concludes with a detailed prescription for maintaining order in future war crimes trials.
The Irrational Supreme Court

Rationality is prized by lawyers. The 'rational review' test provides the constitutional minimum for due process and equal protection analysis. Unfortunately, even in an idealized world populated by perfectly rational people not all causes of irrational decision-making can be avoided. The basic nature of group decision-making inevitably creates the possibility of certain kinds of irrationality. The core of the problem is that, while deciding which party prevails is a binary decision [either one side or the other wins], there are often multiple issues that need to be decided in any particular case. The task of creating a system for selecting among multiple options presents an intractable problem for any group, including the Supreme Court. Kenneth S. Arrow has proven that no reasonable group-voting system for resolving multiple issues can avoid all inconsistency. Specifically, Arrow showed that under certain conditions, there always exists the potential for what is known as a 'lack of transitivity.' Transitivity requires that preferences between several options be consistent, so that if one prefers coffee to soda, and soda to tea, that person also prefers coffee to tea. Arrow's Theorem establishes that such a conclusion does not necessarily follow in the context of group decision-making. That is, given a similar choice of the three beverages, the group might prefer coffee to soda, and soda to tea, but also prefer tea to coffee. While the scholarly discussion of Arrow's Theorem is voluminous, until now, no one has identified a lack of transitivity in Supreme Court opinions. This Article presents the first such example, but it also explains why Arrow's Theorem is not a significant cause of "irrational" Supreme Court opinions. The article shows that there is a second form of irrational group decision-making exists, which has occurred far more frequently. It occurs when one party in a case receives the votes of a majority of the Justices of the Court on every relevant issue yet loses the case anyway. In these cases: (i) the Court agrees that if all of the relevant issues are decided in one party's favor, that party will win; (ii) at least five of the nine Justices rule in favor of that same party on all relevant issues; but, (iii) the other party wins. This phenomenon can be explained using what this Author has termed the 'Irrationality Theorem.' Stated generally, the Irrationality Theorem proves that there is no way to eliminate the possibility that a majority of the Supreme Court (or any other multi-member tribunal) will vote that one party should lose on every relevant issue yet win the case anyway. Several cases embodying this irrationality are discussed in detail.
Explaining the border effect: the role of exchange rate variability, shipping costs, and geography

This paper exploits a three-dimensional panel data set of prices on 27 traded goods, over 88 quarters, across 96 cities in the US and Japan. We show that a simple average of good-level real exchange rates tracks the nominal exchange rate well, suggesting strong evidence of sticky prices. Focusing on dispersion in prices between city-pairs, we find that crossing the US-Japan 'Border' is equivalent to adding as much as 43 000 trillion miles to the cross-country volatility of relative prices. We turn next to economic explanations for this so-called border effect and to its dynamics. Distance, unit-shipping costs, and exchange rate variability, collectively explain a substantial portion of the observed international market segmentation. Relative wage variability, on the other hand, has little independent impact on segmentation. © 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
Response to Tudor: Remorse-based Sentence Reductions in Theory and Practice

Steven Tudor defends the mitigation of criminal sentences in cases in which offenders are genuinely remorseful for their crimes. More than this, he takes the principle that such remorse-based sentence reductions are appropriate to be a ‘well-settled legal principle’—so well settled, in fact, that ‘it is among those deep-seated commitments which can serve to test general theories as much as they are tested by them’. However, his account of why remorse should reduce punishment is strongly philosophical in character. He sets to one side the many practical difficulties in implementing such reductions in the real world of criminal justice institutions so that he can focus on the question of whether a plausible account of sentencing can show that remorse should mitigate punishment. I contend that Tudor’s defense of such reductions is unpersuasive in certain respects. Yet even if it can be made more persuasive, I argue that the conditions that would have to be satisfied for remorse-based sentence reductions to be justifiably implemented are so many and various that they would likely exceed our abilities to responsibly grant them in real world legal contexts. I therefore claim that Tudor has failed to provide a defense of the ‘remorse principle’ that serves to explain or justify existing legal practices.
Factual Premises of Statutory Interpretation in Agency Review Cases

