cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Changing minds? Not in Congress!

This paper shows a variety of evidence that members of Congress are ideologically consistent. Based upon the roll call voting record, once elected to Congress, members adopt a consistent ideological position and maintain it over time. There may be changing minds, but they are not in Congress.
The Online Advertising Industry: Economics, Evolution, and Privacy

Online advertising accounts for almost 9 percent of all advertising in the United States. This share is expected to increase as more media is consumed over the Internet and as more advertisers shift spending to online technologies. The expansion of Internet-based advertising is transforming the advertising business by providing more efficient methods of matching advertisers and consumers and transforming the media business by providing a source of revenue for online media firms that competes with traditional media firms. The precipitous decline of the newspaper industry is one manifestation of the symbiotic relationship between online content and advertising. Online-advertising is provided by a series of interlocking multisided platforms that facilitate the matching of advertisers and consumers. These intermediaries increasingly make use of detailed individual data, predictive methods, and matching algorithms to create more efficient matches between consumers and advertisers. Some of their methods raise public policy issues that require balancing benefits from providing consumers more valuable advertising against the possible loss of valuable privacy.
Antitrust and Sports Equipment Standards: Winners and Whiners

Sports governing bodies routinely adopt equipment standards because equipment can have a dramatic impact on performance. Standards and rules set in relation to human capacity define a sport. Because standards by nature are restrictive, equipment producers stand to lose if their products do not conform. Excluded producers sometimes challenge standards on antitrust grounds. This paper explores the economics of sports equipment standard setting and the merits of the antitrust challenge. It concludes that except in the rare case in which the governing body is itself a victim of a boycott, standard setting decisions should be lawful per se.
Identity motives and cultural priming: Cultural (dis)identification in assimilative and contrastive responses

The present article explores whether effects of cultural primes are influenced by identity motives as well as by construct accessibility. The authors hypothesized that assimilative responses (shifting one’s judgments toward the norm of the primed culture) are driven by identification motives, whereas contrastive responses (shifting away from this norm) are driven by disidentification motives. Evidence for this claim was attained in reanalyzes of past data sets and a new study of Chinese American biculturals, using improved measures of identification and disidentification motives. Consistent with the identity-motive hypotheses, assimilative responses to American-culture primes occurred for high (but not low) identifiers with American culture, and contrastive responses to Chinese-culture primes occurred for high (but not low) disidentifiers with Chinese culture. Results disconfirmed an alternative account predicting that contrast effects hinge on trait self-consciousness. Consistent with an accessibility saturation account, judgment patterns already heightened in accessibility by the task structure were not made more likely by priming. 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Defining the Government's Debt and Deficit

Although the budget deficit and the public debt feature prominently in political debate and economic research, there is no agreement about how they should be measured. They can b e defined for different sets of public institutions, including the nested sets corresponding to central government, general government, and the public sector, and, for any definition of government, there are many measures of the debt and deficit, including those generated by four kinds of accounts (cash, financial, full accrual, and comprehensive), which can be derived from four nested sets of assets and liabilities. Each debt and deficit measure says something about public finances, but none tells the whol e story. Each is also vulnerable to manipulation, and is likely to be manipulated if it is subject to a binding fiscal rule or target. Narrow definitions of government encourage the shifting of spending to entities outside the defined perimeter of governme nt. Narrow definitions of debt and deficit encourage operations involving off - balance - sheets assets and liabilities, while broad measures are susceptible to the mismeasurement of on - balance - sheet assets and liabilities. Reviewing the literature on these is sues, the paper concludes that governments should publish several measures of the debt and deficit in a form that clearly reveals their interrelationships.
Large-Capacity Magazines and the Casualty Counts in Mass Shootings: The Plausibility of Linkages

Do bans on large-capacity magazines (LCMs) for semiautomatic firearms have significant potential for reducing the number of deaths and injuries in mass shootings? The most common rationale for an e...
The optimal design of Ponzi schemes in finite economies

Abstract As no rational agent would be willing to take part in the last round in a finite economy, it is difficult to design Ponzi schemes that are certain to explode. This paper argues that if agents correctly believe in the possibility of a partial bailout when a gigantic Ponzi scheme collapses, and they recognize that a bailout is tantamount to a redistribution of wealth from non-participants to participants, it may be rational for agents to participate, even if they know that it is the last round. We model a political economy where an unscrupulous profit-maximizing promoter can design gigantic Ponzi schemes to cynically exploit this “too big to fail” doctrine. We point to the fact that some of the spectacular Ponzi schemes in history occurred at times where and when such political economies existed—France (1719), Britain (1720), Russia (1994), and Albania (1997).
Quantitative SEM-EDS Analysis of Semi-Transparent Samples