This Article examines factual premises of statutory interpretation in cases reviewing administrative agency action. It proposes an approach that would better integrate the treatment of such factual premises into the overall structure of administrative law. Judicial interpretation of statutes administered by agencies follows the well-known Chevron framework, which construes statutory ambiguity as an implicit delegation of primary interpretive authority to the agency charged with implementing the statute. The Chevron framework has not been applied, however, to the factual premises of statutory interpretation, despite the pervasiveness of such premises in legal reasoning. Courts frequently encounter questions of statutory interpretation that depend on underlying factual background, context, and implications. When they do, however, courts tend not to follow the Chevron framework. Instead, courts assume that they retain the authority to decide factual premises and, it follows, authority to answer questions of statutory interpretation that depend on factual premises. This is especially problematic because courts often lack the information or expertise necessary to assess these underlying facts. Consequently, often courts fail to understand the implications of their interpretive options. This Article proposes a new approach to premise facts in agency review cases. In particular, when courts encounter a question of statutory interpretation that depends on a factual premise, courts should recognize that the statute itself does not answer the precise question; under the Chevron framework, primary interpretive authority therefore rests with the administrative agency. This means that, among other things, agencies are not bound by prior judicial precedent interpreting statutes based on factual premises, and that agencies have the authority to reconsider such premise facts—and the statutory interpretation based on those facts—in subsequent proceedings. This reconsideration process would allow agencies to bring their superior information-gathering and -analyzing capacity to bear on premise facts, thereby improving statutory interpretation.
Negotiating the People's Capital Revisited

Editor's Note: What follows is the second part of an unofficial transcript of an off-the-record conversation among three of the labor movement's leading strategists. (The first installment appeared under the title “Strategy for Labor,” 22 J. Labor Research 569 (Summer 2001), and has been updated as “Strategy for Labor Revisited,” available www.ssrn.com). This second meeting was also convened by C, or "cooperationist," who had been for over ten years the president of a local union, part of a major industrial union, representing 3,000 employees who had been hired to staff a new manufacturing plant in a Southern town ("Newplant"). Newplant had been widely touted as a breakthrough in U.S. labor-management relations because it was consciously designed to promote greater participation of production and maintenance workers in business decisions and a “partnership” role role for union officials alongside traditional management officials. In bitterly contested local elections last year, C was voted out of office and now serves in a staff capacity at the AFL-CI0. A, or "adversarialist," perhaps surprisingly a longstanding friend of C, is the research director of another industrial union. A was very active in the Students for A Democratic Society in the 1960s, and after graduating from Oberlin College began his career as a labor organizer, working for a succession of unions that had been active in the McGovern-Kucinich wing of the Democratic Party. S, or "stay the course," is the highly respected chief of staff for a national union representing government workers. Section headings and parenthetical references are supplied by the editor and do not appear in the original transcript.
Greenlighting American Citizens: Proceed with Caution

Name-calling is hurtful. But when the Obama Administration labeled Anwar al-Awlaki as a “global terrorist,” it was a death sentence. According to various media reports, the Obama Administration authorized the C.I.A. to use lethal force against al-Awlaki, a dual U.S.-Yemeni citizen. A U.S. drone attack targeted but missed al-Awlaki in May 2011. Approximately four months later, armed drones operated by the C.I.A. fired a barrage of Hellfire missiles at a car carrying him and at least one other person. Al-Awlaki and another American citizen, Samir Khan, were killed.This Comment argues that the C.I.A.’s targeted killing of al-Awlaki is prohibited under 18 U.S.C. § 1119, commonly known as the foreign-murder statute. Although the Obama Administration might seek to avoid this prohibition by relying on the laws of war, this Comment concludes that any such reliance is misplaced for two reasons: (1) the particular laws of war on which the Administration must rely are non-self-executing, and (2) those laws have not been incorporated in domestic legislation. Consequently, the Administration must rely on the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) to justify violating the foreign-murder statute. The AUMF does not, however, provide the needed justification.Part I of this Comment explores the background of the President’s authorization to target al-Awlaki and the federal and international law relevant to that decision. It concludes with a discussion of Al-Bihani v. Obama, the judiciary’s latest ruling regarding the relationship between international and domestic law. Part II begins with a discussion of the status of treaties in the United States before and after Medellin v. Texas, a pivotal Supreme Court decision.The domestic status of relevant provisions of the laws of war is then considered in light of Medellin. Part II next discusses whether those laws of war have been incorporated through a federal statute, specifically, the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), or the AUMF.This section is followed by a discussion of whether the AUMF supersedes the foreign-murder statute.The Comment concludes that the foreign-murder statute prohibits the targeted killing of al-Awlaki. Thus it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that any C.I.A. operative that executed President Obama’s order to kill al-Awlaki is guilty of murder under the foreign-murder statute. An equally unavoidable conclusion is that certain high-ranking executive officials, including the President, would share in that criminal culpability.
The Ideological Mapping of American Legislatures

The development and elaboration of the spatial theory of voting has contributed greatly to the study of legislative decision making and elections. Statistical models that estimate the spatial locations of individual legislators have been a key contributor to this success (Poole and Rosenthal 1997; Clinton, Jackman and Rivers 2004). In addition to applications to the U.S. Congress, spatial models have been estimated for the Supreme Court, U.S. presidents, a large number of non-U.S. legislatures, and supranational organizations. But, unfortunately, a potentially fruitful laboratory for testing spatial theories of policymaking and elections, the American states, has remained relatively unexploited. Two problems have limited the empirical application of spatial theory to the states. The rst is that state legislative roll call data has not yet been systematically collected for all states over time. Second, because ideal point models are based on latent scales, comparisons of ideal points across states or chambers within a state are dicult. This paper reports substantial progress on both fronts. First, we have obtained the roll call voting data for all state legislatures from the mid-1990s onward. Second, we exploit a recurring survey of state legislative candidates to enable comparisons across time, chambers, and states as well as with the U.S. Congress. The resulting mapping of America’s state legislatures has tremendous potential to address numerous questions not only about state politics and policymaking, but legislative politics in general.
The Human Dignity of Clients

This essay reviews David Luban's forthcoming book, Legal Ethics and Human Dignity. At the heart of this new book is an argument that interactions between lawyers and clients ought to be at the center of jurisprudential inquiry. Pointing out that most cases do not go to trial and that much transactional work occurs outside the litigation context, he argues that law's defining moments occur when a "client sketches out a problem and a lawyer tenders advice," rather than when a judge decides a litigant's case. This review essay examines how Luban might elaborate a new "jurisprudence of lawyering" by examining the unresolved tension that has always existed between the strong deference to client values in his writing on lawyer paternalism and the "moral activist" vision of lawyering that he has proposed in response to the problem of overzealous partisanship. The human dignity framework he introduces in this volume holds out the promise of integrating respect for client values with attention to the public good. However, I argue, to fulfill this promise would require Luban to move away from the perspective of lawyers as "lawmakers" that he highlights as a jurisprudence of lawyering and contemplate the value and legitimacy of lawyers' partisan interpretation of the law in transactional as well as litigation settings.
A Lesson from the South for Fiscal Policy in the US and Other Advanced Countries

In the early 1990s, many people had drawn a lesson from the previous decade: Japan’s variant of capitalism was the best model. Other countries around the world should and would follow it. Japan’s admired institutions included relationship banking, keiretsu, bonus compensation for workers, lifetime employment, consensus building, strategic trade policy, administrative guidance, pro-saving policies, and maximization of companies’ industrial capacity or market share. These features were viewed as elements of Japanese economic success that were potentially worthy of emulation. The Japanese model quickly lost its luster in the 1990s, however, when the stock market and real estate market crashed, followed by many years of severe stagnation in the real economy.2
Demographics, GDP, and Future Stock Returns: The Implications of Some Basic Principles