Recent years have seen increased crossover of microscopy techniques developed for transmission electron microscopes (TEMs) being utilized as well in scanning electron microscopes (SEMs). The order of magnitude lower beam energies available in SEMs correspond with significantly different beam-sample interactions that must be accounted for when examining freestanding films. This is especially important for composition analysis via energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) since lower-energy transmission experiments mean X-ray volumes become comparable to sample dimensions. To better understand this scenario, we report results of an SEM-EDS study of terraced freestanding films comprising binary compounds with well-defined atomic ratios. Guided by Monte Carlo simulations, EDS line scan data were collected at different beam energies across segments of varying thicknesses. The results of quantification analysis using different models are compared for multiple combinations of beam energy, sample thickness, and material density, from which some general guidelines are provided for SEM-EDS analysis of freestanding films.
An experimental evaluation of strategic preemption

Abstract This paper reports the results of a series of two-stage, two-person noncooperative games where one player can strategically preempt the other. In one of our designs, the subgame perfect equilibrium entails complete preemption; in the other, it entails partial preemption. The data show that players tend to completely preempt when it is privately optimal. However, when partial preemption is privately optimal, a non-trivial fraction of players persist in choosing the non-preemptive structure. This may result because of occasional irrational behavior following preemptive play, which induces some dominant agents to play less aggressively.
Salesforce Compensation with Inventory Considerations

We study a scenario in which a firm designs the compensation contract for a salesperson who exerts unobservable effort to increase the level of uncertain demand and, jointly, the firm also decides the inventory level to be stocked. We use a newsvendor-type model in which actual sales depend on the realized demand but are limited by the inventory available, and unfulfilled demand cannot be observed. In this setup, under the optimal contract, the agent is paid a bonus for meeting a sales quota. Our key result is that it may be optimal for the firm to stock more than the first-best inventory level, because this enables the firm to obtain a more precise indicator of the salesperson's effort. The possibility of stockouts due to limited inventory also leads to several counterintuitive results, including the following: (i) relative to when stockouts are not considered, it may be optimal for the firm to pay a higher bonus even though limited inventory constrains sales; (ii) as inventory becomes more expensive, th...
Trading Restrictions and Stock Prices

I examine a series of stock splits in Japan in which firms restrict the ability of their investors to sell their shares for a period of approximately 2 months. By removing potential sellers from the market, the restrictions have the effect of increasing the impact of trading on prices. The greater the desire of investors to trade, and the greater the restrictions, the larger the impact of the restrictions. In the data, particularly severe restrictions are associated with returns of over 30% around the ex-date, most of which are reversed when investors are allowed to sell again. Firms are more likely to issue equity or redeem convertible debt during the restricted period, suggesting strong incentives for manipulation.
All Events Induce Variance: Analyzing Abnormal Returns When Effects Vary across Firms

We demonstrate analytically that cross-sectional variation in the effects of events, i.e., in trae abnormal returns, necessarily produces event-induced variance increases, biasing popular tests for mean abnormal returns in short-horizon event studies. We show that unexplained cross-sectional variation in true abnormal returns plausibly produces non proportional heteroskedasticity in cross-sectional regressions, biasing coefficient standard errors for both ordinary and weighted least squares. Simulations highlight the resulting biases, the necessity of using tests robust to cross-sectional variation, and the power of ro bust tests, including regression-based tests for nonzero mean abnormal returns, which may increase power by conditioning on relevant explanatory variables.
The epidemic of children's dental diseases: putting teeth into the law.