The aging of the baby boom generation has focused investor attention on the issue of how changing demographics will affect the economy generally and the stock market specifically. One commonly expressed view is that stock returns will be depressed as baby boomers liquidate their portfolios to fund retirement. In this article, Cornell returns to basic theories of economic growth and asset pricing to disentangle the various ways in which demographics can affect future economic growth and future stock returns. He concludes that whereas the aging of the baby boom generation is indeed bad news for future economic growth, in particular, on a per capita basis, it is unlikely to lead to lower future stock returns.
Hedge fund politics and portfolios

Abstract Consistent with the well-documented relation between political orientation and psychological traits, hedge funds’ political orientations are related to their portfolio decisions. Relative to politically conservative hedge funds, politically liberal hedge funds exhibit a preference for smaller stocks, less mature companies, volatile stocks, unprofitable companies, non-dividend paying companies, and lottery-type securities. Politically liberal hedge funds are also more likely to enter new positions or fully exit existing positions, and make larger adjustments to their U.S. equity market exposure. Our results suggest that psychological characteristics can influence the portfolio decisions of even those at the very top of the financial sophistication ladder.
Lessons from the Orange County Bankruptcy

On December 6, 1994, Orange County became the largest municipality ever to file for bankruptcy. This dramatic action was prompted by a loss of $1.64 billion on the Orange County Investment Pool that became "realized" as the pool was liquidated. This study provides an update to the Orange County situation and discusses whether the bankruptcy and liquidation were necessary. The bankruptcy decision seems to be justified by the fact that the county was facing liabilities far in excess of its assets. Indeed, the bankruptcy court has ruled that the county's petition was entirely appropriate as it was insolvent at the time of the filing. The liquidation decision, however, involved a substantial opportunity loss, as the subsequent drop in interest rates would have led to a recovery of the portfolio. Whether liquidation was appropriate cannot be judged by the path of interest rates after the fact. The article illustrates how the value at risk methodology could have been used to estimate the risks of the portfolio prior to the facts. By December 1994, there was an estimated 5% probability that the portfolio would suffer a further loss of $1.1 billion or more over the following year.
When Public Health and Genetic Privacy Collide: Positive and Normative Theories Explaining How ACA's Expansion of Corporate Wellness Programs Conflicts with GINA's Privacy Rules

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (ACA) contains many provisions intended to increase access to and lower the cost of health care by adopting public health measures. One of these promotes the use of at-work wellness programs by both providing employers with grants to develop these programs and also increasing their ability to tie the price employees pay for health insurance for participating in these programs and meeting specific health goals. Yet despite ACA's specific alteration of three different statues which had in the past shielded employees from having to contribute to the cost of their health insurance based on their achieving employer-designated health markers, it chose to leave alone recently enacted rules implementing the Genetic Non-Discrimination Act (GINA), which prohibits employers from asking employees about their family health history in any context, including assessing their risk for setting wellness targets. This article reviews how both the changes made by ACA and the restrictions recently put place by GINA will affect the way employers are likely to structure Wellness Programs. It also considers how these changes reflect the competing social goals of both ACA, which seeks to expand access to the population by lowering costs, and GINA, which seeks to protect individuals from discrimination. It does so by analyzing both positive theories about how these new laws will function and normative theories explaining the likelihood of future friction between the interests of the population of the United States as a whole who are in need of increased and affordable access to health care, and of the individuals living in this country who risk discrimination, as science and medicine continue to make advances in linking genetic make-up to risk of future illness.
The polytropic approximation and X-ray scaling relations: constraints on gas and dark matter profiles for galaxy groups and clusters

The X-ray properties of groups and clusters of galaxies obey scaling relations that provide insight into the physics of their formation and evolution. In this paper, we constrain gas and dark matter parameters of these systems, by comparing the observed relations to theoretical expectations, obtained assuming that the gas is in hydrostatic equilibrium with the dark matter and follows a polytropic relation. In this exercise, we vary four parameters: the gas polytropic index Γ, its temperature at large radii, the dark matter logarithmic slope at large radii ζ and its concentration. When comparing the model to the observed mass–temperature relation of local high-mass systems, we find our results to be independent of both the gas temperature at large radii and of the dark matter concentration. We thus obtain constraints on Γ, by fixing the dark matter profile, and on ζ, by fixing the gas profile. For a Navarro–Frenk–White dark matter profile, we find that Γ must lie between 6/5 and 13/10. This value is consistent with numerical simulations and observations of individual clusters. Taking 6/5 ≲Γ≲ 13/10 allows the dark matter profile to be slightly steeper than the Navarro–Frenk–White profile at large radii. Upon including local low-mass systems, we obtain constraints on the mass dependence of Γ and on the value of the gas temperature at large radii. Interestingly, by fixing Γ= 6/5 and ζ=−3, we reproduce the observed steepening/breaking of the mass–temperature relation at low masses if the temperature of the intercluster medium is between 106 and 107 K, consistent with numerical simulations and observations of the warm–hot intergalactic medium. When extrapolated to high redshift, the model with a constant Γ reproduces the expected self-similar behaviour. Given our formulation, we can also naturally account for the observed, non-self-similar relations provided by some high-redshift clusters, as they simply provide constraints on the evolution of Γ. In addition, comparing our model to the observed luminosity–temperature relation, we are able to discriminate between different mass–concentration relations and find that a weak dependence of concentration on mass is currently preferred by data. In summary, this simple theoretical model can still account for much of the complexity of recent, improved X-ray scaling relations, provided that we allow for a mild dependence of the polytropic index on mass or for a gas temperature at large radii consistent with intercluster values.
Discussion of empirical research on accounting choice

Abstract This discussion considers four aspects of the survey paper on empirical accounting choice research by Fields, Lys and Vincent: implications of the authors’ selection of an expansive definition of accounting choice and their decision to classify this research by managerial motives; implications of the authors’ decision to include implementation decisions in their definition of accounting choice; implications of the authors’ call for research on the consequences of accounting choice, including the costs of defective accounting choices and the benefits of superior choices; implications of the authors’ call for a reconsideration of research designs that explicitly consider groups of accounting choices.
Judicial Transparency, Judicial Ethics, and a Judicial Solution: An Inspector General for the Courts

Many federal judges routinely fear criticism, but that fear is unwarranted. The public is rightly concerned that the procedure to investigate and discipline problem-judges is flawed, particularly in a few high-profile cases discussed in this article. Several recent indictments of federal judges add to the problem. As Judge Ralph Winter has acknowledged, the status quo is "not a confidence builder". Judges should welcome an Inspector General for the Federal Courts, who could restore public confidence in the federal judicial discipline system. The Inspector General can investigate potential ethical violations and proceed in those few instances where more is needed. This solution is something that both the public and the judiciary should welcome. Congress can create an Inspector General with appropriate safeguards that will keep our judiciary independent (because no one favors a dependent judiciary) and will keep our judiciary accountable (because no one favors a judiciary that is above the law).
Have We Got a Deal For You: Can the East Borrow From the Western Water Marketing Experience?

Markets of one sort or another have played a role in western water allocation for many decades, and this role is on the rise for a variety of reasons. In contrast, water markets have not played a significant part in water allocation east of the Great Plains states. Eastern markets have not developed for two main reasons. As long as there was plenty of water to go around, there was little pressure to move water from one use to another-- something that markets can help to accomplish. Also, because laws poorly defined riparian rights for so long and usually limited riparian water to use on riparian lands, Eastern water law did not readily define an interest subject to market transfers. However, now that statutory changes have begun to firm up the parameters of some water rights, while also loosening restrictions on the places of use, there is more room for eastern markets to develop. As the East looks to the West for help in managing an increasingly scarce resource, markets are one device attracting interest. This article offers one tool for consideration--using water markets to preserve instream flows. The article briefly describes the use of markets in the West, particularly streamflow markets, and addresses some of the pros and cons of water marketing. The article then considers the similarities and differences between eastern states and the western states where these markets are flourishing, and offers some thoughts on what a streamflow market might offer to an eastern state.
Bank mergers, the market for bank CEOs, and managerial incentives