Health care reform often involves a search for interventions that have the greatest value, both in terms of outcome and cost. Preventive dental care for children is simple, low risk, affordable, and has benefits that exceed its cost, making it a sensible type of care for all children to receive. However, there is a literal epidemic of preventable tooth decay amongst children in this country, an epidemic that has proven resistant to many attempts to ameliorate it. This epidemic leads to pain, poor school performance, poor nutrition, infection, and increased risk of heart problems in adulthood. It also, at times, leads to children’s deaths. This Article argues that this pervasive, stubborn problem of preventable dental decay is structural, and requires legal reforms to create a system whereby all, or at least most, children receive the necessary preventive care in a timely manner. This epidemic has highest rates of prevalence in children who have other significant stressors in their lives, such as lower socioeconomic status. Interestingly, those in families with relatively high incomes still have an appallingly low rate of compliance with recommended preventive care and so this does not appear to be a simple matter of increasing funding for Medicaid programs. In light of the epidemic’s pervasiveness and complexity, this Article explores the attributes of the epidemic, gives examples of how the current system is incapable of addressing it and then makes substantive recommendations for legal changes that can help allow for a system that achieves better preventive care. In brief, there are not enough dentists in this country to treat all children. Medicaid and dental insurance reimbursement rates are inadequate. Many parents cannot seem to manage to leave work and take children to necessary preventive care appointments. This Article recommends that dental therapists, a newer type of caregiver trained in pediatric preventive dental care, be used in schools to provide the basics of preventive care to all children. This proposal is based on the system currently being used in New Zealand, where it has achieved close to universal preventive care. The Article then explains some impediments to implementing this proposal, and suggests interim legal steps to improve children’s dental health.
Criminal Procedure in Perspective

This Article attempts to situate the Supreme Court's constitutional criminal procedure jurisprudence in the academic debates surrounding the reasonable person standard, in particular, the extent to which objective standards should incorporate a particular individual's subjective characteristics. Analyzing the Supreme Court's search and seizure and confessions opinions, I find that the Court shifts opportunistically from case to case between subjective and objective tests, and between whose point of view - the police officer's or the defendant's - it views as controlling. Moreover, these deviations cannot be explained either by the principles the Court claims underlie the various constitutional provisions at issue or by the attributes of subjective and objective tests themselves. The Article then centers on the one Supreme Court opinion in this area to address the question of "subjective" objective standards, Yarborough v. Alvarado, 541 U.S. 652 (2004), where the Court intimates that a minor defendant's age might not be a relevant factor in applying the objective "reasonable suspect" test used to define custody for purposes of Miranda. The Article criticizes the Court's simplistic suggestion that considering any of a defendant's characteristics may automatically turn an objective inquiry into a subjective one, and then discusses the issue of age that the Court faced in Alvarado as well as the questions of race that pervade our criminal justice system. In the end, the Article does not advocate that the Court choose one perspective for all criminal procedure cases, or even necessarily for all cases interpreting a particular constitutional provision, but instead that the Court adopt a principled approach to the question of perspective based on the interests a particular constitutional protection is designed to further. The constitutional provisions intended to deter abusive police practices should focus on the party to be deterred, the police, and in order to maximize their deterrent impact ought to incorporate both subjective and objective considerations. On the other hand, the perspective that should control when interpreting constitutional doctrines whose goal is to promote voluntary decisionmaking and/or dispel coercion depends on whether one subscribes to the "consent model" or the "coercion model." The consent model, which is aimed at preserving the defendant's right to make a free and unconstrained choice, should turn on the defendant's point of view. The coercion model, by contrast, is meant to discourage the police from using improperly coercive techniques and thus, like the deterrence-based constitutional rights, ought to focus on the police. Unless the Court takes the preliminary step of articulating a consistent position on the issue of perspective for criminal procedure cases, we can continue to expect oversimplified decisions like Alvarado rather than meaningful contributions to the controversies surrounding the reasonable person standard.
Centralization, decentralization and conflict in the Middle East and North Africa

This paper examines broadly the intergovernmental structure in the Middle East and North Africa region, which has one of the most centralized government structures in the world. The authors address the reasons behind this centralized structure by looking first at the history behind the tax systems of the region. They review the Ottoman taxation system, which has been predominantly influential as a model, and discuss its impact on current government structure. They also discuss the current intergovernmental structure by examining the type and degree of decentralization in five countries representative of the region: Egypt, Iran, West Bank/Gaza, Tunisia, and Yemen. Cross-country regression analysis using panel data for a broader set of countries leads to better understanding of the factors behind heavy centralization in the region. The findings show that external conflicts constitute a major roadblock to decentralization in the region.
Special dividends and the evolution of dividend signaling

This paper documents that (1) special dividends were once commonly paid by NYSE "rms, but are now rarely paid; (2) "rms typically paid specials almost as predictably as they paid regular dividends; (3) despite the dramatic overall decline in specials, the incidence of very large specials increased in recent years; and (4) special dividends were not displaced by stock repurchases. Most plausibly, small specials disappeared because their predictability made them close substitutes for regular dividend signals, while large specials survived because their sheer size automatically di!erentiates them from regulars. ( 2000 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved. JEL classixcation: G35; D82
Extensive and Intensive Investment over the Business Cycle