After a large bank merger, the compensation of the surviving bank’s CEO often increases materially. Theories of executive compensation based on managerial productivity and optimal incentives suggest that changes in CEO compensation are related to the potential gains from merger. Alternatively, compensation gains might result from an increase in bank size regardless of whether the merger creates value. We examine mergers among billion-dollar banks in the 1990s and find results consistent with managerial productivity. Specifically, we show empirically that changes in CEO compensation after mergers are positively related to anticipated gains from merger measured at the announcement date. Other changes in the structure of compensation are also consistent with hypotheses based on managerial productivity and incentive restructuring.
Natural Selection in Financial Markets : Does It Work?

Can investors with incorrect beliefs survive in financial markets and have a significant impact on asset prices? My paper addresses this issue by analyzing a dynamic general equilibrium model where some investors have rational expectations, whereas others have incorrect beliefs concerning the mean growth rate of the economy. The main result is that an investor can survive if and only if he has the lowest survival index, which is a function of his belief accuracy, patience parameter, and relative risk aversion coefficient. If preferences are held constant across all investors, then those with incorrect beliefs cannot survive in the limit, although calibrations reveal that the selection process is excessively slow. However, if preferences vary across investors, even slightly, it becomes possible for an irrational investor to dominate the market even if his beliefs persistently and substantially deviate from the truth.
Home Equity and Labor Income: The Role of Constrained Mobility

Using detailed data for U.S. homeowners, we document a negative, nonlinear relation between the loan-to-value ratio (LTV) of homeowners’ primary residence and their labor income. Consistent with high LTV individuals experiencing constrained mobility, we find stronger effects among subprime, liquidity- constrained individuals and those living in regions with limited alternative local employment opportunities and strict noncompete law enforcement. Though high LTV individuals are less likely to move across MSAs, they are more likely to change jobs without changing their residence. We find no effects among similar neighboring renters employed at the same firm and with a similar job tenure.
International Civil Litigation in China: A Practical Analysis of the Chinese Judicial System

In recent years, international civil litigation in China has been on the rise. This trend will inevitably continue with China's entry into the World Trade Organization. Given the increase of foreign businesses in China, a better understanding of the Chinese judicial system becomes essential to protect foreign business interests. Jurisdiction, choice of law, and enforcement of judgments are three primary concerns of foreign parties seeking judicial relief and remedies in China. Questions commonly asked include: what are the bases for a Chinese People's Court to assert jurisdiction over foreign parties; what are the standards to determine judicial competence; how does a Chinese People's Court decide which law will be applied in each particular case involving "foreign elements;" and whether a judgment could be effectively enforced and by what means. Fear that China lacks the rule of law and an independent judicial system gives rise to hesitancy to conduct business in China and pursue legal rights. Creating public confidence in the judiciary is one of China's most important tasks, as it seeks to attract international business.
Sex, Threats, and Absent Victims: The Lessons of Regina v. Bedingfield for Modern Confrontation and Domestic Violence Cases

In 2004, Crawford v. Washington, authored by Justice Antonin Scalia, revolutionized the law of confrontation by requiring that, aside from two discrete exceptions, all testimonial statements (those made with the expectation that they will serve to prosecute the accused) be subject to cross-examination. This new interpretation of the Sixth Amendment confrontation clause has profoundly affected domestic violence cases, making it much harder to prosecute them successfully. Although Justice Scalia’s approach to confrontation is new, it is strikingly similar to the analysis in Regina v. Bedingfield, a notorious English murder case, which excluded from the evidence an alleged statement by the murder victim. The analysis of the res gestae hearsay exception, which was central to excluding the victim’s statement in Bedingfield, focused on the timing of her statement, her intent in making it, and whether an ongoing emergency existed when the declaration was made. Justice Scalia’s rigid, formalistic approach to testimonial statements in Davis v. Washington, another in the line of new confrontation cases, is analogous and ultimately as confusing and unworkable as Bedingfield’s res gestae analysis.Although Bedingfield arose in 1879, its facts, replete with verbal abuse, intoxication, unheeded pleas for police protection, and ultimately, murder when the victim tried to break off the relationship, resonate with modern experiences of domestic violence. Both the Bedingfield case and Justice Scalia’s confrontation jurisprudence fail to account for the practical realities of domestic violence cases and ignore the voices of victims who cannot or will not testify on their own behalf. The facts of Bedingfield, which present a serious question whether the victim’s statement was ever uttered, demonstrate another flaw in Justice Scalia’s new approach. In addition to being too rigid in rejecting unconfronted testimonial statements, the new confrontation doctrine it is also too lax regarding nontestimonial statements, which now receive no constitutional protection at all.
Bankruptcy and the Collateral Channel

Do bankrupt firms impose negative externalities on their nonbankrupt competitors? We propose and analyze a collateral channel in which a firm’s bankruptcy reduces the collateral value of other industry participants, thereby increasing their cost of debt financing. We identify the collateral channel using novel data of secured debt tranches issued by U.S. airlines that include detailed descriptions of the underlying collateral pools. Our estimates suggest that industry bankruptcies have a sizeable impact on the cost of debt financing of other industry participants. We discuss how the collateral channel may lead to contagion effects that amplify the business cycle during industry downturns. DO BANKRUPT FIRMS affect their solvent nonbankrupt competitors? Although a large body of research studies the consequences of bankruptcy reorganizations and liquidations for those firms that actually file for court protection (e.g., Asquith, Gertner, and Scharfstein (1994), Hotchkiss (1995), and Str¨ omberg (2000)), little is known about the externalities that bankrupt firms impose on other firms operating in the same industry. Any such externalities would be of particular concern, as they may give rise to self-reinforcing feedback loops that amplify the business cycle during industry downturns. Indeed, the potential for contagion effects was of particular concern during the financial panic of 2007 to 2009, where insolvent bank liquidations and asset sell offs imposed “fire-sale” externalities on the economy at large (see, e.g., Kashyap, Rajan, and Stein (2008)). In this paper, we identify one channel through which bankrupt firms impose negative externalities on nonbankrupt competitors, namely, through their impact on collateral values. We use the term “collateral channel” to describe this effect. According to the collateral channel, one firm’s bankruptcy reduces the
Why has the investment-cash flow sensitivity declined so sharply? Rising R&D and equity market developments

Abstract The study of the investment-cash flow (ICF) sensitivity constitutes one of the largest literatures in corporate finance, yet little is known about changes in the ICF relationship over time, and the literature has largely ignored how rising R&D investment and developments in equity markets have impacted ICF sensitivity estimates. We show that for the time period 1970–2006, the ICF sensitivity: (i) largely disappears for physical investment, (ii) remains comparatively strong for R&D, and (iii) declines, but does not disappear, for total investment. We argue that these findings can largely be explained by the changing composition of investment and the rising importance of public equity as a source of funds, particularly for firms with persistent negative cash flows.
Women's Business Centers in the United States: Effective Entrepreneurship Training and Policy Implementation

Abstract In the US, the passage of the Women’s Business Ownership Act of 1988 (HR5050) provided seed funding for women’s business centers through the Small Business Administration. Women’s business centers were targeted to provide technical assistance to women for business formation, particularly women who were socially and economically disadvantaged. This research examined women’s business centers in the US to ascertain the success of a policy initiative targeted to provide training, technical assistance and support for entrepreneurship by women. We found that women’s business centers in the United States are successfully accomplishing their mission. The success of women’s business centers can be attributed to shared practices targeted specifically to women’s situational and social capital needs. Tailored programming, a relationship-oriented approach, and activities that develop social capital are key practices consistently used by women’s business centers nationwide. US women’s business centers provide ...
Financial Development, the Structure of Capital Markets, and the Global Digital Divide