Investment of US firms responds asymmetrically to Tobin’s Q: investment of established firms—“intensive” investment—reacts negatively to Q whereas investment of new firms—“extensive” investment—responds positively and elastically to Q. This asymmetry, we argue, reflects a difference between established and new firms in the cost of adopting new technologies. A fall in the compatibility of new capital with old capital raises measured Q and reduces the incentive of established firms to invest. New firms do not face such compatibility costs and step up their investment in response to the rise in Q.
$\mathcal N=2$ SYK model in the superspace formalism

We use superspace methods to study an SYK-like model with $$ \mathcal{N}=2 $$ supersymmetry in one dimension, and an analog of this model in two dimensions. We find the four-point function as an expansion in the basis of eigenfunctions of the Casimir of su(1, 1|1). We also find retarded kernels and Lyapunov exponents for both cases.
What Goods Do Countries Trade? A Quantitative Exploration of Ricardo’s Ideas

The Ricardian model predicts that countries should produce and export rela- tively more in industries in which they are relatively more productive. Though one of the most celebrated insights in the theory of international trade, this prediction has received little attention in the empirical literature since the mid-1960s. The main reason behind this lack of popularity is the absence of clear theoretical foundations to guide the empirical analysis. Building on the seminal work of Eaton and Kortum (2002), we oer such founda- tions and use them to quantify the importance of Ricardian comparative advantage. In the process, we also provide a theoretically-consistent alternative to Balassa's (1965) well-known index of 'revealed comparative advantage.'
Managerial Actions, Stock Returns, and Earnings: The Case of Business-to-Business Internet Firms

In this study we investigate the valuation implications of managerial actions undertaken by 57 Internet firms engaged in Business-to-Business (B2B) e-commerce. We classify 3,007 managerial actions undertaken by our sample firms between the firm’s IPO date and September 30, 2000 into nine action categories: (1) acquisition of major customers, (2) introduction of new products and services, (3) promotional and marketing actions, (4) actions taken to address the concerns of stakeholders such as employees and the community at large, (5) announcements of technology, marketing, and distribution alliances, (6) completion of acquisitions, (7) expansion into international markets, (8) management team building actions, and (9) organizational changes. In the short window tests, we find a significant increase in stock price volatility over a three-day event window surrounding the announcement of almost all actions suggesting that announcement of managerial actions provides valuerelevant information to the stock market. In the long window tests, we use factor analysis to group the counts of managerial actions taken by each firm over its post-IPO life into two broad managerial initiatives—market penetration and organization building. These two initiatives explain a substantial portion of the cross-sectional variation in the firms’ post-IPO life stock market returns beyond that explained by both reported earnings and analysts’ forecasts of future earnings and revenues. Thus, investors appear to supplement relatively meager accounting information with data about the cross-sectional intensity of managerial actions in setting stock prices of B2B Internet firms.
Static Hedging of Standard Options

We consider the hedging of options when the underlying asset price is exposed to the possibility of jumps of random size. Working in a single factor Markovian setting, we derive a new, static spanning relation between a given option and a continuum of shorter-term options written on the same asset. We implement this static relation using a finite set of shorte r-term options and use Monte Carlo simulation to determine the hedging error. We compare this hedging error to that of a delta hedging strategy based on daily rebalancing in the underlying futures. The simulation results show that the two types of hedging strategies generate comparable performance under purely continuous asset price dynamics, but that our static hedge strongly outperforms delta hedging when the underlying asset price process contains random jumps. When we compare the hedging effectiveness of the two types of strategies using over six years of data on S&P 500 index options, we find that a static hedge using just five call options outperforms daily delta hedging with the underlying futures. This result lends empirical support for the existence of random jumps in the movement of the S&P 500 index.
The bomb thief and the theory of justification defenses

I s a justification defense, such as self-defense, law enforcement authority, or lesser evil, given because of an actor's good motive--his justificatory purpose--for doing what otherwise would be an offense? Or, is a justification defense given because, given the special justifying circumstances, the law tolerates and even encourages the actor's conduct? The answer to these questions has implications for how justification defenses are formulated. The bomb thief case nicely illustrates the tension between these two ways of characterizing the justification defense, and helps illustrate why one theory is better than the other.
What We Know and What We Should Know about American Trial Trends

More than a few people noticed that the American court system was seeing ever fewer trials before Marc Galanter named the phenomenon. But until Galanter mobilized lawyers and scholars to look systematically at the issue, inquiry was both piecemeal and sparse. Over the past three years, in contrast, Galanter’s research and his idea entrepreneurship, crystallized in the “Vanishing Trial” label, has spawned if not a huge literature at least a substantial one. We have now gotten the benefit of sustained scholarly inquiry by researchers of many stripes. Their work has been largely, though not entirely, empirical, and so we have gained a good deal of positive knowledge. This brief essay first summarizes some of that knowledge—in particular, the chief features we know about the shrinking civil trial docket in federal district courts. Next, it proposes four areas of future investigation necessary to understand the contours of the trend and to assess its causes. Then, I bring together the causal hypotheses that have already been proposed, none of which has yet been securely tested. Finally, in an appended bibliography, I list data sources, reports, and scholarly analyses that will be useful to those doing future work.
Course Corrections:: The Obama Administration at the United Nations

Less has changed in US diplomacy at the United Nations than many observers expected when the Obama administration took office in January 2009. In the UN Security Council, the United States has pursued a generally steady course that in many respects builds on the accomplishments of the Bush administration. Unexpectedly, the Security Council’s pace of work diminished considerably during the first few years of the new administration. The most significant change is the atmospherics of US diplomacy, not its substance: the Obama administration has participated in processes that the Bush administration shunned and has toned down US criticism of the United Nations’ perceived shortcomings.
Avoiding Legal Seduction: Reinvigorating the Labor Movement to Balance Corporate Power

This article is a response to the lead article in the symposium by Professor Ken Dau-Schmidt arguing for a more effective mechanism for employee voice and recommending primarily legal vehicles to increase opportunities for voice. The article suggests the law is unlikely to change in the ways Professor Dau-Schmidt suggests without a revitalized labor movement. It further argues that that unions have been too dependent on the law and lawyers, a strategy that is ultimately unsuccessful without a large, active and loyal membership base and a network of supportive organizations advocating for the same causes. Unions have been enticed, and understandably so, to rely heavily on legal action, contract enforcement and electoral politics. As a result, they have sometimes spent too little energy on engaging their own membership, organizing new members, and building coalitions with other organizations with similar aims. While legal strategies can be one arrow in a quiver, in order for labor unions to play a significant role in the future in providing employee voice, they must have a broad vision. Law must be an instrument of the movement but not a driver of the strategy. A combination of returning to the tools that built the movement and adapting to the changed conditions of the global economy will enable trade unions to provide an important and much- needed counterbalance to corporate power.
Recommendation agents on the internet

Abstract This article examines one of the functions of “intelligent agents” used by service providers on the Internet (e.g., retailers and information search engines) that compare a user's profile to data on other users to determine which users in the database are similar to the focal user, and which recommendations (of products or information strings) might thereby be useful to the focal user. We characterize these questions as Internet modelers “rediscovering the wheel” of cluster analysis. We draw from the literature on cluster analysis to begin to address the questions being posed in this new application arena.
Executive Compensation and Business Policy Choices at U.S. Commercial Banks

We show that contractual risk-taking incentives for chief executive officers (CEOs) increased at large U.S. commercial banks around 2000, when industry deregulation expanded these banks’ growth opportunities. Our econometric models indicate that CEOs responded positively to these incentives, especially at the larger banks best able to take advantage of these opportunities. Our results also suggest that bank boards responded to higher-than-average levels of risk by moderating CEO risk-taking incentives; however, this feedback effect is absent at the very largest banks with strong growth opportunities and a history of highly aggressive risk-taking incentives.
Facts and Fantasies about Commodity Futures

For this study of the simple properties of commodity futures as an asset class, an equally weighted index of monthly returns of commodity futures was constructed for the July 1959 through December 2004 period. Fully collateralized commodity futures historically have offered the same return and Sharpe ratio as U.S. equities. Although the risk premium on commodity futures is essentially the same as that on equities for the study period, commodity futures returns are negatively correlated with equity returns and bond returns. The negative correlation is the result, primarily, of commodity futures' different behavior over a business cycle. Commodity futures are positively correlated with inflation, unexpected inflation, and changes in expected inflation.
Republicanism, Liberalism, and the Law

Much recent scholarship contrasts republicanism with liberalism as the two central and contradictory ideals of modern legal and constitutional thought.1 Both terms continue to attract new meanings, in pursuit of various legal and political goals.2 Recently, some lawyers have contrasted that liberalism which regards law as a necessary evil with republican visions of cultural self-expression through law.3 This misstates the historical origins and best usage of both terms. Looking more closely at the origins and fundamental doctrines of republicanism and liberalism reveals that their principles do not necessarily conflict, and that each endorses law as the necessary vehicle of social justice. Republicanism is the parent of liberalism in Western Europe. They share a fundamental commitment to liberty and differ only in their relative ambition. Liberalism grew out of republican theory, and has never found stability or security, without the protection of a republican form of government.
Aggregate demand and supply