Abstract This paper examines the extent to which financial development and financial structure may explain cross-country diffusion of information communication technology (ICT). Using panel data for 76 emerging and advanced countries for the period 1990–2003, it finds that credit and stock market development tends to foster ICT diffusion, but financial structure does not appear to have any significant relationship with it. The conclusions, which are consistent with what theory might predict, highlight the role of financial development in the market for knowledge-based products. The finding that financial development is an important determinant of ICT diffusion implies that countries with underdeveloped financial markets may sink even further to the information-poor and noncommunicating side of the global digital divide.
The America Invents Act, Its Unique First-to-File System and Its Transfer of Power from Juries to the United States Patent and Trademark Office

The signing of the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (AIA) by President Obama on 16 September 2011 is a landmark event in the history of American patent law. It has already been the subject of numerous articles on the web and in the law reviews as well as in the popular press. I have no intention here of going into all the details of the AIA, I just want to leave the reader with a sense for its eventual impact on American patent law. All the details are to be found in its 37 sections whose titles give the reader a good sense of the scope of the AIA. In one sense Section 1 says it all.
The Information Content of Guidance and Earnings

I compare the information content of quarterly earnings guidance and quarterly earnings by examining their associations with current and future stock returns when the two signals are bundled at earnings announcements. At the bundled announcement, I find a significantly stronger association between announcement returns and guidance news. From the day after the bundled announcement through the next earnings announcement, both signals generate abnormal return drifts of about 200 basis points. However, the timing of the post-announcement returns differs considerably. For guidance, about 50% of the post-announcement drift occurs at the next earnings announcement. In contrast, for earnings, about 20% of the preceding drift reverses at the next earnings announcement. Investor ignorance of the drift following guidance news coupled with a fixation on post-earnings announcement drift potentially explains this surprising difference in the timing of the post-announcement returns. Overall, this study indicates that bu...
Richardson v. Ramirez: A Motion to Reconsider

In Richardson v. Ramirez, 418 U.S. 24 (1974), the Supreme Court held that Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment authorized states to disenfranchise convicted felons. The decision thus leads to the anomalous result that, although Section 2 was clearly aimed at discouraging discriminatory denial of participation in the political process to African Americans, the provision nevertheless actually provides the primary justification for state statutes disproportionately denying African Americans the right to vote. This article argues that the Court got it very wrong in Richardson. Charles Sumner, one of the leaders of the Radical Republicans in the Congress that drafted the Fourteenth Amendment, argued that the amendment should pursue a political agenda of "inclusion and exclusion," by which he meant including former slaves in the larger political community while at the same time denying the franchise to whites who had participated in the Civil War on the side of the Confederacy. The Court in Richardson erred by ignoring the context in which the amendment was drafted and passed as well as specific parts of the legislative history of the amendment that demonstrate that the language recognizing state power to disenfranchise "felons" actually meant to include only those who had committed crimes of rebellion against the Union.
Bounding the Effects of R&D: An Investigation Using Matched Establishment-Firm Data

We find that the effects of parent firm RD that productivity appears to depend on RD and that spillovers from technologically related firms are significant but also depend on R&D intensity rather than on total industry R&D. These results suggest that the "dilution" of R&D across multiple target plants reduces its potency sufficiently that spillovers may not be a source of industrywide or economywide increasing returns.
Understanding the 'conservative' view on abortion.

The philosophical literature would have us believe that the conservative view on abortion is based on the claim that the fetus is a person from the time of conception. Given the widespread acceptance of this analysis, it comes as something of a surprise to learn that it conflicts with a number of major arguments offered in support of the conservative view. I argue, in the present paper, that a careful examination of these inconsistencies establishes that the personhood analysis is mistaken: the conservative view is based on the natural process of fetal development, not the personhood of the fetus.
A New Data Set on Monetary Policy: The Economic Forecasts of Individual Members of the FOMC

This paper describes a new data set of the forecasts of output growth, inflation, and unemployment prepared by individual members of the Federal Open Market Committee. The paper discusses the scope of the data set, possibilities for extending it, and some potential uses. It offers a preliminary examination of some of the cross-sectional features of the data.