This paper is part of a broader project that provides a microfoundation to the General Theory of J. M. Keynes. I call this project “old Keynesian economics” to distinguish it from new-Keynesian economics, a theory that is based on the idea that to make sense of Keynes we must assume that prices are sticky. I describe a multi-good model in which I interpret the definitions of aggregate demand and supply found in the General Theory through the lens of a search theory of the labor market. I argue that Keynes' aggregate supply curve can be interpreted as the aggregate of a set of first-order conditions for the optimal choice of labor and, using this interpretation, I reintroduce a diagram that was central to the textbook teaching of Keynesian economics in the immediate post-war period.
Personalistic leadership, party politics, and the quality of democracy: the case of Italy

Italian political history has not been marked by the presence of major political leaders. Only exceptionally have leadership figures, such as the Risorgimento hero Giuseppe Garibaldi, played a significant and widely acclaimed role. Others, especially Benito Mussolini, were associated with the authoritarian regime of the interwar period, therefore contributing to the general distrust of powerful leaders. This paper explores what have been, and are, the cultural and institutional obstacles to the emergence of powerful leaders. The most important can be found in the presence of widely shared anti-political sentiments. In the post–Second World War period, the prevailing attitude of dislike of strong leaders was expressed by both major parties, the Christian Democrats and the Communists. This dislike was institutionalised in the Italian Constitution, which provides for a traditional model of weak parliamentary government. In spite of Silvio Berlusconi’s emphasis on his personal leadership qualities, or perhaps...
Incomplete Contracts and Firm Boundaries: New Directions

The seminal work by Grossman and Hart (1986 "The Costs and Benefits of Ownership: A Theory of Vertical and Lateral Integration", 94 Journal of Political Economy 691–19.) made the study of firm boundaries susceptible to formal economic analysis, and illuminated an important role for markets in providing incentives. In this essay, I discuss some new directions that the literature has taken since. As a central challenge, I identify the need to provide a formal theory of the firm in which managerial direction and bureaucratic decision-making play a key role. Merging a number of existing incomplete contracting models, I propose two approaches with very different contracting assumptions. As in transaction cost economics, a central element in those theories is the presence of a central office that directs and coordinates the actions of subordinates. More novel, I highlight the superior ability of nonintegrated firms to adapt to a changing environment. JEL: D23, D83, D86, L22, L23.
Auction failures and the market for auction rate securities

Abstract The market for auction rate securities (ARS) made headlines during the second week of February 2008 when auctions at which the bonds’ interest rates reset experienced a wave of “failures.” Contrary to headlines that attribute the failures to a “frozen” market or investors’ “irrationality,” we find that (1) even at their height, less than 50% of ARS experienced auction failures, (2) the likelihood of auction failure was directly related to the level of the bonds’ “maximum auction rates,” (3) the implied market clearing yields of bonds with failed auctions were significantly above their maximum auction rates, and (4) ARS yields were generally higher than yields of various cash equivalent investment alternatives. We infer that investors priced the possibility of auctions failures into ARS yields and rationally declined to bid for bonds for which required market yields exceeded their maximum auction rates.
Making Sense of Drug Regulation: A Theory of Law for Drug Control Policy

This article advances a new theory of drug regulation that addresses two previously unexamined questions: how law-makers are able to regulate drugs differently irrespective of the dangers the drugs may pose and independent of their health effects, and the process followed to achieve this phenomenon. For example, although tobacco products are the leading cause of preventable death in the U.S. they can be bought and sold legally by adults, while marijuana, a substantially safer drug, is subject to the highest level of drug control. This article posits a conceptual model for making sense of this dissonance and applies this model to the regulation of four common drugs: cocaine, marijuana, tobacco and anabolic steroids. Although much has been written on the topic of licit and illicit drug regulation, none of the scholarship in this literature has attempted to explain through an examination of pharmaceutical, illicit, and over-the-counter drugs how the apparent inconsistencies and incoherence of the U.S. system of drug control have been achieved and sustained. This work fills the gap in this literature by proposing an innovative and comprehensive theoretical model for understanding how drugs can become “medicalized,” “criminalized” or deemed appropriate for recreational use, based upon little or no empirical evidence regarding the pharmacodynamics of the drug.
Exchange Theory, Political Parties, and the Allocation of Federal Distributive Benefits in the House of Representatives

Many works acknowledge partisan differences in distributive benefits. Few works, however, have empirically examined the role party-building activities play in these distributions. Through Exchange Theory, we hypothesize that legislators are rewarded with distributive benefits for promoting the legislative and electoral goals of the party. Using data on party unity, member-to-member contributions, and distributive benefits, we observe these exchange relationships occurring between members and their parties in the House of Representatives, as well as directly between representatives and members of the Appropriations Committee. The analyses point to the importance of political parties in distributive politics.
Inextricably Linked: An International Human Rights Perspective on Child Health and Education

Millions of children around the world wish most of all for the chance at an education. Their thirst for education is so great that when barriers such as school fees have been removed in some countries, school populations surge almost overnight. Unfortunately, tens of millions of children face considerable obstacles in attempting to realize their right to education. Economic, social, and geographic barriers are, in some respects, readily identifiable. However, another obstacle to children's dreams of pursuing an education - health status - often goes unnoticed. This article focuses on the links between health and education in children's development. While connections flow in both directions, the article's primary aim is to highlight specifically the impact of health on education prospects. The dramatic consequences of health status on children's educational opportunities suggest that educators have a role to play in the health sector. The article discusses the importance of international human rights law in advancing the health and educational opportunities for children and suggests that human rights law can be an important tool for educators seeking to promote progress in health and education and further assist children in developing to their fullest potential.
Service Providers of the Sharing Economy: Who Joins and Who Benefits?

Many "sharing economy" platforms, such as Uber and Airbnb, have become increasingly popular, providing consumers with more choices and suppliers a chance to make profit. They, however, have also brought about emerging issues regarding regulation, tax obligation, and impact on urban environment, and have generated heated debates from various interest groups. Empirical studies regarding these issues are limited, partly due to the unavailability of relevant data. Here we aim to understand service providers of the sharing economy, investigating who joins and who benefits, using the Airbnb market in the United States as a case study. We link more than 211 thousand Airbnb listings owned by 188 thousand hosts with demographic, socio-economic status (SES), housing, and tourism characteristics. We show that income and education are consistently the two most influential factors that are linked to the joining of Airbnb, regardless of the form of participation or year. Areas with lower median household income, or higher fraction of residents who have Bachelor's and higher degrees, tend to have more hosts. However, when considering the performance of listings, as measured by number of newly received reviews, we find that income has a positive effect for entire-home listings; listings located in areas with higher median household income tend to have more new reviews. Our findings demonstrate empirically that the disadvantage of SES-disadvantaged areas and the advantage of SES-advantaged areas may be present in the sharing economy.
The Past, Present, and Probable Future for Community Banks

We review how deregulation, technological advance, and increased competitive rivalry have affected the size and health of the United States community banking sector and the quality and availability of banking products and services. We then develop a simple theoretical framework for analyzing how these changes have affected the competitive viability of community banks. Empirical evidence presented in this paper is consistent with the model’s prediction that regulatory and technological change has exposed community banks to intensified competition on the one hand, but on the other hand has left well-managed community banks with a potentially exploitable strategic position in the industry. We also offer an analysis of how the number and distribution of community banks may change in the future.
Long-Run Performance Evaluation: Correlation and Heteroskedasticity-Consistent Tests

Abstract Although there is an extensive literature that evaluates long-run stock returns, the statistical tests that are commonly used are misspecified when event firms share common characteristics. For example, industry clustering or overlapping returns in the sample contribute to test misspecification. We propose a new test of long-run performance that allows for heteroskedasticity and autocorrelation. Our tests are well-specified in random samples and in samples with industry clustering and with overlapping returns.
THE IMPACT OF INSURANCE PRICES ON DECISION MAKING BIASES: AN EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS

This article tests whether the use of endogenous risk categorization by insurers enables consumers to make better-informed decisions even if they do not choose to purchase insurance. We do so by adding a simple insurance market to an experimental test of optimal (Bayesian) updating. In some sessions, no insurance is offered. In others, actuarially fair insurance prices are posted, and a subset of subjects is allowed to purchase this insurance. We find significant differences in the decision rules used depending on whether one observes insurance prices. Although the majority of choices correspond to Bayesian updating, the incidence of optimal decisions is higher in sessions with an insurance option. Most subjects given the option to purchase actuarially fair insurance choose to do so. However, fewer subjects purchase insurance when the probability of a loss is higher.
Competition and Efficiency of Coalitions in Cournot Games With Uncertainty

We investigate the impact of coalition formation on the efficiency of Cournot games where producers face uncertainties. In particular, we study a market model where firms must determine their output before an uncertain production capacity is realized. In contrast to standard Cournot models, we show that the game is not efficient when there are many small firms. Instead, producers tend to act conservatively to hedge against their risks. We show that in the presence of uncertainty, the game becomes efficient when firms are allowed to take advantage of diversity to form groups of certain sizes. We characterize the tradeoff between market power and uncertainty reduction as a function of group size. In particular, we compare the welfare and output obtained with coalitional competition, with the same benchmarks when output is controlled by a single system operator. We show that when there are $N$ firms present, competition between groups of size $\Omega (\sqrt{N})$ results in equilibria that are socially optimal in terms of welfare and groups of size $\Omega (N^{2/3})$ are socially optimal in terms of production. We also extend our results to the case of uncertain demand by establishing an equivalency between the Cournot oligopoly and Cournot Oligopsony. We demonstrate our results with real data from electricity markets with significant wind power penetration.
How Country and Safety-Net Characteristics Affect Bank Risk-Shifting

Risk-shifting occurs when creditors or guarantors are exposed to loss without receiving adequate compensation. This paper seeks to measure and compare how well authorities in 56 countries controlled bank risk shifting during the 1990s. Although significant risk-shifting occurs on average, substantial variation exists in the effectiveness of risk control across countries. We find that the tendency for explicit deposit insurance to exacerbate risk shifting is tempered by incorporating loss-control features such as risk-sensitive premiums, coverage limits, and coinsurance. Introducing explicit deposit insurance has had adverse effects in environments that are low in political and economic freedom and high in corruption.
Of Smiles and Smirks: A Term Structure Perspective

An extensive empirical literature in finance has documented not only the presence of anomalies in the Black-Scholes model, but also the term structures of these anomalies (for instance, the behavior of the volatility smile or of unconditional returns at different maturities). Theoretical efforts in the literature at addressing these anomalies have largely focused on two extensions of the Black-Scholes model: introducing jumps into the return process, and allowing volatility to be stochastic. We employ commonly used versions of these two classes of models to examine the extent to which the models are theoretically capable of resolving the observed anomalies. We find that each model exhibits some term structure patterns that are fundamentally inconsistent with those observed in the data. As a consequence, neither class of models constitutes an adequate explanation of the empirical evidence, although stochastic volatility models fare somewhat better than jumps.
Overcoming Structural Barriers to Integrated Housing: A Back-to-the-Future Reflection on the Fair Housing Act's "Affirmatively Further" Mandate

Akey goal of the 1968 Fair Housing Act (“FHA”),3 which was passed as an immediate response to Dr. King’s assassination,4 was to replace the ghettos with “truly integrated and balanced living patterns.”5 It hasn’t happened. Today, more than four decades after the FHA’s passage, “residential segregation remains a key feature of America’s urban landscape,”6 continuing to condemn new generations of minorities to a second–class set of opportunities and undercutting a variety of national goals for all citizens.7 But recent developments dealing with an underutilized provision of the FHA – § 3608’s mandate that federal housing funds be used “affirmatively
ENVIRONMENTAL REGULATION AND LABOR DEMAND: EVIDENCE FROM THE SOUTH COAST AIR BASIN *

Abstract The devolved nature of environmental regulation generates rich regulatory variation across regions, industries and time. We exploit this variation, using direct measures of regulation and plant data, to estimate employment effects of sharply increased air quality regulation in Los Angeles. Regulations were accompanied by large reductions in NO x emissions and induced large abatement investments for refineries. Nevertheless, we find no evidence that local air quality regulation substantially reduced employment, even when allowing for induced plant exit and dissuaded plant entry. Regulations affected employment only slightly — partly because regulated plants are in capital and not labor-intensive industries. These findings are robust to the choice of comparison regions.
Why Copyrights are Not Community Property

This Article argues that copyrights created during the legal of community property are the separate property of the author-spouse. Although community property law purports to vest ownership of all property-including copyrights-in the community, federal copyright law vests ownership of copyrights solely in the author. Given this conflict, federal law preempts state community property law on the issue of initial vesting of copyright ownership. Furthermore, no provision of state community property law purports to transfer vested copyrights from the author to the community. Indeed, no state law could do so given that federal law prohibits most involuntary copyright transfers. Arguing that federal classification of copyrights as the separate property of the author-spouse is fair, this Article concludes that such classification is essential not only to further important interests advanced by community property law, but also to comply with the Copyright Clause of the Constitution.